SF Weekly has written a little bit about the jaw-dropping recent discovery of a Franciscan Manzanita beneath mounds of overgrown plants abutting the Doyle Drive highway project. While finding a manzanita plant in coastal California is a bit like spotting a rabbit in a rabbit hutch, no one had seen a Franciscan Manzanita in the wild since 1947. This is a once-in-a-lifetime find -- and the plant is right in the path of the highway project. That's irony for you.
The tentative plan for the manzanita we're hearing from those involved in crafting it is to move the plant -- which may be 40 to 70 years old -- to a location where it could become part of a breeding population once again (while previously considered extinct in the wild, a number of Franciscan genotypes descended from clippings made in '47 reside in local botanical gardens). While, theoretically, the botanists and government officials crafting a quick turnaround conservation plant for the lone Franciscan Manzanita could order the billion-dollar highway rebuild to be drastically altered, it doesn't look like that's going to happen.
As a result, some have anticipated that the Center for Biological Diversity will file suit. But Jeff Miller, a local conservation advocate with the CBD, said that's not necessarily so.
'Jetson, depending upon whom you ask and whether or not you factor in several semantic games, you may or may not be fired!'
The big news of the day in the city -- other than our pending return to a quasi-barter economy; I'll exchange two chickens for a scrape of gold off the City Hall dome I can trade to the Ron Paul supporter down the street for some mittens -- is the ongoing battle regarding pending layoffs in the health department.
Yet it seems unclear just how many workers stand to lose their jobs. First we heard it was well over 500. Then in the flier announcing last week's boisterous City Hall protest, the number 500 was bandied about. Then, the number 100 found its way into the press. And, today, we saw "45 to 70." What's the correct answer? Well, all of them -- depending on whom you ask.
In this case, we asked SEIU organizer Robert Haaland, and he answered 546. But there's an explanation that goes with that. Yes, 546 people are slated to be laid off. But the vast majority of them will almost certainly be hired back by the city.
The other day we reported on the apparent discovery of a Franciscan Manzanita in the Presidio -- the first wild specimen of the native San Franciscan plant spotted since 1947. But, in a development that appears to be ironic -- without any mention of diabetics being flattened by insulin trucks -- the manzanita is smackdab in the middle of the planned route for the billion-dollar Doyle Drive redesign.
According to Al Donner, an assistant regional supervisor with the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, a consortium has been cobbled together to decide what comes next. Representatives from the Presidio Trust, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Fish and Wildlife, and expert botanists have a couple of weeks to bang out a conservation plan. Is it within the group's power to tell Caltrans to make costly and time-draining changes to the revamp of the state's most dangerous highway to save a single bush? Donner isn't sure -- but a member of the group told us it can. And yet, that group member also told SF Weekly that moving the roadway doesn't appear to be the route being taken with regards to saving the Franciscan Manzanita.
"The current location of the plant is a place where, even if you left it there, it's not really likely to become a functional population over time," said the group member, who insisted on speaking anonymously. "The goal should be the long-term persistence of the plant. Ideally, the recovery of the plant will involve essentially making it part of a population."
In short, many cuttings need to be taken of the bush and planted elsewhere, and an attempt needs to be made to replant the Franciscan Manzanita (this will be a risky maneuver). This is also the route favored by Professor Tom Parker of San Francisco State, one of the state's foremost experts on manzanitas. "I would rather see it moved to a place where it's protected better and plant more individuals next to it and basically start a population of them," he says. "There are a couple of different individuals in cultivation in botanic gardens. So it makes a lot more sense to me to restore a population into the wild rather than save a single individual in a place you can't really do that."
When Mayor Gavin Newsom's new spokesman -- replacing the freshly resigned old spokesman -- said things are "business as usual" for Newsom these days, it was a brilliantly ambiguous choice of words. Truly, what the hell is ever "business as usual" for Gavin Newsom -- especially now?
Having a mayor acting a little bit loopy is an interesting novelty for a while, just as it was to have a former action star or pro wrestler serving as a state governor. But, barring Ed McMahon heading to City Hall and handing stunned city controller Ben Rosenfeld an oversize check, this city is in dire financial straits right now. And this kind of political theater begins to lose its charm when people begin to throw around terms like "insolvency," and "deficit" while coupling them with figures exceeding $50 million.
