Ed Lee Has Some 'Splaining to Do

Answer the question or I throw you out!

​Familiarity breeds contempt -- and, crammed into a smaller room upstairs during Board Chambers' expensive redesign, members of the Board of Supervisors are knocking boots in the most nonsexual of ways.

Contempt also breeds contempt -- and, along with spartan accommodations, we can expect much of it at the next supes meeting. It will be the first "mayor's question time" since one Ed Lee decided he liked being mayor so much, he'd buy the company.

Since supes from odd-numbered districts will get their say come Tuesday, that includes fellow mayoral aspirants John Avalos and David Chiu. Expect a few pointed questions.
And expect to know them tomorrow. The deadline for submitting them was noon today (it was missed), and Clerk of the Board Angela Calvillo has to review them before the queries are made public on Thursday.

Chiu didn't return our call, but Avalos told SF Weekly he's going to ask the mayor what he can do to make question time a more dynamic process and less of a "snoozefest."

Along those lines, yes, the ostensible idea of mayoral question time was to produce the best kind of political theater -- entertaining but also informative. It was meant to keep mayors from hiding behind the folks who tell them what to say and how to say it, and defend their principles, on the fly. Giving the mayor a week's heads-up to learn his lines -- which he doesn't even need to do; he often reads from a script -- doesn't achieve anything.

Just one more thing to hold in contempt.

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