They intend to “grow” the paper, hiring journalists instead of firing them. This should create opportunities for writers and investigative journalists. How will he pay for it? He has some deep pocket of his own, but, he must also have investors. He could merge the SF Weekly and SF Examiner, or turn SF Weekly into a weekend paper to promote entertainment when it returns.
It they really want to compete with the Chronicle they have a lot of hiring to do. Will they delve heavily nto electronic media? I don’t think they know yet. Following this story will be a story in itself. Has anyone seen any changes at the Marinatimes yet?We should keep an open mind for now, especially if they increase federal and state coverage. That gives them a lot of new ground to cover, and we are not lacking in subject matter these days.California First Appellate District Court of Appeal publishes its opinion in LC/CVP v ABAG
Posted by Bob Silvestri : marinpost – excerpt
On January 6, 2021, the First Appellate District Court of Appeal issued an Order Granting Publication of its opinion in the case of New LivableCA/Community Venture Partners v ABAG, stating that
“For good cause, the request for publication is granted. Pursuant to rule 8.1105(c) of the California Rules of Court, the opinion in the above-entitled matter is ordered certified for publication in the Official Reports.”
That means the opinion of the Court of Appeal is now case law. This opinion will have broad applicability and impacts throughout the state’s legal system. To put it plainly, this is a very big deal.
The significance of this reversal of the decision by the San Francisco Superior Court, to dismiss this case, and its publication cannot be over-stated. The Appeal Court’s opinion has now become case law and as such is the law of the land in California that will impact future Brown Act petitioners for years to come.
To read the appellate court’s opinion CLICK HERE…(more)
Gavin Newsom could be ‘undermined’ by Democrats in recall efforts, report says
By Eric Ting : sfgate – excerpt
The sixth attempt to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom is rapidly gaining steam amid the worsening pandemic, a controversial new stay-at-home order and an unemployment fraud scandal.
It was previously reported by Politico’s Carla Marinucci that those close to the governor were growing “increasingly worried” about the recall efforts, and Marinucci’s latest report on the recall adds another twist.
After detailing the new Republican fundraising efforts behind the recall — while noting the challenges the GOP will face in a heavily Democratic state — Marinucci quotes a “Sacramento insider aligned with a major special interest group” who says, “We’ve gotten calls from Democrats who are already kicking the tires” on getting on the ballot in a potential recall election in 2021….(more)
She Noticed $200 Million Missing, Then She Was Fired
By Scott Morris, Bay City News Foundation : propublica – excerpt
Alice Stebbins was hired to fix the finances of California’s powerful utility regulator. She was fired after finding $200 million for the state’s deaf, blind and poor residents was missing…
Earlier this year, the governing board of one of California’s most powerful regulatory agencies unleashed troubling accusations against its top employee.
Commissioners with the California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC, accused Executive Director Alice Stebbins of violating state personnel rules by hiring former colleagues without proper qualifications. They said the agency chief misled the public by asserting that as much as $200 million was missing from accounts intended to fund programs for the state’s blind, deaf and poor. At a hearing in August, Commission President Marybel Batjer said that Stebbins had discredited the CPUC.
“You took a series of actions over the course of several years that calls into question your integrity,” Batjer told Stebbins, who joined the agency in 2018. Those actions, she said, “cause us to have to consider whether you can continue to serve as the leader of this agency.”…(more)
Clint Reilly, S.F. Examiner’s New Owner, Vows to Expand Paper’s Newsroom, Coverage
By Laura Wenus : sfpublicpress – excerpt (includes audio)
The soon-to-be owner of the San Francisco Examiner intends to grow the publication’s newsroom and expand its coverage, diversifying the perspectives in San Francisco’s news ecosystem.
Clint Reilly, a retired political consultant with a real estate and hospitality business who also owns two local magazines, is purchasing the Examiner and SF Weekly after the two papers were under absentee ownership for years. The company he and his wife Janet co-own, Clint Reilly Communications, is expected to take over in January.
“What’s happened in newspapers over the last decade, decade and a half, even 20 years, has been essentially a huge cutback in journalists and costs at the local level,” Reilly said. “As journalists have been laid off, so have the beats that they cover. And so the amount of coverage of local news has declined dramatically over the last 10 years.”… (more)
Hypocrisy in the local zoning debate
By Zelda Bronstein : 48hills – excerpt
Professors who argue that local regulations drive up housing prices appear to admit they have no credible data to back up that argument.
On December 1, 48hills ran my story about the California State Auditor’s dubious sortie against local land use authority, an incursion purportedly undertaken in behalf of greater housing affordability. While I’m waiting for the Auditor to respond to my Public Records Act request for documentation of her numerous claims, I want to call out the hypocrisy of three of the scholars cited in my story.
To illustrate the tenuousness of the Auditor’s attack, I observed that a growing number of academics are questioning the argument that “local constraints significantly hamper the provision of affordable housing.” I illustrated that interrogation with a few examples:…(more)
Government confusion, fraud and corruption are to blame for the high cost of building in San Francisco.
If we look at San Francisco’s building triumvirate, Planning, DBI and Permitting departments, that the public and small contractors must wade through we can see that the primary costs for building and remodeling in the city is not in government regulations. It is in government confusion, fraud and corruption. The sad thing is that is took the FBI t expose what many knew was going on for decades. This system is rigged. You must pay to play or get out of the game.
