Source: http://westsideobserver.com/news/patrick2016.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 16:22:07+00:00

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Imagine being a public employee who lacks basic First Amendment protections to use free speech on matters of “public concern” guaranteed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Thirteen years after voters passed Prop “C” in 2003 requiring the Board of Supervisors to enact adequate protections to curtail retaliation against City employees who file complaints involving improper government activity and matters of public concern, progress has inched forward over the past year — but just barely.
During the past year there’s been more “collateral damage” to City employees who faced bullying in one form or another in a whole host of prohibited personnel practices already proscribed by law.
Since 2007, the costs of bullying San Francisco City employees has soared to $41.6 million, but that’s counting only those employees fortunate enough to afford filing lawsuits against the City. That $41.6 million could have been better spent solving a myriad of problems facing the City.
In May 2013, the Westside Observer carried my first article on the high costs of retaliation and bullying of City employees. In July 2015, I wrote an update on the subject in “Retaliators Keep Their City Jobs” for the Observer.
Dr. Derek Kerr — a former Senior Physician Specialist at Laguna Honda Hospital for over 20 years wrongfully terminated for his exposé of the raid of the hospital’s patient gift fund used for staff perks instead — first placed a records request with the City Attorney’s Office in October 2012 for records involving lawsuit settlements for a host of prohibited personnel practices. The first 103 cases involved $9.6 million in lawsuit settlements, and another $7.7 million for the costs of City Attorney time and expenses trying to stop the lawsuits.
The lawsuit settlement amounts paid by the City Attorney do not include back pay awards or other amounts not processed through the City Attorney. Checking Board of Supervisor’s agendas, six of the 103 settlement received a total of an additional $1.4 million, ostensibly for back pay or other awards, bringing the total to $18.8 million for the first 103 cases that I reported on in 2013.
In my July 2015 article, the initial 103 cases settled prior to October 24, 2012 had climbed between October 2012 and May 2015 by an additional 123 cases to 226 cases that had been settled, plus 66 cases that then remained pending.
On May 29 of this year, I placed another records request for updated data on lawsuits settled between October 2012 and May 29, 2016. The number of cases settled in that period surged from 123 to 159, involving $7.2 million in settlements awarded, and a whopping $14.6 million costs in City Attorney time and expenses, for a total of $21.8 million, plus an additional $1 million awarded by the Board of Supervisors for back pay or other awards, pushing the total since October 2012 to $22.8 million, above and beyond the first 103 lawsuits.
Combining all cases since 2007, the City Attorney has settled 259 lawsuits totaling $16.8 million in settlement awards, plus $22.3 million in City Attorney time and expenses, plus $2.5 million awarded by the Board of Supervisors for back pay or other awards, bringing the costs across the past nine years to a staggering $41.6 million, with now 63 lawsuits still pending, which will likely fuel additional costs!
That there’s been 322 such lawsuits filed in the past nine years, shows the City clearly has a problem on its hands in not avoiding costs for 27 various categories of already-prohibited personnel practices on the law books.
Table 1 below shows that four of the 27 categories — Racial Discrimination, Disability Discrimination, Wrongful Termination, and “Other-Actions by Employees Against the City” — have accounted for 67% ($27.8 million) of the total costs for the 259 cases settled to date, including $8.6 million involving Racial Discrimination (40 cases), $6.6 million involving Disability Discrimination (46 cases), $6.4 million involving Wrongful Termination (41 cases), and $6.3 million involving Other Actions (45 cases).
Together they total 172 — 66.4%, fully two-thirds — of the 259 cases settled to date, but there are another 41 pending cases spread across these four categories that will push the combined total to 213 of the 322 cases filed to date between January 2007 and May 29, 2016.
Of interest, of the $27.8 million in total costs for the four categories, the City Attorney Office’s (CAO) costs for time and expenses total $15.4 million — 69.1% — of the $22.3 million in CAO costs trying to stop all 259 cases settled to date, and $12.4 million was awarded to employees in these four categories — 64.5% — of the $19.3 million in total settlement awards (combining the CAO awards and Board of Supervisor awards).
Table 1 shows the cumulative total of lawsuits filed between 2007 and 2016, sorted by descending Total Amount.
Of some concern is that many of the lawsuits filed by City employees are apparently classified by the CAO as a given type of complaint, but Superior Court records show the case to be something entirely different.
Of the 322 lawsuits filed since 2007, only one involved a claim of First Amendment claim, in a lawsuit filed by a City employee, Andrew Cohen v. Gavin Newsom et al., a case that was transferred from San Francisco Superior Court to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California at the City’s request.
Although the City Attorney’s Office had logged the case as involving a First Amendment lawsuit, the Superior Court web site showed that it was a Civil Rights lawsuit involving approximately 18 officers of the San Francisco Police Department over the “Cops Gone Wild” video scandal in 2005 who had alleged “Racial Discrimination,” not “Civil Rights” or the “First Amendment.” The 18 officers asserted that everyone on the video was suspended, except Asian American SFPD officers. Why the City Attorney had not initially recorded it as a Racial Discrimination case, instead of a First Amendment case, isn’t known.
Cohen’s case was dismissed in District Court in Newsom’s favor. That means that to date, there has been not one actual First Amendment retaliation lawsuit filed by City employees against the City, in part because San Francisco’s Campaign and Government Conduct Code §4.115(a) does not currently contain anti-retaliation protections for City employees who exercise their First Amendment free speech rights.
In addition to Andrew Cohen v. Gavin Newsom et al. lawsuit, there are other cases that appear to have been misclassified by the CAO.
A second example is the still-pending lawsuit Shirley Moore vs. San Francisco General Hospital, (CGC-12-524344), the CAO categorized it as a “6099 Other-Actions by Employees Against City” case, but the initial lawsuit filed in Superior Court alleged 10 factors, including Racial Discrimination, Harassment Based on Race, Constructive Discharge, Retaliation, and Harassment Based on Disability, along with five other causes.
A third example is in the Christine McGuire vs. City and County of San Francisco lawsuit (CGC-11-511007), which the CAO categorized as a “6080 Disability Discrimination” case, but Superior Court records shows it to be a “Wrongful Discharge” lawsuit.
A fourth example is the lawsuit Abel Gonzalez vs. Department of Public Health (Court Case 481-910) that the CAO had categorized as a “6070 General Harassment (Emp against City)” case, but Superior Court records also show it to be another “Wrongful Discharge” lawsuit.
