Category: Power Politics

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Daly City rebels against Olympic Club’s Westlake Park proposal

By Angela Swartz, Freelance Writer : sfgate – excerpt

Beware Gifts that come with Conditions

The ‘whole idea of privatizing a public park is really nonsensical,’ protester says

Children blow bubbles and climb monkey bars on a typical foggy Thursday evening at Daly City’s Westlake Park. Just 100 feet away, in front of a pale yellow post-World War II building with a green awning, about 50 people clutch bright signs reading “No plastic park” and “Westlake Park is not for sale or lease.” Organizers, who are part of a group called Save Westlake Park, pass out neon-colored posters describing a “land grab” and flyers linking to a website with more information on their cause.
 
The Aug. 13 gathering at the park at 145 Lake Merced Blvd. brought together a new coalition of residents of the working-class suburb just south of San Francisco. They have banded together in hopes of halting a $10 million proposal to revamp Westlake Park. The Olympic Club, one of the oldest private athletic clubs in the world, has offered to make the changes — in exchange for some exclusive use of the field and facilities. … (more)

What is it about AstroTurf that YIMNYs like? This is becoming a national front to green grass trees. Who is behind this? We know who is paying for it, but why? And what role does Rec and Park pay in. this?

They cut down a tree, pour concrete or Astroturf and call it a park?

And then want the public to volunteer to maintain it?

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‘Independent’ super PAC paying Wiener campaign staffers, records show

By Ian Firstenberg : 48hills – excerpt

Families for an Affordable San Francisco, an Independent Expenditure PAC supporting Scott Wiener’s congressional bid, was the primary employer for a number of staffers who also work on Wiener’s official campaign—something that would have been illegal until recently and is still in a shady political arena, experts say.
Under federal law, independent expenditure super PACs are explicitly prohibited from coordinating with campaigns. That’s because IEs can take unlimited money, and contributions to a candidate’s campaign committee are limited.
The Federal Elections Commission in 2024 issued an advisory saying that IEs and candidates can share fundraising for canvassers. That ruling is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit.
In several cases, Federal Elections Commission records show, staffers have been paid during the same period by both the Wiener for Congress Campaign and Families for Affordable San Francisco.
A former staffer, who worked briefly for the Wiener campaign, shared documents exclusively with 48hills that identify the super PAC as their employer. They noted that a similarly structured employment agreement, with Families as the employer, was circulated “to about 12 people.” Given that the Scott Wiener for Congress 2026 runs Wiener’s campaign, the former staffer expected that committee to be their employer.
“Not only have I never seen this before, but I have only seen it that campaigns and independent expenditures have zero communication, zero coordination,” they said in an exclusive interview with 48hills.
The former staffer, who shared details on the condition of anonymity, said that when they received the employment agreement that listed Families for an Affordable San Francisco as the primary employer, they flagged the concerns to higher ups. They got no response from them and chose to leave the campaign because of the legal concerns…

Jim Sutton, a lawyer who is an expert on election law, told us that the situation is, at the very least, questionable… 
(more)

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There are some lines you don’t cross in politics

By Willie Brown : sfexaminer – excerpt (audio)

San Francisco politics has often been described as a knife fight in a phone booth. Having spent a life inside that phone booth, I can tell you the description is largely accurate.

I have thrown my share of elbows and taken plenty in return. Politics is a tough business — no one who puts their name on the ballot should expect otherwise.

But there are still lines you don’t cross. State Sen. Scott Wiener’s decision to create an artificial-intelligence chatbot impersonating Supervisor Connie Chan, his opponent in the November race for Congress, crossed several.

Wiener’s campaign built a website around an AI version of Chan, put her face on it and invited voters to have a conversation with a machine programmed to mock her. When prompted about Chan’s accent, the chatbot responded that her “accent is so thick I can barely understand myself.” When asked whether she was an American citizen, it dodged the question with a birther swipe, which Wiener shrugged off as a “joke.”

