Board of Supes 'Item No. 8' To Determine Who's Getting Thrown Under Muni Budget Bus -- Or Will It?

By Joe Eskenazi in Government, Politics, Public Transit

Tue., May. 12 2009 @ 8:30AM

Who will ride MTA -- and who will be run over?

If you're going to sit through the utterly forgettable film Red Heat, be sure to not go get a beer from the kitchen during the film's one unique moment -- a game of chicken involving a pair of city buses driven toward one another at breakneck speed. One of those buses, incidentally, was piloted by our future governor.

Well, sub out Arnie and sub in our current mayor. Yank the Russian thug and put Supervisor David Chiu behind the wheel of the other bus and you've got today's full Board of Supervisors meeting -- an event that promises far more drama (and repercussions) than Red Heat, and deals with budget numbers that humble even a Hollywood blockbuster.

Okay, let's be judgmental: Unless you don't give a damn about this city you live in, you've heard a bit about the ongoing Muni battle between Mayor Gavin Newsom and David Chiu. While the mayor supports a Municipal Transportation Agency budget that, simultaneously, calls for fare hikes, service cuts, and ongoing raids of MTA's coffers by tangentially related city agencies, Chiu last week took the unprecedented step of saying "hell no."

Barring some manner of 11th-hour compromise, Item No. 8 of today's Board of Supervisors meeting looks to be a political Rubicon: "Motion rejecting the Municipal Transportation Agency's (MTA) proposed FY 2009-2010 budget ... Question: Shall this motion be APPROVED?"

Well, that is the $766 million question, isn't it?

Machinations will certainly precede today's 2 p.m. meeting: Chiu says he has the seven vote "super-majority" he needs to send the MTA budget packing -- but can the mayor's people wrest away Sophie Maxwell? But will Bevan Dufty -- who blew the whistle on the pillaging of Muni via "work orders"-- jump on board the budget-spiking bandwagon? (He told us last week he didn't know what he'd do -- but sided with Chiu's motion to let the supes vote on this).

And let's say Chiu does pull the rug out from under the mayor and MTA -- will those two even bother submitting another budget? City Controller Ben Rosenfield maintains they are not required to do so. If Newsom wants to insist that it's this budget or nothing -- and force the supes into watching him enact the draconian draining of the General Fund he warns of -- he can.

In short, is our game of chicken ending today -- or just beginning?