That's why it's a mistake to think the media is giving Newsom a hard time over his self-imposed press blackout because we feel threatened. Rather, we feel a bit cheated. This is a mayor whose critics -- with some merit -- have accused him of governing by press release. When you take the press releases away, well, then what? Newsom's not saying. And as for the notion that the mayor is now going "directly to the people" -- this is an awesomely half-baked concept. As if globetrotting, gadabout Gavin Newsom needed more ways to resemble "Where's Waldo," now he's randomly popping up at receptions, open mic nights, and, for all we know, keggers at S.F. State.
"Even if he's licking his wounds after the gubernatorial race, Newsom can still give the appearance of running the show -- and he's not," one veteran political consultant told us. "This not talking to the press is just not good." Added another: "In bad times, sometimes the most valuable thing an elected official can provide is that ephemeral quality called leadership."
The American Civil Liberties Union's San Francisco-based Northern California office is launching a campaign to beef up Internet privacy. In a statement released today, the ACLU seeks to "spotlight the need to upgrade laws protecting consumer data" and unveils its nifty new Web site, dotrights.org (try saying that URL aloud five times), which features a two-minute video primer on the issue.
The statement notes that the federal law which ostensibly safeguards Internet privacy, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, was drafted in 1986, back when the only folks with Internet access were Army scientists and aliens. Today, companies and even government agencies take advantage of this lax legal landscape to collect, subpoena, and sell personal information gleaned from our Web-browsing habits -- such as what books we've recently bought.
D.A. Steve Cooley (left) and City Attorney Carmen Trutanich: They'll keep busting dispensaries no matter what the City Council says!
It was a petulant fit of pique, certainly entertaining, and potentially hilarious -- if safe access for so many medical marijuana patients weren't hanging in the balance.
After things didn't go his way at Monday's Los Angeles City Council joint committee meeting, District Attorney Steve Cooley pronounced Tuesday that he'd keep prosecuting medical marijuana dispensaries, even if the council adopts an ordinance that doesn't ban sales. Cooley said his office was already prosecuting some dispensaries, and he promised to step up such efforts in December.
The D.A.'s public meltdown was a result of his frustration that the council ignored the advice of L.A. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich and changed a provision in L.A.'s proposed medical marijuana ordinance, allowing cash transactions as long as they complied with state law.
"The City Council has no authority to amend state law or Prop. 215. Such authority is solely possessed by California voters," Cooley said. "What the City Council is doing is beyond meaningless and irrelevant."
With today's announcement of the departure of Kevin Ryan, the head of the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, Gavin Newsom passed an important pinnacle. His right-hand men and women have now quit more times than Brett Favre. It took a while, but Newsom caught up.
On a serious note, Ryan's departure comes one day after that of spokesman Nathan Ballard, and on the heels of a number of key members of Team Newsom bidding adieu.
Whether or not this is business as usual or the prelude to more bizarre behavior by the mayor is a matter of opinion; while longtime consultant Jack Davis couldn't think of another San Francisco mayor who suffered such a bevy of resignations at this point in his tenure, fellow consultant Alex Clemens noted that "People move on in politics -- this is not a Japanese salaryman profession where the first job you get is what you retire from."
That's certainly true; political apparatchiks move from job to job with the abandon of assistant football coaches. Still, the glut of high-profile figures resigning from Newsom's campaign while the mayor's political prospects fade and his behavior sinks past eccentric to legitimately strange is difficult to rule out as irrelevant -- no matter how many departing officials assure the media that this was in the works for months, that the mayor is a great man doing a great job, and they want to spend so much more precious time with their families.
Yesterday, SF Weekly broke the news that the city's finances are in such bad shape that the controller has forbidden the mayor or supes from making any expenditures not previously budgeted; the controller cannot guarantee the money is there. Yes, it's that bad.
This takes the wind out of the sails of the Progressive Armada, which had been planning a showdown today regarding legislation that would have spent around $8 million to stave off layoffs of union health workers and rescinded pay freezes. Now, noted Deputy Controller Monique Zmuda, the supes are forbidden from passing such measures unless they hack an equivalent amount out of the city budget or devise revenue-boosting measures (fees or taxes).