A fifth example is the lawsuit Teresa Yeung vs. City and County of San Francisco, et al. — actually against the Mayor’s Office of Community Development — (CGC-07-465400) that the CAO had categorized as a “6080 Disability Discrimination” case, but Superior Court records also show it to be another “Wrongful Discharge” lawsuit.
Between 41 cases settled to date, and 9 more still pending, the number of wrongful termination cases since 2007 totals 50 cases.
Of the $6.4 million paid to date to settle wrongful termination cases, fully $2.7 million of it — 42.1% — is attributed to just two of the 41 cases (Dr. Derek Kerr’s lawsuit against the Department of Public Health at $1.2 million between settlements and City Attorney fees, and Kelly O’Haire’s lawsuit against the Police Department at $1.5 million).
Of the nine pending wrongful termination lawsuits, Joanne Hoeper’s case against the City Attorney’s Office and City Attorney Dennis Herrera will more than likely be another million-and-a-half-dollars gone up in smoke.
Fifty wrongful termination lawsuits involve a lot of careers and lives damaged after being wrongfully fired, and suggests much of it may be likely due to retaliation by managers and City department heads who think they can get away with firing employees wrongfully.
However, because of the potential misclassification of lawsuits by the CAO, we may not have an accurate count of the total number of wrongful discharge and wrongful termination lawsuits filed by City employees.
It’s clear from the 322 lawsuits filed to date that you can only push people so far before they start fighting back, a concept apparently lost on senior City managers, department heads, and the City Attorney’s Office.
An analysis of data provided by the City Attorney’s Office suggests that five City Departments are responsible for a goodly chunk of the prohibited personnel practice lawsuits, suggesting employees in those Departments know how to lawyer-up, particularly those in San Francisco’s Police Department.
Public records requests to date have not previously requested which City Departments the lawsuits were filed against. But matching up employee names from five separate fiscal years of City Controller payroll data uncovered significant details. Of the 322 lawsuits filed to date — including pending cases — payroll records showed 237 of the cases could be matched to employee names to track which City Department they had worked for; the remaining 85 cases were researched on the Superior Court’s case information web site to determine City Department.
Table 2 shows that of the 259 lawsuits settled between 2007 and 2016, 221 were matched to payroll records or court records to determine the corresponding City Department. The 221 accounted for fully $39.8 million — 95.6% — of the total $41.6 million in lawsuit costs. The remaining 38 of the 259 settled cases that could not be matched to a corresponding City Department accounted for $1.6 million — 4.4% — of total settlement costs.
Of the 259 cases settled, 133 — 51.4% — were filed by employees in just five City Departments: The San Francisco Police Department, the Department of Public Health, the Municipal Transportation Agency, the Sheriff’s Department, and the San Francisco Fire Department in descending order, at a combined cost of $28 million — two-thirds, or actually, 67.5% — of the total $41.6 million in combined costs between 2007 and 2016.
Some of the employee’s who filed lawsuits that were not identified by payroll records were not found on the Superior Court web site, including some that are blocked from public access viewing, for whatever reason, and are listed in Table 2 as “Unknown City Department,” “Lawsuit Not Found” or “Not Available,” or the City Department wasn’t named.
Clearly, the City Attorney’s Office fought tooth-and-nail — spending nearly $3 million — to fight the “Other Actions by Employees Against the City” category, which accounted for well over one-third of the $12.4 million in total costs.
But what’s more shocking is that the “Racial Discrimination” lawsuits resulted in the highest amount of City Attorney settlement awards (at $1.7 million), and although they represented just 15.2% of the lawsuits, those cases gobbled a quarter — 24.6% — of the total costs to settle the 33 cases filed by SFPD employees settled to date, with “Sexual Discrimination,” “Disability Discrimination,” and “Wrongful Termination” not far behind.
This suggests not only that SFPD has a problem with racial and homophobic bias against members of the public, they have the same problem internally with its own employees.
All of this suggests that this is precisely why the City’s Whistleblower Protection Ordinance needs to be amended, as the Civil Grand Jury recommended over a year ago.
[Note:	A Word on the Methodology: The lawsuit data in this report does not include unlitigated claims that were not included in responses from the City Attorney’s Office to public records requests. For instance, on April 3, 2014, the Board of Supervisors approved a settlement of an unlitigated claim filed by Dr. Rajiv Bhatia against the City and County of San Francisco for $155,000. Dr. Bhatia had formerly been the Director of Occupational and Environmental Health for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, but was forced out by DPH’s current Director of Public Health Barbara Garcia. It is not known how many other disputes between City employees and their supervisors have resulted in additional unlitigated claim settlement costs related to bullying of City employees.
As I wrote in July 2015, on June 8, 2015 San Francisco’s 2014–2015 Civil Grand Jury released its report “San Francisco’s Whistleblower Protection Ordinance Is in Need of Change,” dated May 2015. The Grand Jury’s report was a damning indictment of City Hall’s failure to adequately strengthen whistleblower protections for City employees since directed to by voters in 2013 — now 13 years ago.
The Grand Jury noted that since 1989, the scope of San Francisco’s whistleblower protection laws had narrowed, providing weaker protections for City employees than for state and federal government employees. That narrowing, or shrinkage, of protections for City employees who blow the whistle had been no accident, but was driven by the “powers who be” who have tried valiantly to silence City employees for years.
Following the Grand Jury’s report, our Ethics Commission held two hearings (on January 20 and February 24, 2016) and forwarded recommendations to the Board of Supervisors to amend the Whistleblower Protection Ordinance (WPO).
Greater specificity on whistleblower complaints filed by City employees and City contractors, adding protections against retaliation for City contractors.
Authority for the Ethics Commission to order reversal of wrongful retaliatory actions.
The ability to sanction City officials and contractors who retaliate (including a provision to permit civil lawsuits against specifically-named employees who engage in retaliation).
Requirements that reports of action taken by City Departments action or inaction with explanations be filed after a referral.
Greater confidentiality protections for whistleblowers.
Whistleblower complaints can be filed without being required to be in writing.
Increasing civil penalties for City officers and employees who violate §4.115(a) of the WPO from $5,000 to $10,000, for which they may be personally liable in court proceedings.
