S.F.’S TEMPORARY, TELLING TRANSFORMATION

EDITORIAL

In democracies all over the world, there is a neverending debate over government resources, how smartly they are used and in whose interests. When services are spotty, roads are pothole-filled and parents are disappointed with schools, complaints are sometimes taken seriously. But sometimes they lead to lectures which assert that the public is getting what it pays for — and that if citizens whine about anything, they should look in the mirror at their chintzy selves and start embracing calls for higher and/or new taxes. This has certainly been the mantra of many local and state officials in California since Proposition 13 capped property taxes in 1978.

But events in recent days on both sides of the border show cynicism of another sort about government resources is also justified.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s three-day tour of Baja California is likely to be remembered most not for any stirring speech or bold policy proposal but for the fact that all it took was one pointed question from a journalist to bring a badly needed fix. At AMLO’S daily press conference early in his trip, Yolanda Morales — an independent Tijuana journalist and Union-tribune en Español contributor — asked about the nightmarish waits that cross-border commuters have endured on their way back to Mexico, especially in the afternoon, in recent months. AMLO pledged to solve the problem, and just like that, Mexican authorities opened more lines for vehicles to use and offered a commitment to build more exit lines at El Chaparral crossing. Will this actually lead to lasting changes? History doesn’t offer much hope.

Meanwhile, 470 miles to the north, a similarly dramatic transformation took place on some of the most squalid streets of San Francisco.

Between seemingly ineradicable homelessness and an explosion in property crime — starting with car break-ins that seem nearly as common as jaywalking — the national and international reputation of the beloved city has plunged. Especially after pandemic-inspired telecommuting began to empty out the city’s expensive office towers, the sense that San Francisco is in decline has been inescapable. Yet before global political and business leaders — including Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping — began arriving last week for the Asia-pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, an area ranging from Union Square to City Hall to the Moscone Center underwent a massive civic face-lift. Beforeand-after photo essays showed entire blocks had been cleared of open drug dealing, down-and-out addicts, tents and general filth. Remember, this came after years of assertions from city leaders that between a lack of funding and facilities, they were doing all they could.

This is not to suggest that governments in California and Mexico are holding out on the public and can readily fix huge problems whenever they want. It’s to suggest there is something wrong when elected leaders fix the optics of problems when the spotlight is on and it is helpful to them — then return to the same indifference to public angst over the problems when the spotlight disappears.

Commuters stuck in hours-long waits on the border? Store owners on the brink of closing in San Francisco because of City Hall callousness to the chaos they face? Tough luck.

But when a short-term need emerges for politicians to burnish their reputations, the old Mel Brooks’ one-liner comes to mind: It’s good to be the king. Money is suddenly no object.

At least Gavin Newsom, our nakedly ambitious governor who reveled in the global attention that APEC provided, was honest. “I know folks say, ‘Oh, they’re just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming into town.’ That’s true,” he told reporters on Nov. 13.

It’s true, all right. It’s also telling — and pathetic.