It didn't take long for accusations to be made that this cry of insolvency was a veiled political move. SEIU organizer Robert Haaland commented on SF Weekly's Web site that "I smell not only one rat but several." Supervisor John Avalos, author of some of the union-friendly legislation, complained to the Chroniclethat the controller's report was "a little bit cooked" and included totals that were harmful to his cause and left out totals that were beneficial.
Zmuda told SF Weekly she can't remember the last time her office was accused of playing partisan politics. She methodically explained that the smell of rodentia isn't emanating from our city -- that's the odor of nightmarish financial shortfalls.
Older politicians and older political reporters pine for the days when dueling politicos could check out at the end of the day like Ralph and Sam the coyote and sheep dog in old Looney Tunes shorts ("Morning Frank." "Morning Sam."). There was a glimmer of this form of old-fashioned camaraderie yesterday when Gavin Newsom's spokesman, Nathan Ballard, quit -- and everyone SF Weekly talked to, even folks with axes to grind, refused to kick Ballard on his way out the door.
Yet it was a mirage. What good does it do to dump on Ballard when you can pick him up and toss him at your real target -- Gavin Newsom? (See: Daly, Chris)
Still, others think Ballard is irreplaceable -- or at least hope he is. They're encouraging Newsom to do the ailing city budget a favor by not hiring anyone to take Ballard's place (the mayor is down to his last three or four spokesmen with Ballard on the way out).
Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi told SF Weekly he will encourage the mayor's office to go with one fewer spokesman. And, if he gets the backing, he may be doing more than just asking.
Ignoring the advice of anti-pot City Attorney Carmen Trutanich, two Los Angeles City Council committees yesterday rejected a proposed ban on sales of medical marijuana.
Anti-pot zealots within L.A. city government had coordinated an 18-month assault on the dispensaries, with headline-grabbing pronouncements from media hogs Trutanich and Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley dominating coverage of the issue in recent weeks.
Both Trutanich and Cooley have been widely quoted in the press as claiming that most of the dispensaries are operating in violation of state law. Cooley's recent declaration that "approximately zero" of the dispensaries were operating legally sent chills and outrage through the medical marijuana community, seeming to echo San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis' statement that there are "no such things" as legal dispensaries.
In a chilling move, the city controller's office announced it will formally rescind its certification of any supplemental expenditures by the city -- in plain English, there's no money and the Board of Supervisors can't spend any more unless more revenue comes in or the current budget is cut.
"We're going to decertify the supplementals," confirmed deputy controller Monique Zmuda -- who had no idea when the last time was the city was forced to take this drastic a financial step. This means that the Board of Supes "is not able to act on legislation tomorrow" that would call for additional city funds to be spent. Quite simply, the money is not there; like dealing with a full e-mail inbox, the city cannot spend any more money unless it makes room by cutting the budget or crafting new revenue-generators.
Here's the back story: Several weeks ago, Supervisors John Avalos and Chris Daly introduced legislation that would have cost the city roughly $8 million dollars but staved off layoffs and reversed pay cutbacks in the health department. At the time, the controller's office had not researched the availability of the necessary city funds to pay for such a move. Now, however, the data is in -- and it's horrific. Due largely to huge shortfalls from reduced property taxes and evaporating payroll taxes, the city is $53.1 million in the hole -- and carrying only a $25 million General Fund surplus.
So when Avalos' and Daly's legislation comes up Tuesday, "procedurally there are any number of things they can do -- but they cannot pass it," warns Zmuda. "They can continue it or table it. They can continue it until other cuts are made."
The upside of having multiple spokesmen is that when one leaves, others can announce it. That's what happened today, when Mayor Gavin Newsom's chief spokesman, Nathan Ballard, announced he's leaving the mayor's employ.
Ballard and Newsom praised one another in a release sent moments ago by the mayor's office. Newsom described his soon-to-be former employee as "unflappable, smart, and a fierce advocate," while Ballard returned the favor by calling the mayor "a gifted leader who fearlessly tackles significant issues such as health care, the environment, education and equal rights."
No news on, ahem, why these two mutual admirers have parted company. Our calls to the mayor's press office seeking Ballard were answered by an assistant who said Ballard is not around -- and he's not sure if he's stepping down soon or has already left for good.
Among San Francisco neighborhoods, the Outer Sunset is high on the list of places you could conceivably land a spaceship with no one noticing. And yet denizens of the area certainly noticed that Muni's weekend repairs to the N-Judah rails were not confined to the weekend -- hence they were riding a bus to work today.