President Breed should be thanked for introducing amendments to strengthen the WPO. However, Friends of Ethics is working to have additional recommendations incorporated into the legislation’s amendments.
As I have written in the past, Federal Judge Claudia Wilken had noted in her September 6, 2012 Court Order keeping Dr. Kerr’s wrongful termination lawsuit alive, that San Francisco’s Campaign and Government Conduct Code §4.115(a) does not contain anti-retaliation protections for City employees who exercise their First Amendment free speech rights to speak out on matters of public concern, despite U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have consistently upheld that federal, state, and municipal employees absolutely have those First Amendment rights when it comes to issues of public concern.
Those protections need to be explicitly duplicated in Campaign and Government Conduct Code §4.115(a).
I have repeatedly testified to the Ethics Commission that this disconnect must be fixed, so that all 39,122 current full- and part-time City employees are finally afforded this anti-retaliation protection, but in the right City ordinance. I’ll continue to do so before the Board of Supervisors.
As I noted in July 2015, D. Jan Duffy — an expert witness Kelly O’Haire’s wrongful termination lawsuit against the Police Department — is correct in indicating that Mayor Lee had both a duty to ensure retaliation against whistleblowers is detected and remedied, and that organizations should set the tone from the top on down that retaliation is not acceptable and will not be tolerated. Unfortunately, all along Mayor Lee has also failed to set the appropriate tone regarding amendments to the Whistleblower Protection Ordinance.
I also noted in July 2015 that the WPO needs to have a provision added specifying that any manager in every City department found to have engaged in retaliation will face immediate suspension, and in instances where a harmed individual prevails in civil court, the manager(s) responsible for wrongful termination should themselves face immediate termination.
Unfortunately, the amendments advanced by Supervisor Breed do not fully incorporate a key provision recommended by Friends of Ethics, which had suggested specific penalties for City employees who wrongly retaliate against other City employees, such as a minimum two-week suspension without pay. Breed’s amendments do allow for administrative actions to be taken and a report on what was done, which is a step in the right direction to hold individuals accountable for their wrongful actions.
Breed’s amendments don’t go far enough, because there won’t be a uniform policy that applies to every Department citywide, which may likely result in disparate outcomes for those who wrongly face retaliation, since administrative actions may wildly vary across City departments.
City employees deserve to have the First Amendment anti-retaliation protections on matters of public concern replicated and enshrined in the WPO, in addition to being in the Sunshine Ordinance. Anything less will be inadequate.
If the Whistleblower Protection Ordinance is fully amended and enhanced, it may well help reduce the amount of lawsuits filed against the City by City employees who wrongly face retaliation.
The savings could be in the millions of dollars, and should be pursued, if for no other reason than for the potential cost savings.
Monette-Shaw is a columnist for San Francisco’s Westside Observer newspaper. He received a James Madison Freedom of Information Award from the Society of Professional Journalists–Northern California Chapter in 2012. He can be contacted at monette-shaw@westsideobserver.
Throughout this article, data presented was for the 103 lawsuits that were settled between January 1, 2007 to October 24, 2012 (a 5-year, 10-month period) vs. the 156 cases settled between October 25, 2012 and May 29, 2016, (a 4-year, 2-month period), irrespective of the date the lawsuits were actually filed. The surge in cases settled — from 103 to 156 — represents a 51.5% net increase in settlements concluded, comparing an almost six-year period to just over a four-year period.
Table A-1 shows that of the 103 lawsuits settled, many of them were first filed as far back as 1999. While the number of cases filed after January 1, 2007 outpaced cases filed after October 25, 2012, the key trend is the number of lawsuits filed during Mayor Ed Lee’s tenure after he took office in January 2011. The growth from 121 lawsuits filed between 1999 and 2010 — over a 12-year period — to 154 cases filed in the 5.5-year period since January 2011 represents a 27.3% net increase in cases filed during Lee’s tenure, which is significant precisely because this involves a 12-year period vs. a 5.5-year period. Lawsuits filed under Lee’s “watch” are definitely going up!
Sadly, data provided by the City Attorney’s Office failed to include the dates on which 47 — 14.6% — of the 322 lawsuits were filed, suggesting rotten recordkeeping by the CAO.
What About the Size-of-a-City-Department “Denominator”?
The Police Department ranked #4 in the number of employees (2,979), but ranked #3 in the number of lawsuits filed (41), and ranked #1 in the total costs of lawsuits ($12.4 million).
The Department of Public Health ranked #1 in the number of employees (8,886), ranked #1 in the number of lawsuits filed (51), but ranked #2 in the total costs of lawsuits ($5.5 million).
MUNI ranked #2 in the number of employees (6,087), ranked #2 in the number of lawsuits filed (48), but ranked #3 in the total costs of lawsuits ($4.6 million).
The Human Services Agency ranked #3 in the number of employees (3,183) employees, but ranked #7 in the number of lawsuits filed.
The Recreation and Park Department ranked #5 in the number of employees (2,364), but ranked #8 in the number of lawsuits filed.
The Airport Commission ranked #6 in the number of employees (1,808), but ranked #16 in the number of lawsuits filed.
The Fire Department ranked #7 in the number of employees (1,621), but ranked #9 in the number of lawsuits filed.
The Department of Public Works ranked #8 in the number of employees (1,441), but ranked #6 in the number of lawsuits filed.
The Sheriff’s Department ranked #9 in the number of employees (1,023), but ranked #5 in the number of lawsuits filed.
And going from there, the ranking of settlement awards from the CAO, ranking of settlement awards from the Board of Supervisors, and ranking of City Attorney time and expenses trying to stop the lawsuits are all over the map.
Several readers asked me to provide recommendations for San Francisco’s June 7, 2016 election. My recommendations are based on reading 87 pages of the five City ballot measure’s legal-language texts, Controller’s statements, Legislative Analyst digests, and other documents, along with media reporting. For what it’s worth, here goes.
A San Francisco Examiner article on January 31, 2016 indicated $54 million to build a new Animal Care and Control facility initially included in June’s $350 million Public Health and Safety bond was removed in a sudden and unprecedented change of plans. The Examiner reported the $54 million would be used to “modernize homeless shelters and clinics that deal with mental health,” instead. It was unprecedented, in part, because the change was made just two days before the bond measure was to be discussed during a Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee meeting, and in part because typical long-term planning of the timing and composition of bond measures was thrown out the window at the last moment, perhaps along with the baby and the bathwater.
