Sweet Melissa

Tiff over RCV Announcement Here

Check out thier RCV discussion here: 

 

Liveblogging the CBS Debate

Constant Readers,

I'm grateful to all the clubs that allowed me to moderate their debates. But I'm glad to sit this one out and watch. I'm trying this new liveblogging software. We'll see if it works.

-Melissa

Necessary Conversation, Episode 45: Sexual Hypocrisy

Episode 44: Throwing Shade

Constant Readers,

Happy Friday, y'all!

For those of you who don't know (Hi Mom!): throwing shade

 

-Melissa

The Net-Net could be a Win-Win for Adachi and Lee

After Public Defender Jeff Adachi announced his intention to run for mayor last Friday, some friends and I convened to discuss the issue. We didn’t agree on anything except the fact that none of us saw this coming. But perhaps we should have.

While it’s not an exact indicator, 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 our City’s bottom line? Ed Lee.

Known (rightfully or not) for keeping Twitter in town and negotiating a pension reform measure, Lee appeals to some moderates who want to trust that whomever is mayor won’t be hostile to business or give away the farm to public employee unions. Now Adachi threatens to law claim to that demographic and everyone to the right of it. (Sorry, Tony Hall.)

So, how does Ed Lee deal with Jeff Adachi? In a ranked choice voting situation, the best way to deal with a rival for your base is to get them on your side. How might Lee get Adachi’s support? Does Lee have something that Adachi wants? You betcha: a pension solution. Having two mutually exclusive pension measures on the ballot means that neither is likely to pass.

Remember that a few months ago, Adachi offered to withdraw his own pension ballot measure if Lee would agree to certain enhancements to the “City Plan” Lee helped negotiate. Lee rejected that offer, but he might just be rethinking a negotiated peace right now.

To be explicit, here’s the scenario: Lee agrees to a pension deal (at this point it would have to be a side-agreement, since the proposals are ballot-ready), Adachi withdraws his pension measure and tells his supporters to vote for himself first and Lee second. Adachi avoids another pension loss at the polls, and he gains points with the Lee administration.

Think this is all farfetched? Don't forget that Willie Brown backed Adachi's pension reform last year and already Adachi’s announcement that he is running for mayor knocked “Ed Lee Lied To Us” out of the headlines. (You’re welcome, Ed! - Jeff)

So, while right now it looks like we will be faced with a Lee/Adachi deuling pension showdown in November, maybe this dance ends exactly where Lee and Adachi want it to: with pension peace for Adachi and a win for Lee in the mayor’s race.

"That was stupid." - my consultant friend re: Nuru's appointment as head of DPW

With the chief of the Department of Public Works, Ed Reiskin, moving over to head the Municipal Transportation Agency, the number one spot at the DPW just opened up. Appointing the new DPW chief is the task of the City Administrator, the job formerly held by Mayor Ed Lee. Lee appointed Amy Brown to be acting City Administrator but her selection of Mohammed Nuru to be acting DPW chief is raising some eyebrows.

Nuru has been the Director of Operations at the DPW since 2000, when he was appointed by then-mayor Willie Brown. Nuru’s aggressive tactics when cleaning up graffiti and clearing sidewalks have earned him the love of some merchants and neighborhood groups, but other elements of his history in the department are not so flattering.

Prior to his appointment as director at DPW, Nuru ran a nonprofit called San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners (SLUG). When he moved over to the DPW, Nuru oversaw significant grant funding to SLUG, which continued to flow despite serious concerns about the group’s financial shenanigans. A searing 2004 audit by the City Controller accused the SLUG of nonexistent accounting protocols and states, “$62,508 of SLUG’s contract funds were improperly used by Public Works to buy a portable building for itself.” (Audit here: Download Audit.)

Also in 2004 City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s office undertook an investigation of allegations that SLUG improperly used employees to engage in campaign activities and did so during working hours. While Nuru declined to be interviewed for the investigation, the resulting report found that in 2003 Nuru had “participated in directing – in alleged instance, coercing – SLUG workers in some of their campaign activities” for (Willie Brown-endorsed) candidates Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris during working hours. (The report: Download ShowDocument1)

WEBSITE BONUS: My favorite part of the report?

One of these witnesses reports having eventually refused to engage in the [campaign] activity, inasmuch as he was a strong Gonzalez supporter and already felt profoundly cheated by having been coerced into voting for Newsom on 2 December on pain of losing his day's pay. When he refused to do more work, according to the witness, Nuru reportedly told him to "get off your ass and get to work." The witness alleges that he did not do as Nuru instructed, instead just sitting in a chair in the Russia Street office for the remainder of the shift.