Muni's official explanation for the delay is that "the concrete being used in the project is not hardening as quickly as designed." At the moment, neither Muni nor contractor Shimmick have a working rationale as to why the cement did not dry at Sunset and Judah but did dry at 19th and Judah. It's a beguiling situation, and several cement contractors contacted by SF Weekly were at a loss to explain the delay -- without using lots of profanity.
"They fucked up!" said one contractor of the weekend job. "The weather was ideal all weekend. It should have set."
Apparently the "Smart Boot" people are one bootstep ahead of us. The devices are just like the boots you'd find, say, immobilizing Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi's 1993 Jeep Wrangler. But instead of requiring an employee of the Municipal Transportation Authority to come out and unlock your car, the unfortunate motorist can pay off his or her debt electronically, then punch a secret code into the Smart Boot and remove the device.
Last week, Oakland became the 14th city in the nation to ink a pact with the PayLock company, which manufactures the Smart Boot. Bart Blair, the company's director of account management told SF Weekly that PayLock has had discussions with San Francisco, too.
And yet, the first thing we thought of when we heard about the nifty devices was the joy of clapping a Smart Boot on a pal's car. Or clapping it on just about anyone's vehicle, and extorting money out of them. But, like we noted before, the company is one bootstep ahead of us. You just can't do this.
Yesterday's contentious SEIU protest at City Hall was both similar to and different from the protests that proceeded it. It was different in that it featured a 14-foot-tall puppet and some sort of altercation with a Native American group. And it was the same in that it probably won't save the jobs of the 500 or more public health and clerical workers whose imminent dismissal was the impetus for the whole demonstration.
Regardless of where one falls on unions, this is a shame -- these are relatively low-paid folks who serve the really low-paid and are vital cogs in the city's health care system. Yet the SEIU's oft-repeated refrain that Mayor Gavin Newsom "broke his promise" in failing to get a revenue-generating measure onto the November ballot to bring in funds now being saved by letting these 500 people go just doesn't add up.
SF Weekly has spoken with union organizers and members of the downtown business community regarding the efforts to get some form of revenue measure -- in plain English, a tax -- onto the ballot. Both SEIU representatives and members of the Chamber of Commerce acknowledge that their independent polls showed such a measure would not come close to passing. So it doesn't make much sense for the unions to accuse the mayor of "breaking a promise" to put a revenue measure on the ballot when that same union acknowledges that this was a hopeless cause. What's more, only the Board of Supervisors can put a measure on the ballot -- not the mayor.
SEIU organizer Robert Haaland said Newsom hasn't put forth "a good-faith effort" to find revenue that would have staved off these layoffs. "To be fair to the mayor's office, in July they did polling and we did polling that showed the revenue wouldn't pass in November," he said. Newsom, in Haaland's view, should have then worked hard to find other ways of raising revenue.
Haaland's view doesn't sound unreasonable. But If you're going to charge the mayor with being lazy and disengaged -- well, get in line and take a number. It's not the same as saying he broke a promise.
A SoMa club has ostensibly reached a truce in its long and contentious engagement with a powerful state agency -- but, as cost, the music will be off for a little while.
DNA Lounge representative Jamie Zawinski announced on the club's blog today that the besieged nightclub negotiated a settlement with the state's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) that includes a 25-day suspension -- the club will be closed Jan. 4 through Jan. 28 -- and several years of probation.
As SF Weeklyhas reported in the past, ABC's battle with the DNA Lounge has been ongoing since April 2007 when the club applied to change its liquor license to allow for all-ages events. In order to do this, the lounge installed a $50,000 kitchen because the permit for such a license stipulates that an all-ages music venue also be a legitimate eating establishment. When ABC rejected the application, the lounge appealed the decision -- at which point Zawinski claims the state agency started sending undercover agents in during gay and lesbian promotional events, "looking for dirt."
In July, 2008, the lounge reached a settlement with ABC that finally granted the club permission for the change of liquor license status. But just before DNA Lounge could enjoy the fruits of its labors, ABC slapped it with another citation -- this time, for "lewdness," "discrimination", and for being a "disorderly house injurious to the public welfare and morals."