Mill Valley’s RHNA Methology Letter Calls for a Stronger Response
By Susan Kirsch of Mill Valley : marinpost – excerpt
This letter is written to the Mill Valley Mayor, Vice Mayor, and City Councilmembers, but it may apply to any of our local civic leaders who are considering how to deal with the RHNA number conundrum, made more obviously out of touch with reality by the large exodus of citizens from California this year.
The end of the land rush has come to the state, due to a number of factors, but, our government officials can’t get past their old methods of creating financing through growth. Read the letter here and consider how you may apply the information to your community…(more)
Review the investigative report by The Embarcadero Institute, entitled “Double Counting in the Latest Housing Needs Assessment” (September 2020)…
“Use of an incorrect vacancy rate and double counting, inspired by SB-828, caused the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) to exaggerate by more than 900,000 the units needed in SoCal, the Bay Area and the Sacramento area.”
SF challenges PG&E’s power moves
By Joshua Sabatini : sfexaminer – excerpt
Utility uses expensive hookups to discourage public power use\
The contentious relationship between PG&E and San Francisco has grown more tense, with the energy company now seeking to impose costly new requirements for The City to use its grid to deliver publicly-owned Hetch Hetchy power to city projects and even street lights.
The City lost a dispute earlier this year before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission over similar requirements the utility imposed in recent years on projects like schools, affordable housing and pools. The City has since taken the matter to court.
But now PG&E has filed a Sept 15 proposal with FERC to make the costly hookups a requirement going forward as part of the wholesale distribution tariff, a set of rules for how the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission can use PG&E’s grid to serve The City’s own power customers. The SFPUC delivers over the grid greenhouse gas-free hydroelectric power produced by Hetch Hetchy reservoir in Yosemite…
PG&E has said it will now no longer offer the less expensive secondary service hookups but will support existing secondary service as long as there are no upgrades…(more)
Misusing taxpayer dollars for campaigns
By Dan Walters : calmatters – excerpt
California’s local officials routinely use taxpayer dollars for ballot measure campaigns, even though it’s illegal. One agency just got fined.
Four of the 12 measures on California’s November ballot were placed there by the Legislature.
Let’s assume that legislators had also appropriated $100 million in taxpayers’ money for campaigns to persuade voters to approve the four. It would have been an outrageous and likely illegal misappropriation of public funds under several laws…
The only agency that even expresses interest is the state Fair Political Practices Commission, because anyone who spends money on political campaigns is supposed to file reports on their activities.
Occasionally, the FPPC has penalized miscreant local agencies, the latest being Los Angeles County, which in 2017 spent a million dollars for an ill-disguised campaign to pass Measure H, a quarter-cent increase in the sales tax..
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association complained about the use of public funds, but as usual, the county’s district attorney refused to investigate. The organization filed a lawsuit and complained to the FPPC.
Last week, it was announced that county officials had agreed to a settlement — without admitting liability — and a $1.35 million penalty...
Using public funds to pass ballot measures is also illegal at the local level. Government Code Section 54964,..(more)
In San Francisco we have the FBI investigating various illegal uses of public employees time and public funds being funneled through community benefits programs and non-profits. It turns out the community that is benefiting from these programs is a very elite community comprised of friends of the City Family that doles out the contracts to a limited few supporters of the City Family program.
It took the FBI years of investigating to bring charges on actions that city authorities turned a blind eye to for decades. The best we can do is recommend some reading of the Marina Times articles that are covering the minute details of the cases as they unfold, starting with “Friends with Community Benefits“, by Susan Dyer Reynolds.
U.S. attorney hits SFPUC with subpoena as SF City Hall corruption investigation widens
By Dominic Fracassa : sfchronicle – excerpt
Federal officials served the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission with a sweeping subpoena last month, demanding numerous records and documents that appear to draw the agency into the widening City Hall corruption scandal touched off by the arrest of former Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru in January.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office issued the subpoena on June 15, according to a copy obtained by The Chronicle on Friday.
The subpoena suggests that federal investigators are interested in examining contracts the commission awarded to several companies, some of which have previously been linked to alleged schemes traced back to Nuru in investigations by the FBI and the City Attorney’s Office…
The federal subpoena specifically demands all communications “related to any LED light installation contracts” between commission employees and Walter Wong, Washington Wong, the relative with the business registration, and their affiliated companies. The City Attorney’s Office previously filed a subpoena directly to Alternate Choice in February…
They also ordered the agency to produce any commission audits from 2010 to the present related to trips taken by Kelly and Ellis…
Kelly’s wife is City Administrator Naomi Kelly, Nuru’s former boss…(more)
This is getting to be a rather extensive list of City Hall power players. Who will turn up next in the net?
Clint Reilly shares how his media group reimagines the future of local media
by Clinton Riley Holdings Inc. : bizjournals – excerpt (includes video interview)
In a one-on-one conversation, Mary Huss, publisher of the San Francisco Business Times, talks with Clint Reilly, local real estate, politics and media magnate. Tune in to hear them discuss how the San Francisco Examiner and SF Weekly will revitalize coverage of the city…(more)