Worse, the legal text contains no mention of a $20 million set aside for health clinics modernization. Instead, the clinics modernization are included in the upgrade of other facilities on SFGH’s campus, opening the door that if there are cost overruns or “unforeseen site condition” problems (a recurring issue on bond-funded projects) on the SFGH campus that $20 million may never be used for the clinics modernization, since the legal text doesn’t explicitly set aside the second $20 million, as reported by the Chronicle.
Similarly, there’s no mention in the legal text of $14 million actually being earmarked for neighborhood fire stations; instead the fire stations are rolled up into a $58 allocation to construct a Fire Department ambulance and paramedic deployment facility. Should that deployment facility need the full $58 million — whether or not due to cost overruns or “unforeseen site condition” problems — there may be no remaining funds to improve neighborhood fire stations.
Just $272 million of the bond will be used for upgrading of facilities on SFGH’s campus.
Breed is expected to support the Board of Supervisors in issuing by the stroke of its pen $59.5 million as early as May 25 in another debt instrument that does not require voter approval — so-called Certificates of Participation (COPs) — to fund replacing the Animal Care facility (the COPs Ordinance has already been introduced, and is on track to be approved in early June). COPs also require interest payments, so in addition to the $350 million in principal and the projected $254 million in interest for a total of $604 million for the June 7 bond, taxpayers — via the General Fund — will foot the $59.5 million of principal on the COPs plus an estimated $50.5 million in interest, for a total of $110 million for the COP’s.
So instead of $604 million for the principal and interest on just the $350 million bond, we’re up to at least $714 million by adding in the $110 million in principal and interest for the Animal Control COP’s.
No explanation has been provided why costs for the Animal Shelter have surged from $54 million to $59.5 million, in less than three months.
The January 26 Chronicle article also reported Breed told the City’s Capital Planning Committee “Fifty-four million is a lot of money to spend on any facility,” and Breed also criticized the City for “pouring money down the drain” on projects she said are too big and sometimes unnecessary. How’s that for chutzpah?
Perhaps Breed is more comfortable pouring $110 million down the drain for the Animal Control facility — with the stroke of her COP’s pen, no voters required — rather than the $54 million for it that she helped strip from the bond measure.
Voters were snookered on last November’s $310 million housing bond measure: Only recently has the City finally admitted that fully 20% of that bond — $62 million — is being set aside for housing for the homeless, something voters were never informed about prior to the November 2015 election. [Editor: More on this bait-and-switch in next month’s Westside Observer.] Add in the $20 million for homeless shelters in the June bond, and we’re up to $82 million in bond financing plus interest for homeless projects.
In addition to November’s bond, the City recently introduced a separate COP for an affordable housing Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) project that features $83.4 million in principal plus a staggering $129.8 million in interest —155.6% in interest on the principal — for a total of an additional $213.2 million in COP debt service without voter approval. It is not yet known how much of the Rental Assistance COP’s will also be used to house the homeless.
Between November’s $310 million Affordable Housing bond measure and June’s $350 million Public Health and Safety bond measure, taxpayers are footing $1.13 billion in principal and interest for two bonds. Add the two COP’s nearing approval — the housing RAD project and the Animal Care and Control project — that total another $323.3 million, and we’re up to a combined $1.45 billion in principal and interest debt service in a short seven-month period for four projects, not all of which may be capital improvement projects.
I’m tired of being snookered by City Hall. I’m voting “No” on Prop. “A.” You should, too.
Prop. “B” is a bald attempt to increase the Rec and Park Department’s annual budget by $30 million over a 10-year period above its current $67 million annual budget, and also extend the Open Space fund for an additional 15 years. There’s no specificity on what the Open Space set-aside and baseline budget increases will, or shall, be used for.
It’s another slush fund for the Rec and Park Department to spend on whatever they want, with no ability for San Franciscans to weigh in on the use of the increased funds. Everyone wants the best for our parks, and wants resolution of the $1.6 billion in deferred parks maintenance. But there’s no guarantee Prop “B” will solve the deferred maintenance backlog or fix spending of Rec and Park’s annual baseline General Fund allocation. No new funds to this Open Space Fund or to Rec and Park’s annual budget, until we’re told beforehand how the additional funds will be spent!
Prop. “B” will extend the Open Space Fund set-aside and baseline appropriation by 15 years from the current 30-year term to 45 years, and expire at the end of fiscal year 2045-2046. Prop. “B” appears to eliminate the Board of Supervisors power to adopt, reject, or modify any Strategic and Capital Expenditure Plans adopted by the Rec and Parks Department, including its Open Space Fund.
Importantly, the City Controller’s statement assessing Prop “B” notes the Open Space set-aside is not in compliance with a voter-adopted City policy regarding “set asides” that reduce General Fund dollars that could otherwise be allocated to other priorities.
Join the San Francisco Coalition of Neighborhoods, and Open Space Fund community watchdog extraordinaire Nancy Wuerfel, and I in opposing Prop. “B.” Vote No!
But the 2012 HTF ballot measure contained a “poison pill” — more politely, a “drafting error” — that voters may not have been clearly aware of. The poison pill was a gift to real estate speculators and developers, and involved reducing the on-site affordable “inclusionary” housing requirement by 20% — from 15% to 12% — a change that was incorporated into the City Charter, so that developers and speculators could increase their profits. The 2012 measure prohibited the City from adopting any new land use legislation or administrative regulations to require increasing the amount of “inclusionary housing,” and was enshrined in the City Charter.
The first Housing Balance Report dated July 7, 2015 (required following legislation introduced by Supervisor Jane Kim that was passed) showed the ten-year Citywide Cumulative Housing Balance — the ratio of “affordable” to “market-rate” housing built — was just 21%; the second Report, dated September 4, 2015 showed the Cumulative Balance had dropped to 15%, and the new third Report shows it is now 18%, although Peter Cohen and Fernando Marti, Co-Directors of the Council on Community Housing Organizations, reported in their April 7 Op-Ed in the San Francisco Examiner that the net new affordable housing is down to 13%.
The first two Housing Balance reports in July and September 2015 reported the Projected Housing Balance — projects in the development pipeline — was 11%, and the third report in March 2016 reported the Projected Balance is now 15%.
