Supervisor Sean Elsbernd asked his colleague Jane Kim a worthwhile question at Monday’s Rules Committee meeting: “What is more important to [our] communities? Having dollars available for services? Or standing on a principle that has been deemed unconstitutional?”
Kim, for the record, prefers the latter, but we’ll get back to that.
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You may have read that Mayor Ed Lee negotiated deals with police and fire unions that shield them from the effects of Jeff Adachi’s pension reform measure, Proposition D, if voters support that measure over the mayor-endorsed pension reform dubbed Proposition C.
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This Thursday, the Government Audit and Oversight Committee will hold a hearing to discuss a recent audit by the Office of the Budget and Legislative Analyst. The subject of the audit is The City’s advertising policies and practices. The report covers all departments that receive advertising revenue, but the harshest criticism is reserved for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.
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After Public Defender Jeff Adachi entered the mayoral race on Aug. 12, polling firm Public Opinion Strategies conducted a survey of 500 likely voters to determine the No. 1 choice among the newly expanded field of candidates. The poll, commissioned by an independent expenditure committee not advocating for any mayoral candidate, was conducted over the phone from Aug. 14-16.
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Last week, the group that decides which candidates and ballot propositions will get the stamp of approval from the Democratic Party in San Francisco — the Democratic County Central Committee — held its endorsement meeting.
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No one expected the Friday announcement that Public Defender Jeff Adachi would enter the mayoral race. Perhaps we should have.
With 43 percent of voters in favor of his pension proposal last year, Adachi has a built-in base of folks concerned with fiscal responsibility and sick of the incestuous relationship between unions and city officials. Know who else’s fan club has a lot of members who are concerned about San Francisco’s bottom line? Ed Lee.
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As predicted, Ed Lee is looking to drop the “interim” from his title and conveniently announced this fact Monday, around the same time a poll was released showing Lee ahead of all other candidates by more than a mustache. In the poll, 35 percent of respondents said Lee was their first choice for mayor, and the candidates who are not Ed Lee got between 1 and 10 percent of respondents’ first votes. The poll of fewer than 600 people was conducted by robocall and did not ask about second and third choices for mayor. So, don’t call your bookie just yet.
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‘Mayor Lee is banning all consultants who are working on mayoral campaigns from working on his ballot measures,” said the email I got exactly one month ago from a local consultant.
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How does a law regulating emissions become a law protecting circumcision? In Sacramento, the practice is called “gut and amend” and it is a tactic commonly used to get urgent bills in front of the governor for signature. The regular legislative calendar requires that all bills for any legislative session be introduced by a certain date — this year it was Feb. 18. Of course, the world keeps on turning after that date, so sometimes someone has to take a previously introduced bill and make it a new, more important one.
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At almost four hours long, Thursday’s Board of Supervisors Rules Committee meeting was more than any sane person could sit through. And so, I give you my summary of what happened when supervisors Sean Elsbernd, Mark Farrell and Jane Kim heard testimony about certain measures headed for the November ballot because activists wrote a law and four supervisors signed it. First is the proposal to prevent “all recreation facilities” from being “leased to private entities.” This one was signed by supervisors John Avalos, David Campos, Eric Mar and Ross Mirkarimi.
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“Mayor’s question time is this Tuesday,” I mentioned to my friend as I perused the Board of Supervisors agenda for today’s meeting. “Oh, you mean that thing where Mayor Lee shows up at the board with scripted responses to scripted questions and doesn’t really tell us anything?” my friend said. “That’s the one!”
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Every couple of seasons, Planet Budget and Planet Election collide and the resulting blast of anti-overtime bombast signals the creation of a legislative black hole. Good intentions and electoral pandering alike are sucked in and disappear, along with the public’s memory of their existence.
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Certain changes will have to be made to San Francisco’s system of publicly financing candidates for local office thanks to Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down part of Arizona’s public finance law.
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In November 2002, voters were presented with a plan to issue $123 million in general obligation bonds to improve and seismically retrofit the War Memorial Veterans Building. Although backed by all members of the Board of Supervisors and heavy hitters such as Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, only 55 percent of voters approved the bonds, which was short of the 66.7 percent required by law.
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‘Limitations on contributions to political committees … have been struck down as limitations on free speech,” read part of then-Supervisor Barbara Kaufman’s opposition to Proposition O in the November 2000 voter guide. As The City prepares to pay $290,000 to settle a case against Prop. O, which will never again be enforced, I dare say the warning was prescient.
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