His campaign has since taken the site down for “maintenance” after widespread condemnation, but not before Wiener dug in his heels on the legitimacy of the attack. He has also yet to formally apologize for the offense it caused… (more)

RELATED:

Pelosi slams Wiener chatbot mimicking opponent as sexist, racially problematic

Scott Wiener takes down AI chatbot mimicking Connie Chan after criticism

You said it Willie. There are some lines you do not cross and Wiener has crossed a lot of those lines in his scramble to the top.

 

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Grassroots Efforts Are Thwarting the Billionaire Agenda

By Ian Firstenberg : phoenixproject – excerpt

If you are not at the table you are not in game.

Despite their attempts to remain in the shadows, the state’s roughly 200 billionaires have outed themselves. Greater visibility has meant their narrow — and self-interested — agenda has come increasingly under fire.

San Francisco billionaires like Michael Mortiz and Chris Larsen have a storied history of opposing increased taxes on corporations and the wealthy, using their fortunes to elect allies who will protect them from any incursion into their wealth.

Recently a labor-backed measure, the Billionaire Tax Act earned a place on November’s statewide ballot. The modest, one-time tax that, if passed, will fund essential services like public hospitals, has mobilized California’s elite who tried — and failed — to keep it off the ballot. Despite successes in smaller statewide races, and a few wins in recent San Francisco elections, the very fact that the Billionaire Tax earned a place on the ballot may be a sign that their winning streak is coming to an end.

The measure is popular. It should also be kept in mind that the tax on billionaires will not meaningfully affect their lives or reduce the obscene generational wealth. Nonetheless, billionaires are willing to spend millions to defeat it. This won’t endear them to the state’s voters. A coalition led by Google cofounder Sergey Brin has reserved $87 million of ad space for spots to combat the measure. That number will likely increase as the election approaches… (more)

When billionaires have such an appetite for spending ungodly amounts of money to buy elections one must consider why? The end goal cannot be more money since paying the taxes might be less painful than fighting them. What is worth more than the money? Buying a seat at the table where power lies.

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Albertsons is infuriating Bay Area shoppers over vacant grocery stores

By Susan Guerrero : sfgate – excerpt

Town Hall July 23, 2026 on the Towering plans at the Marina Safeway

In the heart of downtown Larkspur, a tiny shopping center has become the grave site of a former Lucky Supermarket. The building, with its barren storefront and sealed doors, has haunted the neighborhood since 2023, yet there are currently no plans to open another grocery store in its place.

Tina McArthur, a Larkspur resident and board president of the historic Lark Theater, blames the building’s owner: Albertsons Companies.

“I think it’s terrible that they just left their building like that,” McArthur said. “The lights are still on. … I really don’t think they care one bit.”

The Lucky store is not an outlier. Albertsons — the parent company of Safeway, Vons and other major supermarkets — owns dozens of vacant surplus properties across the U.S., including at least seven vacant California stores listed for sale. An SFGATE investigation found that Albertsons appears to have a history of using its vast real estate portfolio to block the opening of competing grocers through restrictive land covenants or by keeping its properties vacant. In some cases, Albertsons has introduced controversial development plans on its properties that could raze existing supermarkets like Trader Joe’s in Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood and Safeway in San Rafael without replacing those markets.

Albertsons could leave even more vacant properties on the market as the grocery company plans to shutter an unknown number of underperforming stores in California, and beyond, after its failed merger with the Kroger Company…

Grocery companies that keep properties vacant or add covenants to prevent future stores contribute to limited food access in communities, according to Christopher Leslie, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine…

The race for housing  Albertsons’ impacts on grocery availability in the Bay Area are likely to only increase as the grocery conglomerate flexes its muscle into property development. Align Real Estate and Albertsons are developing housing projects at Safeway locations throughout the Bay Area, including plans to build almost 3,500 units of housing across San Francisco’s Marina, Bernal Heights, Outer Richmond and Fillmore districts. The proposed residential housing project that could demolish the Safeway in San Rafael is not part of the Align Real Estate portfolio and is instead managed by Mill Creek Residential…(more)

Lots to take in here. I can remember hearing about food deserts from Malia Cohen years ago. Now we all are being faced with them.

What do we belive and what can be done to break those covenants? The food deserts are yet another reason to blame Wiener density bills for the loss of grocery stores as grocery chains are playing into his “HOUSING ONLY” zoning directives, except when he needs an exception and then he creates one..