Between the second and third Housing Balance reports, the number of new housing units produced for moderate income households saw a 28.4% net decline, from 1,550 in September 2015 to just 1,120 affordable units in the March 2016.
Planning Code §303(q)(6) requires that if the cumulative housing balance falls below 30% in any given quarter, the City shall consider contributing additional funds to the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development to fund development of new affordable units, in order to maintain the cumulative housing balance at or above the 30% threshold.
The new Prop “C” in June 2016 would remove the City Charter prohibition, will return the inclusionary housing percentage back to 15%, and will allow the Board of Supervisors to adjust the inclusionary housing percentages by Ordinance in the future, rather than having to ask voters to weigh in on the issue again.
Prop. “D” simply requires the Office of Citizen Complaints (OCC) to investigate all incidents in the City in which a police officer fires a gun killing or injuring someone, even if nobody files a complaint, and requires Police Department officers and employees to cooperate with OCC investigations of such shootings.
This is a common-sense reform that should be supported, even if it might require the OCC to hire additional investigators to handle any increase in investigations.
As I reported in “Mayor’s Hiring Binge vs. Retiree Pensions” in the Westside Observer last March, during the four-and-a-half short years of Mayor Ed Lee’s tenure, he added 5,139 full- and part-time employees to the City’s payroll at an increased cost of $567.1 million — slightly over a half-billion dollars. And that’s not including fringe benefits and increased pension costs for the additional 5,139 City employees.
Prop. “D’s” City Controller voter guide statement notes that the salary and fringe benefits for hiring one OCC investigator is a paltry $140,000, and the OCC’s budget for Fiscal Year 2015–2016 was a mere $5 million. The Controller rightly notes that should Proposition “D” be passed by voters, it would have a “minimal effect” on the cost of City government.
This measure will levy a parcel tax of $12 annually in each of the next 20 years for each parcel in the nine-county Bay Area. Over the life of the measure, each parcel owner would contribute a total of $240 towards clean water, pollution prevention, and habitat restoration in the San Francisco Bay Area. The measure says it will raise $25 million annually, and presumably over the 20-year period, will generate a half-billion dollars for a variety of projects.
The State Senator contest between two sitting members of the Board of Supervisors — Jane Kim and Scott Wiener — to replace termed-out State Senator Mark Leno should be a no-brainer: Vote for Jane Kim.
Ultra-moderate Scott Wiener has, among other legislative issues, been a complete disaster on housing issues and re-zoning of large swaths of San Francisco. Wiener’s housing philosophy appears to be “build lots of market rate housing at all costs, and let ‘affordable housing’ trickle down to the masses of citizens.” Given the glut of market-rate housing, and the paucity of affordable housing built in the past 10 years in San Francisco, it’s painfully obvious Wiener’s trickle-down theory isn’t trickling down quite so well.
Jane Kim, on the other hand, has a very strong record on a whole host of legislative issues too long to wade into this article, including taking the lead on sponsoring legislation to require San Francisco’s Planning Department to submit a Housing Balance Report twice annually to the Board of Supervisors.
That’s hardly “trickle-down” in San Francisco, which has added 140,000 new jobs and 50,000 new residents just since 2009. Kim is to be commended for trying to identify the problem of trickle-down housing economics that aren’t working.
At the Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee hearing on April 18, Wiener wrongly accused Supervisor Kim and Supervisor Peskin in a public hearing of having engaged in a “backroom deal,” regarding a mere 200 units involving “grandfathering” (a.k.a. “grandparenting”) of inclusionary affordable housing units for projects in the pipeline. Wiener’s body language during that hearing illustrated just how petulant he becomes at times, a trait not worthy of anybody seeking election to the State Senate.
Wiener’s tizzy about grandfathering just 200 units being unfair to his real estate and developer campaign contributors was comical, at best.
Electing Kim to the Senate would provide a needed balance to San Francisco Assemblyman David Chiu in the State Assembly. Conversely, Wiener in the Senate and Chiu in the Assembly is a recipe for disaster for a really long time. Vote for Kim!
The race for 24 seats on San Francisco’s Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC) is very intense. I recommend most of the 21 candidates endorsed by the San Francisco Bay Guardian, which released a special web page devoted to its June 2016 election recommendations.
However, since State Senator John Burton declared he is running for the DCCC in the 17th Assembly District after the Guardian published its endorsements, if you feel strongly about electing Burton to the DCCC you’ll need to decide which of the other 14 candidates the Guardian recommended to eliminate.
The list below shows I recommend voting for Senator Burton, and not voting for Bevan Dufty. In my book, Mr. Dufty’s role in getting Ed Lee appointed as the “interim” Mayor was, and is, unforgiveable.
When the Board of Supervisors voted for an Interim Mayor for a one-year term to replace Mayor Gavin Newsom, Dufty initially cast no votes for anybody during the first two rounds of voting. Dufty then asked for a recess, and during the recess, Dufty suddenly met with Gavin Newsom in the Mayor’s suite in City Hall Room 200, more than likely making a deal with The Gavin for a City Hall job when Dufty was termed out. When the Board resumed from recess, everyone was shocked when Dufty suddenly backed appointing Ed Lee as interim mayor.
Dufty has often been characterized as “flip-flopping” his votes as a former Supervisor, when not characterized as being “fickle.” Dufty is widely seen as a politician at their worst, or alternatively as being “Machiavellian” — using clever lies and tricks in order to get or achieve something, or someone marked by conduct involving cunning, duplicity, or bad faith.
In my book, Dufty’s betrayal led directly to Mayor Lee’s failed housing and economic policies during Lee’s almost five-year tenure that has driven too many San Franciscans out-of-county. Dufty shouldn’t be rewarded for this subterfuge by election to a seat on the DCCC.
Alysabeth Alexander, Tom Ammiano, John Burton (instead of Dufty), David Campos, Petra DeJesus, Jon Golinger, Prathima Gupta, Frances Hsieh, Jane Kim, Rafael Mandelman, Sophie Maxwell, Aaron Peskin, Leroy Wade Woods, and Cindy Wu.
Do not vote for Joshua Arce, London Breed, Bevan Dufty, Shaun Haines, Alix Rosenthal, or Scott Wiener for a seat on the DCCC’s 17th Assembly District. They’re all bad apples, for various reasons.
Brigitte Davila, Sandra Lee Fewer, Hene Kelly, Leah LaCroix, Eric Mar, Myrna Melgar, and Norman Yee.