[This would be funnier if these folks weren't being paid by tax dollars. And if it didn't sound so familiar.] 

As an interim appointment, Nuru’s promotion might have been a blip. (The next mayor can appoint a new administrator who can replace Nuru.) But now that Lee is a candidate for a full term, his ethics and close ties to Willie Brown are under scrutiny. On Monday, mayoral candidate Dennis Herrera accused Leeof “cronyism, politics and poor judgment” in allowing Nuru to take over the helm of the DPW.

Welcome to the race, Ed.

WEBSITE BONUS: Fun facts that got cut - (1) Amy Brown was the Director of Real Estate in 2008-2009 when SLUG was winding down and had to give property to the DPW to settle over $120k in debts to the city for grant money it improperly billed for and/or failed to return. (Resolution No. 189-10.) (2) Ed Lee was the head of DPW when Nuru joined as Director of Operations in 2000. Lee left the DPW in 2005 to be City Administrator.

I'm Bringing Sour Patch Kids. You Bring the Popcorn.

Tomorrow night the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC) will select which candidates will get the Democratic Party endorsement for mayor, sheriff, and district attorney in this November’s election.

The DCCC has 32 members. Eight of those seats are occupied by elected officials who are members of the Democratic Party and also live in our (mostly San Francisco) Assembly Districts 12 or 13. Right now, they are: Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Congresswomen Nancy Pelosi and Jackie Speier, State Attorney General Kamla Harris, State Senators Mark Leno and Leland Yee, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano and Assemblywoman Fiona Ma.

Last month, DCCC chairman, Aaron Peskin, had Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom taken off the committee because Newsom no longer lives in San Francisco. The move was both justified and savvy: the committee is pretty evenly split between progressives and moderates so getting rid of Newsom’s moderate vote helps the progressive vote count. Tomorrow night’s meeting will hopefully answer two questions.

First, whether the committee will continue its enthusiastic quest for irrelevance by again endorsing candidates with no chance of winning?

Second, whom are the elected officials endorsing? A vote from Pelosi, Feinstein, or Harris would be a welcome boost to any campaign. And with former supervisor Bevan Dufty as the only mayoral candidate with significant support in the gay community thus far (though Herrera gets points for his work on behalf of gay marriage) Leno’s endorsement will be especially valuable.

Necessary Conversation, Episode 40: You Can't Bring a Snake In Here

Constant Readers,

It's Friday! Here's some love from us to you!

-Melissa

Necessary Conversation: Episode 39, The British are Coming!

Constant Readers,

It's Friday! Here you go!

Mayor Question Time, honestly...

“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!”

In an effort to bring you the honesty that should accompany question time, below are the accurate yet slightly paraphrased questions posed by supervisors this week. I also included the answers that I believe Ed Lee would give if he actually were not interested in a full term as mayor.

Question from Supervisor Mark Farrell: How do you plan to stimulate the local economy?

Answer: Charge supervisors $100 for every piece of legislation they propose. We’re doubling that price for resolutions, Supervisor Mar.

Question from Supervisor Carmen Chu: How do you plan to make sure whomever you hire to be the new executive director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is not an utter disappointment with a wandering eye like the last one?

Answer: We will require each applicant to have more than a Transportation Merit Badge from the last Boy Scout jamboree. Also, we will have a new rule mandating that the executive director must take Muni to all job interviews while in office.

Question from Supervisor Jane Kim: What will you do to keep gang members from killing each other in my district?

Answer: We plan to institute a “guns for thesauruses” program to encourage young people to attack each other with sly repartee and vicious innuendo, instead of bullets. It worked in Dusseldorf, so we are confident it will work here.

Question from Supervisor Scott Wiener: What will you do about the fact that certain property owners are finding themselves charged with tree maintenance because The City cannot afford to take care of all our trees.

Answer: All people in District 6 need to move to District 8 because there are apparently no problems larger than the potential for tree maintenance. Next question.

Question from Supervisor Malia Cohen: Please give us a status update on the efforts to improve the Third Street corridor.

Answer: We plan to declare the corridor a historic district like we have done with the Tenderloin and Civic Center. This way, instead of “presently blighted,” people will just think of it as “formerly awesome.” Just kidding! We have no plans.