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Newsom Proved Them Wrong

By SHIFT-BAY AREA: substack – excerpt

When Bay Area transit leaders are backed into a corner, they rely on a familiar, patronizing refrain: “The public just doesn’t understand how transit funding works.”…

The False Claim: The transit establishment’s response was swift, arrogant, and entirely dismissive. In KQED’s recent reporting on the Connect Bay Area Act, campaign spokesman Jeff Cretan dismissed proposals to redirect money from major capital projects toward transit service…

They Already Did It: Earlier this year, Newsom negotiated a financing package allowing Bay Area transit agencies to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars from state funds that had already been allocated for transit capital projects.

The largest share of those capital dollars had originally been reserved for construction of the San Jose BART extension. Instead, they became the source of loans designed to keep existing transit systems operating.

As columnist Daniel Borenstein observed, the package did not require new state money. It relied on capital funds that had already been committed to construction projects, temporarily converting those resources into operating support through a loan structure.

The accounting mechanism may have been creative.

But the result was unmistakable.

Capital resources were used to sustain operations.

Exactly the scenario transit advocates now insist cannot happen… (more)

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Supervisor Dorsey wants city-funded nonprofits to report their lobbying efforts at City Hall.

By J.D. Morris, Alyce McFadden : sfchronicle – excerpt
non profits paying lobbyists

Can’t happen fast enough…

Should city-funded nonprofits in San Francisco have to disclose their lobbying activities in the same way that for-profit corporations do? One city lawmaker thinks so, and he’s working on legislation to enact the idea.

Supervisor Matt Dorsey intends to propose an ordinance that would eliminate a provision in city law that exempts nonprofits from local rules requiring organizations to register their lobbyists and publicly report when they seek to influence officials at City Hall.

In a Wednesday letter to city lawyers asking for help preparing the ordinance, Dorsey said the legislation was intended to create more transparency around how city-funded nonprofits are allocating their resources. San Francisco has roughly doubled its spending on nonprofits since 2019, the Chronicle previously reported, but Dorsey noted that the city has simultaneously seen a “troubling pattern” of “ethical scandals, mismanagement” and other problems among nonprofits that provide crucial services.

Dorsey submitted the letter, which is likely to face pushback from nonprofits and their political allies, the same day supervisors sat for a marathon hearing to receive public comment about Mayor Daniel Lurie’s nearly $17 billion city budget proposal. Hours after the meeting of the supervisors’ appropriations committee began, the line of people waiting to speak still snaked through the corridors of City Hall. People sat huddled on the marble floors, some sporting matching shirts and jackets representing nonprofits and community groups… (more)

How many non-profits spend money on lobbyists? We know that some of them do, but., probably not the many.

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Citizens’ Democracy Report – Massive fee increase for citizens’ ballot arguments

by Patrick Monnette-Shaw and John Crabtree

Breaking news on City Hall Proposal for 400% increases proposed for both ballot argument filing fees and per-word fees. A Citizens’ Democracy Report & Citizens’ Anti-Corruption Report Breaking News Story.

Mayor Lurie’s revised plan to increase filing fees and per-word fees for paid ballot arguments in the official Voter Information Pamphlet (VIP), which is mailed to voters in the City & County of San Francisco; and his new plan to eliminate publishing the legal text of each ballot measure in San Francisco’s VIP. Both measures will weaken democratic elections in San Francisco, and likely hand over even more power to special-interest recipient committees funded by billionaires to adversely influence San Francisco elections.

There are two companion Ordinances being heard at either the Budget and Appropriations Committee on June 17 at 10:00 a.m., or the next day on June 18 (apparently if the Committee runs out of time on 6/17). Both measures are being rushed through the Board of Supervisors Budget and Appropriations Committee without adequate public review. Although the Mayor’s Budget Director submitted both pieces of legislation on Monday June 1, it took two full work weeks until Friday June 12 before the public learned the legislation would be heard five days later on June 17… (more)

The two measures are Agenda Items 6 and 7 on the Appropriations Committee meeting agenda…

UPDATE: The issues were heard at the Appropriations Committee and were tabled by the Chair, Connie Chan. THEY NEED TO BE WATCHED AS THEY WILL COME BACK.