The story is complex, but here it is in the tiniest possible nutshell: Last month, Nedar Bey was awarded a portion of a state-funded lighting project worth up to $3.2 million by the BART board. Per the state's regulations, all contracts had to be signed by Oct. 31, or the grant money earmarked for the job would vanish. Yet Bey -- a scion of the Your Black Muslim Bakery empire who in 1996 stiffed the city of Oakland on a $1.1 million loan -- was unable to come up with the necessary bonding, insurance, and licensing. On the verge of losing the money, BART and Bey's company, Solar Eclipse, inked an Oct. 30 deal -- but it may have only postponed the painful. Bey was given until tomorrow to shore up all of his loose ends.
Originally, the deadline was today -- but, thanks to the Veterans Day holiday, Bey was given an extra 24 hours. He'll need them. BART spokesman Linton Johnson today informed SF Weekly that Bey has still not come up with the documentation necessary to stave off the voiding of his contract. And if Bey's contract evaporates tomorrow, will the state-provided funds of up to $780,000 for the lighting project at the North Berkeley BART station follow suit? No one at BART knows. No one.
City Attorney Dennis Herrera indicated today that he might seek a ruling from a federal court assuring the legality of San Francisco's newly minted sanctuary policy, shortly after supervisors voted to override Mayor Gavin Newsom's veto of the law. The new city policy establishes a more permissive approach to undocumented youths who are arrested.
Dennis Herrera, man in the middle
In a letter to U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello, posted on the city attorney's Web site, Herrera asks that Russoniello "provide an assurance that if the City proceeds to implement this Amendment... City law enforcement officers and employees will not be prosecuted for violating federal criminal laws." The city law revises the sanctuary ordinance so undocumented juveniles would only be reported to federal immigration authorities if convicted of a crime -- not after they are arrested, which is the current city policy.
Herrera's letter goes on to state that if the U.S. Attorney's office does not provide "an adequate assurance" of city employees' freedom from criminal liability under the new sanctuary policy, the city might file for declaratory relief in federal court -- essentially asking a judge to decide the matter.
San Francisco's Board of Supervisors today mustered enough votes to override Mayor Gavin Newsom's veto of a law softening the city's treatment of juvenile undocumented immigrants who are arrested. But the mayor's office was quick to dismiss the widely expected vote as a symbolic gesture that would have no effect on city policy.
A crowd gathers around Supervisor David Campos after today's veto override
"This veto override cannot really take effect," Newsom spokesman Nathan Ballard said immediately after the vote, which took place at today's full board meeting. Ballard contended that the legislation cannot be enforced because it conflicts with federal immigration law. "The board can't force our law-enforcement officials to break federal law." He added, "We've got to protect our city officials from symbolic gestures like this bill, no matter how well-intentioned it is."
Supervisor David Campos, the bill's chief sponsor, anticipated this response in his remarks before the vote on the ordinance, which passed 8-3 with Supervisors Michela Alioto-Pier, Carmen Chu and Sean Elsbernd voting no. "It is unfortunate that we are at this point," Campos said. "It saddens and pains me to say that what we hear from the mayor is that he is going to ignore the democratic process that's been followed."
Ethics staffer Oliver Luby lawyered up after receiving that curiously timed complaint in June, and charged that this was all retaliation against a whistleblower. That charge may never be truly put to rest -- but the complaint is. Over the weekend Luby received an official letter informing him that the charges have been dismissed.
"Since the maximum consequences of an ethics violation could include up to a $5,000 fine, termination of employment and a permanent bar against holding office or employment with the City and County, I am very much relieved that the retaliatory ethics complaint was dismissed," Luby wrote SF Weekly.
For those who fish, either professionally or because it simply beats sittin' by the dock of the bay, wastin' time, we have some limited good news. The state's Department of Fish and Game -- with the input of the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment -- have re-opened the following areas in the wake of last month's Dubai Star oil spill.
Oakland Middle Harbor north to the Bay Bridge
Oakland Inner Harbor
San Leandro Bay
Shoreline south of the southern boundary of Oakland Airport
to the San Mateo Bridge
That being said, you're still forbidden from harvesting the sea from Alameda County's shoreline ranging from Alameda Point to the southern boundary of Oakland airport. Incidentally, these bans don't apply to people fishing from boats. In that case, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment suggests -- and this is not a joke -- that anglers "avoid fishing in areas where there is a visible sheen on the water." You see? Someone had to go to college to give advice like that. Maybe even grad school.
