In the meantime, Tumlin should be heavily investing in building fully protected bike lanes so alternatives to MUNI are available when the pandemic ends. Programs in San Francisco and Alameda counties to house the homeless in hotels tend to have some draconian rules for those who accept shelter, and several individuals who have experienced these hotel accommodations say they're not worth the cost their freedoms. Government and Politics Regional Agencies Political Groups Elected officials of the SF Bay Area Elections - Next elections will be in June 2006. Let’s hope the Biden Administration will financially rescue urban transit systems like San Francisco’s. 2130 Fulton Street San Francisco, CA 94117-1080 (415) 422-5555 Campus Map A new and embarrassing twist came in the City Hall scandal chapter involving former SF Public Utilities chief Harlan Kelly as prosecutors say that cocaine was found in the FBI's search of his home. The city and plaintiffs’ agreed to a stipulated injunction preventing the return of tents. The Tenderloin tent lawsuit also showed that the vast majority of people on the streets are eager to be housed—few tent dwellers turned down the opportunity. Are parents who can afford to hire SAT prep companies or tutors for their kids also guilty of “pay to play”? Newsom’s PlumpJack Group got a plump $2.9 million in PPP loans for its high-end wineries and restaurants, which is eight times higher than what was originally reported. D6 is fortunate to have another great supervisor in Haney but the health and safety of a neighborhood should be a citywide concern. The Breed Administration needs to start negotiating to buy or lease hotels and get this process moving. I’ve strongly supported the mayor’s call for restricting appeals of building permits. The mystery, which I raised last week (“Mayor Breed’s Challenging Year”), is why the Breed Administration is not moving to secure this permanent housing. It’s been a rough year. It looks like federal investigators have snagged a slightly bigger fish in the unfolding SF City Hall corruption scandal that began with the January arrest of former Department of Public Works head Mohammed Nuru, and it's an executive at longtime San Francisco waste management vendor Recology. The pandemic shifted San Francisco’s narrative around homelessness. But what’s happened at the agency under his leadership reflects deeper structural problems than he anticipated. San Francisco Mayor London Breed said that Gov. But when the leaders who daily try to drill the rules into us violate the rules themselves, it's a recipe for a whole lot of exasperation and outrage in the media and on social media. The district attorney is making a renewed push for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to release his long-jailed father, as a COVID-19 outbreak hits the maximum security prison where he's incarcerated. This lack of process is not what people expected in November 2019 when Mayor Breed selected Jeff Tumlin to run SFMTA. Hiring experts to process permits is no more “pay to play” than retaining an attorney to help with a lease or other business transaction. On top of these failures is SFMTA’s decision to terminate long planned improvements to Mid-Market. I see some bad actors violating laws and DBI officials dealing with these people under strict instructions from the city attorney’s office. I wonder how many believing they have been wronged by DBI have brought their concerns to the DBI Commission—and why they have not. An election worker sits in front of a large American flag Feb. 28 while entering faxed-in ballots ahead of the 2020 primary election at San Francisco City Hall. Further delay almost ensures a crisis down the line as rooms are not ready for those needing to leave FEMA-funded hotels. DBI has nothing to do with promoting these appeal procedures. Even progressives who support expanded government ownership and control believe many public officials are “corrupt.” But phrases like “corruption” and “pay to play” were completely misused in San Francisco 2020. Following Monday's bombshell announcement of charges against SF Public Utilities Commission Director Harlan Kelly, following an FBI raid of his home, we now get word that his wife, City Administrator Naomi Kelly, has voluntarily — or under pressure from the mayor — taken a leave of absence. Get all the latest & greatest posts delivered straight to your inbox. San Francisco, CA local politics, local officials, government and campaigns For what's believed to be the first time, a San Francisco district attorney has filed a homicide charge against a police officer for shooting a citizen while in the line of duty. Federal and state funding has led to over 2000 such placements. People love corruption scandals. It also proves how radical San Francisco Jon Ossoff really is. Although the fight between Democrats and Republicans has been unequal for the … Have a safe and healthy holiday season. Such talk exposed why the city has long maintained the Tenderloin as a containment zone. … Nonetheless, on the day Brown was inaugurated as San Francisco's mayor, cementing his standing as California's most notable African American politician, it was a … It’s a game changer because the city cannot return those temporarily housed to the streets. Here’s our take on the key San Francisco political dynamics of 2020. Record cash pours into Georgia Senate races, with a large chunk from California. The alleged spy was an Eric Swalwell fundraiser and Ro Khanna volunteer, but some Midwestern mayors are likely more nervous because the FBI has footage of her having sex with them. That's still allowed. It was a product of years of stakeholder input. I don’t get it. The Better Market Streets plan was central to this vision. Stay up to date! That federal, state and local building, planning and health code provisions have become extremely complex in today’s world is not a sign of a “corrupt” process. Maybe that’s why these folks went to the media and not to the DBI Commission to raise their concerns. If the Board of Supervisors want to expedite renovations and new construction, they can vote to do so in January. San Francisco supervisors overwhelmingly approved a resolution to condemn the naming of the city’s public hospital for Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan. He is the author of four prior books on activism, including The Activist's Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. Exclusive coverage of Bay Area, Sacramento and Washington D.C. politics and election campaigns and voting including the 2020 presidential election and primaries. Main Campus. Bigger fish are frying in the ever-expanding Mohammed Nuru DPW scandal, as the head of SF’s Public Utilities Commission has his home raided, gets charged with fraud, and possibly faces 20 years in prison. We all know that not everyone is following pandemic isolation recommendations to the T these days. The Bay Area is home to California's largest income gap.Residents in the area's 90th percentile earned 12.2 times more than those in the bottom 10th percentile. Editor’s note: Lincoln Mitchell teaches in the political science department at Columbia University. "There’s been growing public outrage that this important public health institution was named and the naming rights were sold to the highest bidder and to somebody as controversial as Mr. Zuckerberg and Facebook," says Sup. According to the California Secretary of State, the Democratic Party holds a voter registration advantage in every congressional district, State Senate district, State Assembly district, State Board of Equalization district, all nine counties, and all of the 101 incorporated municipalities in the Bay Area. Chris Arvin. The legal settlement was ultimately approved by the Board of Supervisors. The May lawsuit immediately prompted city action. The Board of Supervisors overcame the mayor’s initial resistance to moving former shelter residents and those living on the streets into temporary hotels. Commission members are more likely to know the full story. In a show of unity Wednesday on a live-streamed Zoom session, SF Police Chief Bill Scott and District Attorney Chesa Boudin discussed recent charging decisions implicating SF police officers, and the growing role of the DA's Independent Investigations Bureau. Nevertheless, the political world —-public hearings, meetings of elected officials and a local, state and national election—-proceeded. (See “The Tenderloin Strikes Back,” May 5). Even prior to the pandemic the Breed Administration found it acceptable for over 100 tents to occupy Tenderloin sidewalks. DBI Director Tom Hui resigned at the mayor’s request following disclosure that he arranged for the agency to hire his son. But SFMTA threw this all overboard. The 87-year-old senator has visibly lost a step, but a new report features stories from (mostly anonymous) aides saying that her mental deterioration is a lot further along than we realize. SFMTA made no effort to consult with stakeholders prior to reversing Mayor Lee’s and the community’s vision. This number grew to 420 during the pandemic, raising serious health threats to the neighborhood residents and workers who could not gain the required social distancing walking down the street (See “San Francisco Violating COVID19 Guidelines in Tenderloin,” April 28), A legal team assembled by Hastings College of the Law with neighborhood stakeholders as plaintiffs was forced to sue San Francisco for subjecting the Tenderloin to this serious pandemic risk. This should be a game changer. And because the implementation of the November 2018 ballot measure Prop C ensures that not a single person need become homeless when FEMA funding ends—San Francisco has the local funding to house everyone now in temporary housing. Sup. He is also the author of The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco, San Francisco Politics 2020: The Year in Review, San Francisco Violating COVID19 Guidelines in Tenderloin. It suddenly announced this fall that it was eliminating two of the plans core features: fully protected bike lanes and the replacement of the rundown red sidewalk bricks with beautiful gray pavers. It brought down DPW chief Mohammed Nuru, SFPUC head Harlan Kelly, Sandra Zuniga, the head of the Office of Neighborhood Services, and has put City Administrator Naomi Kelly’s future at risk. Thanks for reading Beyond Chron in 2020. I wrote last week about how the media’s permit expediter scandal of 2004 fell apart when people were unable to confirm their claims at public hearings; some of the “victims” in recent media reports on DBI did work without permits, while others faced delays that had nothing to do with DBI or any city malfeasance. The head of San Francisco’s Public Utilities Commission, which oversees millions of dollars in city contracts, has resigned after being charged with bribery in an ongoing federal corruption probe. The pandemic shifted San Francisco’s narrative around homelessness. Members are appointed by the mayor and president of the Board of Supervisors. The Republican Party holds a voter registration advantage in one State Assembly sub-district (the portion of the 4th in Sol… It’s sort of like “Care Not Cops,” as the hopefully less escalatory Street Crisis Response Team starts its Mental Health SF pilot program today for non-violent incident response. Mayor Breed’s appointment of such a true urban visionary to head SFMTA was a bold and brilliant choice. Breaking Bay Area and national politics news, opinions and blogs from the SFGATE. Following the social upheavals of the 1960s, San Francisco became one of the centers of liberal activism, with Democrats, and progressives dominating city politics. By July the tent count had fallen from 420 to roughly 30. San Francisco had a tough 2020. All four candidates have raised much of their money out of state, with California the largest source Everybody figured 38-year-old former Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg would get a job in a theoretical Biden administration, and of course he has. This continuing trend is also visible in the results of presidential elections; the last Republican to win San Francisco was Dwight Eisenhower in 1956. Hillary Ronen popped up on “60 Minutes” Sunday night to proclaim “We are getting screwed” over Sutter Health’s alleged monopoly and price-gouging practices. I don’t see any evidence of “corruption” or illegal “pay to play” amidst the hard working employees of the Department of Building Inspection. But as of Friday, she has received her first shot of the vaccine. Frankly, I’ll be surprised if the Board goes along. With shelter capacity curtailed by social distancing mandates, a debate began over where to house the unhoused. DBI is controlled by a Commission. 2020 was a fiscal nightmare for all urban transit systems in the United States. It remains just a list of recommendations that hasn't been formalized, but a SF school district committee's push to strip Abraham Lincoln's name from a school is drawing national outrage and laughter. ... San Francisco is a FANDOM Lifestyle Community. Governor Gavin Newsom has put an end to all the palace intrigue and any backroom wrangling that may have been going on and he's tapped California Secretary of State Alex Padilla to be the next senator from California, to take Senator Kamala Harris's seat. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — An ordinance to ban cigarette smoking in San Francisco apartments failed to get a second vote from supervisors Tuesday, meaning the proposal is dead for now. Around 41,000 San Franciscans voted for Donald J. 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