Do not vote for Joel Engardio, Mark Farrell, or Mary Jung for a seat on the DCCC’s 19th Assembly District. They’re also bad apples, also for various reasons.
Henderson has claimed it’s important that an African American who is gay be elected to the bench. Hwang, an Asian candidate, is clearly more qualified than Henderson.
The ultra “moderate” Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club has endorsed Henderson.
Mr. Henderson is currently the Mayor’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Public Safety. Imagine, for example, a lawsuit being filed in Superior Court against the City, and the case is assigned to a “Judge” Henderson. I’m not at all convinced Paul would maintain any semblance of “independence” in judging the merits of such a lawsuit, and I’m very concerned he would, by default, support the City in such a lawsuit, rather than remaining impartial.
As an emissary from the Mayor’s Office at various City Hall events, Henderson makes a great emcee. I’m not convinced having emcee skills is the best qualification to become a judge.
Another example: Were a lawsuit to be filed against the City in Superior Court by a City employee wrongfully terminated for any number of prohibited personnel practices — discrimination based on age, gender, race, or other prohibited actions — I don’t have much faith in a Judge Henderson remaining impartial.
As another example, were a lawsuit filed in Superior Court against the City involving violations of San Francisco’s open government Sunshine Ordinance, violations of the Brown Act, or violations California’s Public Records Act, I have no optimism a Judge Henderson would remain impartial.
Reportedly, two years ago Henderson sought to be appointed to a judicial vacancy by Governor Brown. But reportedly, Henderson hasn’t heard from the governor’s office. If Governor Moonbeam hasn’t been keen on appointing Henderson to a vacancy, I’m concerned. Supervisor David Campos, a gay man who attended Harvard Law School, has endorsed Hwang, as have other elected City officials.
If none of the three candidates win 50% + 1 in the June primary, the top two candidates will be forced into a run-off election in November. That’s why it’s really important to not vote for Henderson, so further debates on the qualifications to become a Superior Court judge can continue.
From my perspective, the more important issue is not a candidate’s race, sexual orientation, or political connections, but their legal experience. Hwang has two decades of courtroom experience under his belt, which Henderson does not. Hwang clearly is the most qualified candidate; vote for him. Hwang’s campaign motto is “Experience Matters.” It should, and does!
This should be a no-brainer: Despite former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s and feminist Gloria Steinem’s recent claims there will be a special place in hell for women (and Democrats) who don’t vote for Hillary, I’m going out on a limb, since my inner-woman and inner-child keep whispering in my ear to vote for Bernie Sanders, even if that means: “Hell, here I come,” Madeleine Albright’s and Gloria Steinem’s ridiculous claims notwithstanding.
Hillary Clinton’s “negatives” are way too high, and may well turn out a deciding factor in handing the Republican Party the Presidency for four to eight years, or longer, if Clinton is chosen the Democratic nominee.
Hillary’s, and her husband Bill’s, legacy include disasters such as the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy (subsequently abandoned by the military); the horrible DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act), in which the Clinton’s failed to support legal marriage of gays and lesbians (eventually struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court); NAFTA (the North America Free Trade Act), which ended up gutting the U.S. job market and outsourcing of untold millions of jobs to other countries; and most egregiously, the Clinton’s support for eliminating Glass-Steagall, which allowed the deregulation of Wall Street that lead directly to the great economic meltdown of 2008–2009.
Glass-Steagall refers to the entire U.S. Banking Act of 1933, which incorporated the Glass–Steagall Act of 1932. It was enacted as an emergency response to the failure of nearly 5,000 banks during the Great Depression. The Banking Act of 1935 clarified the 1933 legislation. Glass-Steagall was intended to separate commercial and investment banking, and prohibited commercial banks from engaging in the investment business. It did so for almost seven decades.
But after 66 years, both of the Clinton’s thought they knew best when Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999 by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA) and signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton, one of Bill’s stupidest acts while president. It took just nine years after Clinton signed GLBA into law for the great 2008 financial meltdown to occur.
Richards noted that the oldest propaganda technique is to repeat a lie emphatically and often until it is taken for the truth, and noted that big bank boosters and analysts who should know better are repeating the falsehood that repeal of Glass-Steagall had nothing to do with the Panic of 2008.
From my perspective, Hillary and Bill should both know better, but both of the Clinton’s keep repeating the same falsehood that repeal of Glass-Steagall was good for the country. The “Bill-and-Hill show” clearly know how to use propaganda to their economic advantage.
Mr. Richards asserted that “if there is any hope of avoiding another meltdown, it’s critical to understand why [the] Glass-Steagall repeal helped to cause the crisis. Without a return to something like Glass-Steagall, another greater catastrophe is just a matter of time,” he noted.
Hillary continues to oppose re-instating provisions of Glass-Steagall, in part because she doesn’t want to lose her political contributions and speaking engagement fees from Wall Street bankers and speculators. For this reason alone, my recommendation is to cast your vote for Bernie! Otherwise, it is extremely unlikely that the U.S. Supreme Court Citizen’s United decision will ever be overturned, particularly not under a President Hillary.
While Hillary now claims discrimination shouldn’t be enshrined in our laws, that’s exactly what her hubby, Bill, did.
In 1989, as Governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton signed into law two of the nation’s toughest HIV transmission criminalization statutes. Since then, Petrelis reports 50 people have been imprisoned in Arkansas for HIV transmission, 29 of whom have been released from prison while the other 21 languish in prison. Nineteen of the 50 received sentences of greater than 20 years, and two (both African American men) received life sentences. Of the 50, 24 were African American’s, 24 white, one was Hispanic, and one was Native American Indian.
All of those convicted of HIV transmission in Arkansas deserve a second look at their convictions.
Although Petrelis placed an FOIA request to discover how many HIV positive individuals have been charged with HIV exposure violations since November 1989, Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge has stupidly refused to respond to the FOIA request, saying Arkansas FOIA law only applies to Arkansas citizens residing within the state, and records will be released only to Arkansas citizens.
Petrelis has found an Arkansas citizen to place the same request, so we’ll see if Ms. Rutledge coughs up the prosecution data during the past 27 years.
Prez Hillary and “First Gentleman” Bill? You’re kidding me, right? Give this pair of propaganda specialists more a “matter of time” to engineer another Wall Street disaster? I don’t trust either of them!
I’m casting my vote for Bernie, and you should, too, whether or not hell may be involved.
I’d like to offer sympathy to the Republican Party for its field of three pathetic candidates, who all appear to be unqualified to be Commander-in-Chief. Republicans are on their own here, since for the past eight years of the Obama Administration, the Republican Party has devolved into the “Party of No” and has become largely irrelevant. What were they thinking?
Well, these are my recommendations. You have a month to figure out how you’ll vote.
Once again, retired City employees are wrongly being blamed for Mayor Ed Lee’s looming budget deficit. The Mayor has quietly been on a hiring binge since taking office in January 2011, but seeks help from his media shills to obscure his budget failures by blaming retirees.
Yet again, San Francisco Chronicle gossip columnists Matier and Ross have rushed to Lee’s rescue, using yet more Chronicle spin control.
On December 7, 2015, Matier and Ross reported that “nearly half” of a projected $99 million deficit for Fiscal Year 2016–2017 starting July 1, 2016 “can be chalked up to skyrocketing pension costs.” But Matier and Ross noted that just $42 million is attributable to increased pension costs, which represents only 42.2% — not “nearly half” — of the projected deficit. While Matier and Ross railed against retirees, they neglected a basic duty of journalists to report facts fully, since they didn’t bother reporting other causes of the remaining $57 million projected deficit.
For its part, the Examiner rightly noted that there are other factors driving the budget deficit, including voter-adopted baselines and set-asides, along with projected increases in citywide operating costs, and other factors, which appeared to have been of no interest to Matier and Ross as they rushed to bash City retirees.
Mayor Lee initially took office at the half-way point during FY 2010–2011 when his tenure began on January 11, 2011. During the five years he has held office, he added 5,386 new of City employees across 41 City departments, according to the City Controller’s fiscal year payroll databases, but offset that by eliminating 246 other City jobs across 11 other City departments.
The net change under Lee’s administration is he has added 5,139 full- and part-time employees to the City’s payroll at an increased cost of $567.1 million. And that’s not including fringe benefits and increased pension costs.
As Table 1 illustrates, the 5,139 additional City employees represents a 15.1% increase in headcount and a 22.2% increase to the amount of the payroll during Lee’s tenure. What changed in City government requiring so many more City employees?
When Ed Lee became mayor on January 11, 2011 in the middle of FY 10–11, the City’s total budget as adopted was $6.56 billion. Within just four-and-a-half years, by FY 14–15 the City’s total budget skyrocketed to $8.58 billion, a net change of $2.2 billion — a staggering 30.8% increase.
Nearly 83% — 4,259 of 5,139 — of the increased staffing, and almost two-thirds of the associated salary cost increases, occurred in just seven City departments as shown in Table 2.
Mayor Lee has clearly been on a hiring binge for City employees earning over $100,000 annually since assuming office.
Interestingly, Figure 1 illustrates that Mayor Lee added 3,127 employees earning over $100,000 to the City’s payroll between FY 10–11 and FY 14–15 at an increased cost of $510.2 million annually.
Why did the City need an additional 1,290 employees earning between $100,000 and $149,999 at an increased cost of $162.7 million? Why did the City need an additional 1,265 employees earning between $150,000 and $199,999 at an increased cost of $220.9 million? For that matter, why did the City need an additional 559 employees earning over $200,000 annually at an increased cost of $126.6 million? What do taxpayers gain with this bloat?
More troubling Table 7 below illustrates salary inequities that have worsened under Mayor Lee. Pay inequity between those earning less than $100,000 annually and those earning over $100,000 annually has dramatically worsened. Table 7 illustrates there has been a 33.3% increase in the number of employees earning over $100,000 between FY 10–11 and FY14–15, along with a 40.4% increase to the City payroll.
The average annual salary for those earning less than $100,000 dropped to $48,715 in FY 14–15 while those earning over $100,000 had average salaries of almost $100,000 more, at $141,704. Can Mayor Lee spell i-n-e-q-u-i-t-y?
Table 7 also shows the inequities for those earning less than $50,000 annually. There was a 16.9% increase — 1,754 — of such employees between FY 10–11 and FY 14–15, but their average salaries plunged by $2,425 to just $17,336, a whopping 12.3% loss in average salaries for those making less than $50,000, even while the 33.3% increase in those earning over $100,000 saw their average salaries increase by $5.3%.
Tables 8 and 9 below show the growth in City managers citywide and additional growth in Muni-specific managers between FY 10–11 and FY 14–15. Between the citywide managers and the Muni-specific managers and transit supervisors, the City added an additional 190 managers, at an increased cost of $39.4 million — fully 7% of Mayor Lee’s additional $567.4 million increase to the City’s budget. One reasonable question is how these additional 190 managers have improved operations of City departments.
It is indisputable the City has made higher pension contributions between FY 10–11 and FY 14–15. The San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System (SFERS) just released its annual report for FY 2014–2015, which shows in FY10–11 the City’s employer share of retirement contributions totaled $308.8 million and rose to $592.6 million in FY 14–15, for a net increase of $283 million across the four fiscal years.
The $283 million increase more than likely had nothing to do with the three factors Matier and Ross whined about (increased life expectancy of retirees, the supplemental COLA payment, or lower investment returns), since the lower investment returns did not occur until FY 14–15, the supplemental COLA lawsuit was only resolved towards the end of FY 14–15, and City retirees had been having a lower mortality rate for a number of years that was simply not discovered and reported by SFERS’ actuarial consultants.
Instead, dollars to donuts suggest the $283 million increase to the City’s required employer share of pension contributions is more than likely attributable to the hiring binge Ed Lee has been on since taking office, which increased the City’s overall payroll by $567 million during his tenure, resulting in the increased total dollar amount of City contributions towards pension contributions.
You simply can’t have a 15.1% increase in the number of City employees on the payroll, and a 22.7% increase to the City’s total payroll, without a concomitant increase in the amount of City employer contributions that are required to be made.
Since the City’s share of employer contributions is based on a percentage of payroll, it’s obvious that if the percentage of employer contribution remains constant (or even increases), but is applied to a significantly larger payroll (say a payroll that has increased by $567 million), the total employer contribution is going to increase simply because the size of the payroll has increased. This has nothing to do with actuarial estimates of mortality vs. longevity, age at the time of hire, and length of time being a City employee.
