Supes’ discord puts a damper on legislation
Tuesday’s San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting appears to be another light one — the third in a row with few pieces of legislation and nothing contentious on the agenda.
It’s a sign of exceptional stagnation of the city’s legislative body, political observers say. In the months after Mayor Ed Lee’s death, the board has succumbed to infighting and a general absence of leadership, at a time when the majority of the supervisors are running for office either in June or November.
January and February are normally the months when supervisors lay out their priorities. But this year kicked off with a dragout fight over who would occupy the may-
or’s office until June 5, which ripped the board in half and took the supervisors’ attention away from nagging issues: street homelessness, property crime and traffic congestion.
The blood sport led to a period of inactivity. Supervisors confront many of the city’s problems by calling for public hearings, which seldom produce new policy. After creating a task force last year to set up safe-injection sites for hard drug users, the board left most of the decision-making to the Public Health Department.
“Let’s just face it: The board dynamics are tough right now,” said Supervisor Malia Cohen. “We’re mad at each other. It’s hard to get things passed.”
The atmosphere in City Hall is tense, and the secondfloor corridor, with its wraparound row of supervisors’ offices, is much quieter than usual. Some of those offices stay dark for long stretches of the day while tourists roam the marble floors and wedding ceremonies proceed in the rotunda. One legislative aide said that conversations have all but died between the normally voluble lawmakers.
“We do have some extraordinary circumstances here,” said political consultant John Whitehurst, noting that the fierce sprint to replace Lee “sucked a lot of the energy and political air out of the room.”
Cohen, who chairs the board’s Budget and Finance Committee, was deeply angered by the vote to install Supervisor Mark Farrell in the mayor’s office. She will now have to work with Farrell and his staff to lay out a $10 billion city budget. She is also running an intense campaign for the State Board of Equalization, which will escalate as the June primary approaches — the same time the budget has to be approved.
Divisions at the board have sharpened as campaign season heats up. Last month, the board’s progressive and moderate factions produced dueling ballot initiatives, both seeking to tax commercial landlords. The progressive measure would spend the money on child care, while the moderate one would raise funds for homeless shelters and middle-income housing.
Supervisor Jeff Sheehy, who co-sponsored the moderate “Housing for All” initiative, said he’s chosen to focus on that right now instead of on producing nuts-and-bolts policies for the city.
“The biggest issues are homelessness and housing,
“Let’s board just dynamics face it: are The tough right now. We’re mad at each other. It’s hard to get things passed.” Supervisor Malia Cohen
and to address them we need substantial revenue, and to get that revenue we need to go to the ballot,” said Sheehy, who is running a tough race to keep his seat in District 8. “Housing for All” will generate money, votes and press for his campaign — three things he wouldn’t get by drafting regular ordinances.
Supervisor Jane Kim, who is running for mayor, is largely devoted to the childcare measure, which is also the centerpiece of her campaign.
“Absolutely I’m going to be campaigning on this,” said Kim, adding that the binding theme of her platform is “regrowing San Francisco’s middle class.”
In addition, Kim has called for $2.5 million to be spent on street cleaning, and rallied support for homeless services in her district, including a program to serve pregnant homeless women. She said she is drafting an ordinance to bar the city from doing business with companies that mandate arbitration clauses with their employees.
Another candidate for mayor, board President London Breed, also appears to be promoting policies that align with her campaign. Known as a light policymaker, she’s building a platform involving issues that help San Francisco’s poorest residents — pressing laws to scrap criminal justice fees and give city departments more oversight over mentally ill people.
Breed said she’s focused on serving her constituents, not on padding her record for the mayor’s race.
“Make no mistake: When you’re supposed to be doing a job representing your district, and you’re now running for a larger office, the larger office is going to get your attention,” said San Francisco State University communications professor Joe Tuman, who ran unsuccessfully for Oakland mayor in 2010 and 2014.
Running a citywide campaign for mayor is grueling, Tuman said. Breed and Kim will have to constantly appear at fundraisers, debates, neighborhood meetings and endorsement events.
That leaves almost no time for the candidates to serve their constituents, Tuman said.
But the board’s malaise can’t just be blamed on individual political ambitions. The new supervisors who were elected in 2016 — Ahsha Safaí, Hillary Ronen and Sandra Lee Fewer — all made big campaign promises that they’ve struggled to deliver, said Laura Foote Clark, executive director of the pro-density Yes in My Backyard advocacy group.
“They all ran district races on promises to build affordable housing, but we haven’t seen any proposals on how to get there,” she said.
Despite being one of the city’s most persistent advocates, Clark said she’s had more success at the state Capitol than at City Hall.
Ronen, Safaí and Fewer pushed back against Clark’s statements. Fewer said she’s identified several potential sites for affordable housing, even if she hasn’t brought anything to the full board. Safaí said he helped negotiate three affordable developments in his district.
Yet Ronen also signaled that she will likely wait until after the June 5 election to introduce any major new laws.
“In moments of political turmoil, when you don’t know who the mayor is going to be, it’s not the best idea to initiate big, bold pieces of legislation,” she said.
Since the beginning of the year, Ronen has been touring the city’s homeless and mental health facilities, trying to understand the system fully. She’s also secured funding to open three Navigation Centers. But she hasn’t enacted any laws on homelessness.
Supervisor Aaron Peskin, the most senior member of the body, said he fears a legislative slowdown “because people are trying to avoid political confrontations during an election.”
Peskin is not running for office, and he said he’s got several ideas lined up. They include: a vacancy tax for empty storefronts, a campaign finance reform ordinance, a tax on ride-hail companies, a November ballot measure to boost the city’s transportation systems and a law to make all takeout food containers reusable.
The newest supervisor, Catherine Stefani, plans to introduce her first law on Tuesday — a ban on carrying firearms at political events.
Yet Stefani is also mired in a brutal contest to keep her District 2 seat in November. Her main challenger, Nick Josefowitz, sued the city’s Department of Elections earlier this month to move the race up to June.
Stefani insisted that fight won’t inhibit her from legislating.
“Not at all,” she said. “I have a thick skin.”