Matier & Ross:
Bernie Sanders gives a boost to Big Soda in ballot battles over sugary drinks.
The bell has sounded on the Bay Area rematch over taxing sugary drinks, with Big Soda coming out swinging with a big-budget campaign — and a surprise helping hand from Bernie Sanders, of all people.
Antisugar forces have placed a penny-per-ounce soda tax on the November ballot in both San Francisco and Oakland and are hoping that former New York Mayor and multimillionaire Michael Bloomberg will come in with some big bucks to finance the campaigns. Both measures are directed at putting money into children’s health and nutrition programs.
Meanwhile, the American Beverage Association has reserved more than $9 million in Bay Area TV ad time to hammer home the idea that voters would be signing on to a “grocery tax” that would boost the cost of all kinds of items at the local supermarket.
The argument is that because the tax is levied on soda distributors rather than individual purchasers, there is no requirement that grocers pass the cost on directly through soda sales. They could just as easily opt to spread the cost among a number of products.
“If you tax small businesses like groceries, that money has to come from somewhere.” said Joe Arellano, spokesman for the no-tax campaign.
The antisugar advocates are apoplectic at the pitch, calling the grocery tax warning a “big lie by Big Soda.”
Ironically, tagging the soda tax with the grocery label was the work of none other than Vermont Sen. and former presidential candidate Sanders, darling of the nation’s progressives.
In an April 24 opinion piece in Philadelphia Magazine, Sanders called that city’s sugar tax proposal “a regressive grocery tax that would disproportionately affect lowincome and middle-class Americans.”
The sugar folks are running hard with the message. Just ask San Francisco resident Alyonik Hrushow, a supporter of the tax who says she was “really mad” when she received a big color mailer the other day calling the proposal a grocery tax.
When we told her Sanders had made the same pitch, she said, “I’m really disappointed — I voted for him.”
Arellano makes no apologies for adopting Bernie’s message: “If you tax small businesses like groceries, that money has to come from somewhere.”
In the meantime, the antisugar folks are pushing hard on a just-released sidewalk poll by UC Berkeley researchers that showed residents in lowincome neighborhoods in Berkeley reduced their soda consumption by 21 percent after city voters imposed a penny-an-ounce tax on sugary drinks.
“We now have data and evidence that show a tax on sugary beverages works and is effective in encouraging the public to make healthy choices, particularly those who have suffered from Big Soda’s tactics,” said San Francisco Supervisor Malia Cohen.
Maybe, but Berkeley financial records show the drop in consumption may have been smaller.
The records show that in March 2015, when the tax went into effect, Berkeley collected $117,433 in sales taxes from high-sugar drinks. In February 2016, the most recent month for which figures are available, the city took in $115,968 — that’s a drop of just 1.2 percent in sales of the sweet stuff. Considering that February is shorter than March, the tax collections per day actually rose.
So either wealthier people in Berkeley are drinking more soda these day — or those in the low-income neighborhoods who talked to the UC Berkeley researchers were saying one thing about sugar and drinking another. Art deal: It’s crunch time in the decadelong battle between the Academy of Art University and the city over the school’s real estate empire.
City Attorney Dennis Herrera set the clock ticking in May when he filed a lawsuit against the academy — the nation’s largest for-profit art school and one of the city’s biggest landlords — accusing it of having illegally converted more than half its 40 buildings in the city into student housing, classrooms and other uses.
Last week, Superior Court Judge Mary Wiss tapped the brakes — issuing a monthlong stay of discovery and turning everyone’s attention to Sept. 22, when the City Planning Commission is set to decide a staff recommendation certain to put the academy in a bind. It would bring just two of the school’s seven residential properties into compliance with the law, potentially forcing scores of students to seek housing elsewhere.
With time running out, the academy is scrambling to negotiate an out-of-court settlement. Academy attorney James Brosnahan confirmed that he made a new settlement offer last week.
While Brosnahan was mum on specifics, we know that his earlier offers included turning over one of the university’s residential buildings to the city for affordable housing and putting an unspecified amount of money into the city’s affordable housing fund.
“It has to be a global arrangement and something the Planning Commission (and Board of Supervisors) is OK with,” Brosnahan told us. “We want to get the acrimony behind us and resolve this in a way that the city can say is legitimate.”
Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who has been involved in past negotiations, said that at very least any deal will have to include an agreement from academy CEO Elisa Stephens to lease a residential building to the city for 99 years for affordable housing and to pay “all fines, fees and penalties” owed to the city for past violations, which could total north of $10 million.
Peskin charged that Stephens has been “a serial lawbreaker” who now wants the city to legalize properties converted illegally over the past decade — and said letting her off with “a slap on the wrist” won’t cut it with the Board of Supervisors.
As for Herrera, he tells us only that the academy’s “proposals have been woefully inadequate, and I have every intention of making sure it abides by the law just like every other San Franciscan is required to do.” San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email matierandross@ sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross