Newsom Berates Supervisors at SPUR Address

by Paul Hogarth, 2007-02-16

Under fire for being a disengaged Mayor who governs by press release, Gavin Newsom gave a presentation yesterday at City Hall on what his Administration has accomplished over the past three years. Sponsored by SPUR, a pro-business think tank, the talk was designed to assess how much the Mayor has lived up to his original campaign pledges. Newsom’s 90-minute speech covered a wide range of goals that the City had set, and included an impressive number of issues. If a listener knew nothing about local politics, they would’ve concluded that Newsom is the best Mayor that the City has ever had – and the best Mayor in the whole country.

But Newsom did not give the Board of Supervisors credit in his speech, as he listed various policy initiatives that would not have materialized without leadership from the Board. He also took credit for various proposals that were underway well before his tenure, and would have happened regardless of any mayoral administration. On the other hand, he did not hesitate to attack the Supervisors for various policy disagreements they have had – and accused me of taking a cheap shot when I asked about his refusal to comply with Question Time.

Newsom began with statistics about the City’s economic health – as the unemployment rate has declined in his three years of office and new companies are setting up their headquarters in San Francisco. “One of the reasons why New York City is so clean,” he said, “is that they have more community benefits districts” – as he touted the creation of seven new districts created under his watch. But Supervisor Aaron Peskin initiated the concept of Community Benefits Districts, as he shepherded the first one in the Union Square shopping district. Community Benefits Districts get created when neighborhood merchants request them, and the Supervisors then legislate them at the Board. Newsom has been an ally on this issue, but he made it sound like it was all his accomplishment.

In a surprise to many advocates, Newsom touted the idea of a gross receipts tax -- as a more progressive and equitable means of taxing businesses than the current payroll tax. The Revenue Coalition (a group of labor and community-based organizations) have been working on this proposal for years with Aaron Peskin, and they convinced Treasurer Jose Cisneros to start collecting data from businesses to track its potential. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard Newsom talk about it,” said Julian Davis, an active member of the Revenue Coalition and the San Francisco People’s Organization. Whether the Mayor sticks to supporting a gross receipts tax – when his allies in the big business community come out against it – still remains to be seen.

Some of the accomplishments that Newsom touted were beyond the control of a Mayor, as they had been started under prior Administrations and would have come to fruition regardless of who was in office. He lauded the façade improvements on Sixth Street that have vastly improved the area – but failed to mention that it was only after the Redevelopment Agency had spent $120 million over the last ten years and he had nothing to do with it. He said he was “very proud” of the Fillmore Renaissance Project that includes 80 units of housing, but that was also a Redevelopment project started under the Brown Administration.

Newsom took credit for the Hunters Point Shipyard project, which will create 1,498 units of housing – and the Public Utilities Commission will work to make the development more environmentally friendly. But he failed to mention that all these units will be market-rate condos with “affordability” requirements that are inaccessible to current residents of Bayview-Hunters Point – and that Redevelopment has let the Lennar Corporation renege on its pledge to build 400 rental units in the project. Furthermore, the entire project is on hold as Newsom tries to convince the 49ers to stay in San Francisco – and for all we know the whole project may end up being a football stadium.

It’s not unusual for a politician to take credit for initiatives that were made by others, or even to omit certain details to make a project sound better than it is. But Newsom was not shy to attack the Board of Supervisors and portray them as obstructionists when they disagreed with his policy initiatives.

Newsom touted the Mid-Market Redevelopment Area and said “we did our part,” but that it just sat there for “political reasons” at the Board of Supervisors – an obvious swipe at Chris Daly. “I feel very strongly,” he said, “that we need to keep the commitment to revitalizing the area. I still feel we should move forward for it.” But if Newsom is so committed to helping the troubled Mid-Market neighborhood, why has he not done anything to push the Trinity Plaza project – which will bring hundreds of units of affordable housing to the area, and help renew the corner at 8th and Market?

He also attacked Jake McGoldrick for leading the charge against his Wi-Fi proposal. “I ask the Supervisors to look beyond their personal opinion of me,” he said, “and to do it for the good of the city.” The Wi-Fi proposal that Newsom negotiated with Google and Earthlink, he said, gives San Francisco the “biggest opportunity to be the first city in the nation to have free basic Wi-Fi, and to truly address the digital divide.” But there are serious questions about the proposal, as advocates have shown that it will not reach the people who are most affected by the digital divide – and could leave San Francisco with an ineffective system that we’d be stuck with for years.

Of course, Newsom brought up police foot patrols – as he had twice vetoed legislation by the Board of Supervisors that mandated cops to get out of their cars and walk the beat. He said that his vetoes were a matter of principle because “the Supervisors should not be telling the cops what to do,” and that he had long advocated foot patrols before. He also complained that they were already transferring police officers away from SFO – which the Supervisors have criticized him on – and said “I guess they will legislate it, even though it’s already being done.”

For a Mayor who famously vowed in 2004 to sign his own recall petition if the City’s homicide rate did not drop, Newsom confessed that he had “failed” on the homicide rate, and that “we have to do more work on this.” He said that they had “invested historic amounts of money in crime prevention programs,” although he opposed Proposition A in the June 2006 ballot – which would have allocated $10 million to such programs and was sponsored by Chris Daly.

It’s hard to get a question to Mayor Newsom answered, as he generally avoids unscripted forums. But at the end of the speech, Gabriel Metcalf of SPUR allowed the few remaining audience members to raise their hands and ask him a question. I told the Mayor that in his speech, he had mentioned on numerous occasions his political disputes with the Board of Supervisors – and that hopefully these disputes could be resolved with more public communication between the branches of government. Why then, I asked, has he refused to attend a monthly meeting of the Board of Supervisors – even though the voters have made it official City policy?

Newsom wasn’t happy with my question, and it showed. “I give you credit for tying all these issues and changing the subject,” he said tersely. “I don’t think you need to have a show at the Board of Supervisors to enhance communication. I have weekly meetings with the President of the Board, and I have an open-door policy with all the Supervisors. I believe we can have communication in other ways – it’s just not necessary.”

Meanwhile, the Mayor has only had one conversation with Chris Daly in the past two years – which is apparently one more conversation than he’s had with Gerardo Sandoval.

UPDATE: In response to this article, Board President Aaron Peskin told me this morning that he has only met with the Mayor "once or twice in the last 6 months." Newsom is "not telling the truth," he said, if he claims that they meet once a week.

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