Meanwhile, several San Francisco fishermen and a seafood processor last week filed a $10 million class-action suit against the Dubai Star and its ownership. They must have seen the sheen.
Hey, lazy! It ain't too late to turn in that absentee ballot!
Here at SF Weekly, we make a point of not telling you how to vote. Well, I'm going to break that taboo today. But not really. I'm not telling you who or what to vote for. I'm going to, literally, tell you how to vote.
When we spoke with Department of Elections head John Arntz Monday, he reported that around 49,000 of the 183,849 absentee ballots mailed to San Franciscans had been returned. San Francisco's Department of Elections doesn't project voter turnouts -- but they do acknowledge the obvious. This is a crap turnout; "It's tracking more like a special election," admits Arntz. It also figures that more people will vote via mail than in person. So the above numbers point to two things: Folks don't care about this election (probable) or folks notice their absentee ballots sitting beneath a pile of unopened letters and figure "eh, too late."
Well, if you had the ballot mailed to your domicile a month prior to election day and consciously chosen to blow it off -- hey, that's on you. But if you're figuring the deadline has passed to return those absentee envelopes -- you're wrong. Here's how.
On Friday we reported that BART's decision to split a multi-million dollar "emergency contract" was in jeopardy of leading to an unforeseen emergency of a different sort. With the contractor for a job installing lighting at North Berkeley station unable to come up with the proper bonding by the state's mandated deadline of Oct. 31, BART stood to lose nearly $800,000 in government grants.
Thanks to ink finding its way onto a hastily assembled contract Friday evening, BART escaped the specter of its Halloween trick being hundreds of thousands in wasted state funds. Still, the day of financial reckoning may not have been eliminated but only postponed .
BART's Oct. 30 pact with contractor Solar Eclipse allows the builder 10 business days -- starting from today -- to fulfill the bonding requirements it could not line up in the proceeding weeks. If the company is unable to obtain bonding at that time, however, the contract expires -- and, it seems, so does the state's offer of roughly $800,000 to redo lighting at North Berkeley BART.
"Let's cross that bridge when we get to it," said BART spokesman Linton Johnson when asked what would happen to the state grant if Solar Eclipse's contract was voided. "I'm not sure we know the answer to that just yet."
In a definite candidate for the ironic hall of fame, the BART board last week awarded part of a multi-million dollar contract to Nedar Bey -- who had earlier accused that very board of being "servants of the devil."
Fittingly, hundreds of thousands of dollars in government money may be going straight to hell, as Bey has been unable to line up the necessary bonding -- insurance, basically -- required of BART contractors. In a flurry of distressed memos and in interviews with SF Weekly, several members of BART's board and management say that if this matter isn't finalized by Oct. 31, money from the State Transportation Improvement Program earmarked for lighting improvements at North Berkeley BART could simply go unspent. Up to $3.2 million in state money is earmarked for improvements at both North Berkeley and Oakland 12th Street stations. The North Berkeley operation's base bid was for $562,129 with options for an additional $218,000 in work -- a total of more than $780,000.
"If we don't get this settled, the money goes away," said BART's San Francisco-area board member Tom Radulovich. "North Berkeley doesn't get done." BART spokesman Linton Johnson confirmed that state money "evaporates tomorrow."
While Cal-ISO -- the state body that determines how much power generation municipalities require -- seemed amenable to shutting down the plant's Unit 3 smokestack when the highly touted transbay power cable comes online early next year, it was not willing to pull the plug on Mirant outright. Citing a potential city shortage of 25 Megawatts, Cal-ISO was not yet ready to give assent to close Units 4, 5, and 6. The body pledged to complete an analysis within two months regarding whether it is viable to shutter those units.
The city has long held that decreased overall power demand would allow San Francisco to meet its power quotas without adding any additional generation. At the August press conference announcing the city's settlement with Mirant, Public Utilities Commission head Ed Harrington described that so-called 25 MW shortage as "overly cautious": That figure assumed "two major
power transmission cables went down on the peak hour of the peak day
and no one ever made any change in their behavior when it happened."
U.S. Representative Sam Farr (D-Carmel) and more than 20 bipartisan co-sponsors introduced legislation today that would allow defendants in medical marijuana cases the ability to use medical evidence at trial, a right they currently do not have.
