San Francisco Blog

​The San Francisco Examiner this week reported that while the lobbyists San Francisco employs to push for the city's interests in Sacramento and elsewhere are required to file quarterly reports detailing how they're spending nearly half a million dollars of public money, they have, in fact, only filed one report since 2005.

Too bad no one's being paid to lobby for accountability!

This serves as yet another opportunity to reference Casablanca, in which Captain Renault was "shocked, shocked" that there was gambling in a casino. Lobbyists who'd failed to file a report since '05 were -- wait for it -- shocked that they actually had to publicly disclose what they did with public money. John St. Croix, the executive director of San Francisco's Ethics Commission, offered a mea culpa: "We all dropped the ball on this. It's my fault we didn't go after it. I don't think there was an attempt to hide anything." 

It's nice to hear someone actually take responsibility -- so nice, in fact, that the media and others often act as if it ameliorates the situation that the apologist should have handled in the first place. Because this was not a case of "dropping the ball." It was a situation in which the Ethics Commission knew where the ball was, and made no effort to catch it. Complaints of lobbyists flouting city laws and Ethics doing little to nothing about it had been made for years before the Examiner story. 

Did you know there's a Republican running against Nancy Pelosi and Cindy Sheehan? Yeah - seriously. Apparently somebody thought this would be a good idea. It's going to make for a hell of a race to third place.

Also, have you heard about the breathy robocall? One of the great political missteps of our time...and we've got the tape.

On the day before E-Day we look at the highlights and bloopers of this year's San Francisco campaigns with BeyondChron's Paul Hogarth and SF Weekly's own Joe Eskenazi. Grab a beer and join us.

Download the conversation here. --Benjamin Wachs

Admit it, the election hasn't even happened yet, and already you want to know what's happened.

So do Joe Eskenazi and Paul Hogarth - we're sitting around drinking and dishing the inside dirt: what's worked, what hasn't, and who's going to win.

Have the Real Estate developers shot themselves in the foot? Can John Avalos survive being linked to Chris Daly? Should the Guardian have known that PG&E was rich when this whole "public power" thing started? Will Scott Weiner get kicked off the Democratic committee?

Pop a cork and join us. Download the discussion here. --Benjamin Wachs

Download: News & Booze Saturday

Sure he was accused of sexual and religious harassment, and forced to resign as head of the city's Rec and Park's department...but Yomi Agunbiade isn't going anywhere. No sooner had he announced his resignation than the city announced his new position, as head of PUC's Director of Waste Water Management.

Is San Francisco saying it's "sex positive" about "sexual harassment"? Because that's what it looks like to us.

Meanwhile Paul Hogarth thinks it's ironic that people who packed the Milk Club to endorse Nancy Pelosi are complaining that people packed the Milk Club to try and get it to endorse Cindy Sheehan; and Joe Eskanazi says Cindy Sheehan is less qualified to run for office than Sarah Palin (ouch!).

Melissa Griffin's here too - but she's still wondering what it takes to get somebody fired in this town. --Benjamin Wachs

Tough week for Mark Sanchez: Widely seen as the District 9 front runner, the Guardian endorsed him for third place. What happened?

One theory: He owns rental properties. Is that what done him in?

Meanwhile, Eric Quezada needs to learn how to count, everybody loves Ross Mirkarimi...and everybody would love Sean Elsbernd except that I think he's a jerk.

Panelists Joe Eskenazi, Melissa Griffin and Paul Hogarth disagree, though. And they've got the inside track on everything votable in San Francisco.

Stick around. --Benjamin Wachs

Download: News & Booze: Episode 6 Part 2

Every November San Franciscans promise to do incredible things for their fellow human beings just as soon as they've slit the throat of the people getting in their way.

Don't get me wrong, we're used to poison politics in SF - but this time, will it take our hospital down with it?

Should it? Prop A, a bond measure that needs to pass in order to save the hospital, does have a few flaws...

Meanwhile the race in District 9 is kind of a Rorschach test for progressives: when you look at these identical candidates, what do you see? Remember, you can only vote for 3 of them.

Joe Eskenazi, Melissa Griffin, and Marc Salomon are in the Sunset Studios drinking - pull up a chair and join them. --Benjamin Wachs

It turns out that the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan isn't so much a "plan" as it is a Biblical command: Thou Shalt Build Condos.

Which is funny, because on my way out of my condo, going to my condo offices, I tripped over a homeless condo sleeping in the street. And I thought: "If there were three more of those, then we'd have something!"

Of course, the city has a plan in place saying that over 60% of all new housing should be affordable...but plans were made to be ignored. Heck, even if the voters do pass Prop B, setting aside a portion of the budget every year for affordable housing, all the money will probably just end up in the Gavin Newsom for Governor fund anyway.

Or am I being too cynical?

Panelists Marc Salomon, Joe Eskenazi, and Melissa Griffin discuss while drinking Pliny the Elder. --Benjamin Wachs

Okay, so, let's get this straight: the city wants to ban the sale of cigarettes at drug stores because drug stores are places of health, but allow their sale at supermarkets because supermarkets can use the money?

According to Melissa Griffin, that's what their legal brief said.

Paul Hogarth says yeah, that's probably legal. But Joe Eskenazi objects on the grounds that the law should make at least a little sense. Just a little.

Meanwhile, just when we thought Sanctuary City couldn't get any worse. . .it got worse. We predict what the next Sanctuary City scandal will be.

Pull up a chair, drink a beer, and listen in. --Benjamin Wachs

I've gotta ask: If the Ethics Commission is going to investigate mayoral candidate Chicken John for filing his paperwork incorrectly, but not the actual mayor for taking hundreds of thousands in salary from jobs he's not supposed to have. . .do we really need it? Isn't Gavin Newsom capable of ignoring the law without it?

I mean, that's just government waste.

Meanwhile Melissa Griffin, Paul Hogarth, and Joe Eskenazi are all caught up on who's endorsing who and what for the November election. Folks, it's gonna get ugly. Better grab and bear and listen up. --Benjamin Wachs

Okay, so I'm going to give away the end. We were talking about how Rec and Parks Department Director Yomi Agunbiade had survived financial scandals in his department, and survived a freakin' tiger escaping from the zoo and killing someone after the walls were built too low...but a sexual harassment accusation? That takes him down.

Then Joe Eskenazi, who seems to get the best line in every week, asked Sweet Melissa: "What do you think Gavin Newsom has to tell someone about an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate? 'Did you pay her $16,000? No? Well, that's your problem!'"

And we lost it. Just...lost it.

We're also talking about whether the prostitution measure on the November ballot won't pass, and why it seems like nobody ever gets fired at city hall ... unless they do that thing that the mayor did.

All that, plus a special message from the Gavin Newsom for Governor Campaign.

Listen below or download Saturday's edition of News & Booze here. --Benjamin Wachs