The second Ordinance, Board File #260604, will “remove the requirement that the Department of Elections publish the legal text of ballot measures in the Voter Information Pamphlet sent to voters before each election, and allow the Director of Elections to determine the format of the Voter Information Pamphlet without the Ballot Simplification Committee’s approval.”… (more)

In place of including the legal text of each ballot measure in the Voter Guide, voters would be forced to locate it on-line, at a Branch Library, in-person at the Department of Elections, or by e-mail or U.S. Mail. The costs of providing it by e-mail or U.S. mail — which may ultimately cost more than including it in the VIP — were not estimated for the consideration of this proposal.

The Ordinance to eliminate publishing the legal text in the Voter Guide would become effective 31 days after passage — meaning it would go into effect for the November 2026 election.

Therefore, all of the Charter Amendments the Mayor is introducing for his “Commission Streamlining” reform ballot measures will have their legal text kept out of the VIP in what appears to be a creative way to keep those ballot measures’ legal text as far from the voters as possible… (more)

Patrick Monette-Shaw will continue his breaking-news reporting on all of these developments in the Westside Observer as well.

 

 

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New Melgar-Lurie plan for affordable housing is great; cutting other funding is not

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

Expanding the Housing Trust Fund could bring in $125 million a year. Repealing Prop. I could wipe out almost as much

Anything that adds more money for affordable housing in San Francisco is, by default, a good thing. The Council of Community Housing Organizations is celebrating new legislation, originated by CCHO and and SF Community Land Trust, that would increase the city’s Housing Trust Fund to as much as $125 million a year.

It’s not an unusual approach, by historic standards: In essence, the Trust Fund would grow as part of what we used to call “tax increment financing.” The additional property tax money that comes in from the city’s radical upzoning would in part (a fairly small part) be dedicated to affordable housing. It’s also called “value capture.”

Sup. Myrna Melgar took on the legislation to make this new approach happen, and Mayor Daniel Lurie signed on, and it will wind up on the ballot in November. The plan is to make sure the trust fund is in the City Charter, so no future mayor or supervisors can divert the money to other purposes.

Since it’s a defined revenue stream, the city could issue revenue bonds against it, bringing in immediate money for housing.

All of that is good. As CCHO Executive Director Quintin Mecke notes:

“Today, more than 17,000 approved affordable homes sit in San Francisco’s pipeline — entitled, designed, and waiting. Ready for permits. Ready on zoning. Waiting only for funding.

The Housing Trust Fund, as currently structured, falls short of what that pipeline demands.

The proposed Charter Amendment can begin to change that. This is a transformation, and we should name it as one.”…

UPDATE: Melgar told me there is no deal involving Prop. I; the only deal was to reduce the amount of required affordable housing in new projects. She said she is not currently supporting the BUILD Act.

Former Sup. Dean Preston and his allies are circulating petitions that would make Prop. I permanent–and would mandate that the money go for affordable housing. Lurie will oppose that.

Some folks will say that Preston and SF’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America are undermining the “deal” that trades away Prop. I and inclusionary housing for this new, valuable, steady income source.

But Mecke told me that in his meetings with Melgar’s Office and Lurie’s Office, nobody said that the new trust fund hinged on everyone supporting the repeal of Prop. I and the cut in affordability requirements. “I was never asked to agree to a deal,” he said.… (more)

This continues to be one of the most convoluted way to operate an affordable housing plan. No matter where you look there is a “gotcha”. Perhaps when the dust settles one may be able to look at what options remain for the voters to respond to in November.

Meanwhile, what is being done to get the people who need housing into the thousands of empty units, some owned by companies that are or will soon declare bankruptcy and may well owe the city millions of dollars in back taxes.

We hear that Parkmerced is largely empty and the owners are broke. What can’t these properties, which can’t be in worse shade than some of the affordable housing projects we hear about, be turned into a temporary housing project for the people who are already signed up for housing?

RELATED:

How a CCHO idea became a $3 billion Charter Amendment — and why the fight isn’t over.  (By Quintin Mecke, SF CCHO : substack )