Due to the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Gonzales v. Raich, the government has the discretion to enforce federal marijuana laws even in medical marijuana states. The Raich ruling also allows federal prosecutors to conveniently exclude evidence of medical use or state law compliance in federal trials, all but guaranteeing convictions of medical marijuana patients and providers.
Last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder formalized a departure from Bush Administration policy when he issued new guidelines to federal prosecutors discouraging them from prosecuting cases in which patients and providers are "in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws."
Unfortunately, the new DOJ guidelines neither direct U.S. Attorneys to abandon the more than two-dozen pending federal medical marijuana cases, nor allow defendants the ability to use medical evidence to exonerate themselves.
Legislation that would reform how San Francisco's nightclub-industry watchdog agency operates was approved by the Board of Supervisors' City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee today, and is headed for a vote by the full board next month.
Are changes coming to SF nightlife?
Following a three-hour hearing that featured extensive public comment from both supporters and opponents of the legislation, the three-member committee unanimously approved the new law, which would grant the Entertainment Commission added powers to crack down on problematic nightclubs as well as establish stricter oversight measures for how the commission operates.
In a separate vote, Supervisor Chris Daly voted against an amendment in the ordinance drafted by board president David Chiu. The measure would establish limits on how many late-night event permits could be granted by the commission in a given year. Chiu and committee chairman Bevan Dufty voted for the measure, giving it the needed votes to pass on to the full board.
Things are still drying out at Northern Police Station in the Western Addition, which was flooded with four inches of water in Monday's deluge. Why all the flooding? Turns out the station doesn't have a lousy check valve -- an item likely smaller than a stereo.
The station really needs this valve. Oftentimes when there's heavy, fast rain, water flows down the Turk Street hill to where the station sits at Turk and Fillmore, and will course up through the building's drain system.
"If we were going to make a lake, we would be at the bottom of the lake," says Station Captain Croce Alexander Casciato.
Challengers to the city's proposed new sanctuary policy are already circling
You may remember the furor over the memo Mayor Gavin Newsom leaked from the city attorney stating the city would face a "likely legal challenge" if it changed the hard-line policy towards reporting undocumented juveniles charged with felonies.
The "likely law suit" is no longer a nebulous threat. The Washington, D.C.-based Immigration Reform Law Institute told SF Weekly Thursday it is actively seeking a plaintiff for the "honor" of suing San Francisco over Tuesday's change to the sanctuary city policy.
"Based on that memo, the question isn't if, but when," says the institute's general counsel Mike Hethmon. "It really is a road map." San Franciscans should expect a suit from "ours or a lot of other law institutions that would like to claim the glory of taking down San Francisco.
"Just because they have the rainbow flag in San Francisco and the
Confederate flag in Alabama doesn't change the underlying issues of
federal supremacy," Hethmon added, claiming the proposed change to city policy violates federal laws.
The San Francisco Entertainment Commission has been having a rough go of it lately. The seven-member board of political appointees, tasked with regulating the city's nightclubs, has presided over a local nightlife scene that has become infamous for its violence. The commission has also come under fire for its often cozy ties to the industry it is supposed to be watch-dogging -- as we reported in a July cover story, five of the seven commissioners (two have since stepped down) had direct financial ties to entertainment interests.
Terrance Alan, friend to himself
The commission's foes have picked up steam, and now have the ear of Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, whose district is home to some of the city's most crime-plagued nightclubs. Chiu has amended a piece of legislation in order to establish stricter oversight of the Entertainment Commission, and establish limits on the number of permits it can dole out. Reacting to this onslaught, politically connected nightclub-industry advocates have launched their own propaganda campaign, declaring that Chiu's efforts are part of a "War on Fun."
One of the outlets peddling this line is the Web site www.supportentertainment.com. At the top of the site's heading is the line, "Friends of the San Francisco Entertainment Commission." It features a rallying cry for nightlife supporters to lobby supervisors to kill some of Chiu's amendments, as well as "suggested points to make" during public comment at upcoming meetings on the legislation. In other words, the site is indeed friendly to the Entertainment Commission -- in the way most of us are inclined to be friendly toward ourselves. Because it turns out the site is being administered by a media company run by Entertainment Commissioner Terrance Alan.
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