You would think this basic math would have been patently obvious to Matier and Ross.
In November 2011, the City placed a ballot measure before voters seeking, in part, to strip City employee retirees of supplemental COLA (Cost of Living) benefits, in part based on bad advice from City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who surely must have a team of labor-relations lawyers on his staff who should have known this gambit wasn’t going to pass muster in a court of law.
After voters wrongly approved restricting COLA payments to retired City employees, a group called Protect Our Benefits sued and eventually won in court, with the City ordered to pay the withheld two supplemental COLA payments, along with interest on the delayed payments.
Of approximately 26,000 retired City employees, the City has agreed so far to restore and pay approximately 17,000 former City employees the COLA benefit who retired after 1996. The City and the Retirement Board are still arguing over whether to extend the COLA back payments to another 7,800 to 8,315 employees who retired prior to 1996.
The upshot is the City had to pay out $40.7 million wrongly withheld from post-1996 retirees, and SFERS did so from funds set aside during the lawsuit (including for the pre-1996 retirees) that had been placed into some sort of “reserve” account. So neither the City nor SFERS is “out” any funds from the Court ruling, since they had already been placed in some sort of a special reserve account.
In the end, the fact remains that rather than blaming City retirees for living longer and trying to assert that the COLA payments are the main cause of the City’s looming budget deficit, the real culprit may be that Mayor Lee has been on a patronage hiring binge, driving up the amount the City has to contribute as its employer share of pension contributions.
This is Ed Lee’s own doing, not the fault of City retiree’s living longer, despite the misinformation Matier and Ross used to whip up hysteria about increasing pension costs for City retirees, while simultaneously ignoring massive spikes in baseline set-asides and other operating cost increases.
An expanded version of this article is available on www.stopLHHdownsize.com.
Monette-Shaw is an open-government accountability advocate, a patient advocate, and a member of California’s First Amendment Coalition. He received a James Madison Freedom of Information Award from the Society of Professional Journalists–Northern California Chapter in 2012. He can be contacted at monette-shaw@westsideobserver.
Just as truth typically becomes the first casualty of war, in the on-going war to enhance San Francisco’s pedestrian safety the truth about pedestrian accidents caused by cyclists appears to be a veracity casualty of San Francisco Police Department statistics.
The Chronicle reported December 14 millennial cyclist Katrina Sostek felt her $200 fine for running a stop sign at Duboce Avenue and Church Street was unfair. The police officer who ticketed her “could have been doing something worthwhile,” Sostek whined. Puh-leeze, Katrina! Don’t want a traffic ticket? Then simply obey State law and come to a full stop.
When did protecting my life from rogue cyclists become unworthwhile? How did preventing cyclists from receiving mere traffic violation citations become more “worthwhile” than protecting pedestrians like me?
Not to be outdone, Board of Supervisors’ president London Breed was quoted in the same Chronicle article saying “Our limited police resources should be used for more important things” involving public safety. Golly, Supervisor Breed! When did protecting my life become both unworthwhile and less important?
The Bicycle Coalition neglected noting that 2,000 petition signatures seeking “smart enforcement” represents just over two-tenths of one percent — yes, just 0.23% — of San Francisco’s 852,469 estimated population in 2014. That’s hardly a mandate to change the vehicle code.
Police Chief Greg Suhr also disagrees. Suhr wrote to the Board of Supervisors’ Land Use and Public Safety Committee on December 4 saying the proposed “rolling stop” cyclist legislation would encourage illegal behavior by those using one specific mode of transportation [bicycles] to violate California Vehicle Code §22450(a) — prohibiting running stop signs — putting others at risk of injuries, ranging from minor to fatal.
Suhr’s December 4 letter documented that in the five-year period between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2014, cyclists were at fault in San Francisco in 30 percent of injury and fatal collisions — 129 of 427 — due to failure to stop at stop signs, violating CVC §22450(a). Suhr also claimed that during the first nine months of 2015 (January 1 through September 30) there were 447 collisions between bicycles and motor vehicles, including two bicycle fatalities, with cyclists at fault in 46 percent (206) of the incidents.
In an apparent game of “chicken” with the Mayor, the Board of Supervisors voted on January 12 to ignore the Mayor’s warning and passed the rolling stop Ordinance on second reading on a vote of 6 to 4, ignoring endangered pedestrians in favor of “convenience” — or “inconvenience” — to a small, but very politically vocal and loud group of cyclists.
“This ordinance does not promote balanced public safety for all the diverse users of our streets; rather, it trades safety for convenience. Therefore, this is not a policy I can allow this City to endorse.
Data generated from SFGH’s Trauma Registry database provided by DPH for the five-year period between calendar years 2010 and 2014 showed that although there was a relatively small number of pedestrians — 56 — struck by cyclists and treated at SFGH, their outcomes were disproportionately severe.
Of the 56 pedestrians hit by cyclists, 46.4% (26) were admitted to SFGH, a significantly higher percentage of admissions than either pedestrians hit by autos or cyclists hit by autos. Of the 56 pedestrians hit by cyclists, their two deaths reflected a higher mortality rate than did either pedestrians hit by autos or cyclists hit by autos. That’s 56 pedestrians struck by cyclists too many, and two deaths too many.
And of the 56 pedestrians hit by cyclists, 42.9% (24) sustained a higher rate of head/neck/cervical spine injuries than did either pedestrians hit by autos (17 percent lower) or cyclists hit by autos (half as low, at 21.8%). Notably, head/neck/cervical spine injuries were double the rate for pedestrians stuck by cyclists — whether or not cyclists were travelling at six miles per hour or more — than for cyclists struck by autos.
Of the 4,050 injuries reported by DPH involving pedestrians vs. cyclists, pedestrians vs. autos, and cyclists vs. autos in this five-year period, fully 67.7% (2,743) involved pedestrians going up against bikes and cars; the remaining 32.3% involved cyclists going up against cars. Clearly, pedestrians are at much greater risk of injuries caused by scofflaw auto drivers and scofflaw cyclists, since 81 pedestrians died from being struck by cars or bikes, and only nine cyclists died after being struck by autos.
And that doesn’t count pedestrians killed by cyclists or autos and pronounced dead at the scene, and never transported to SFGH, or transported to other hospitals.
The 17 pedestrians killed in 2014 represented 58.6% of all traffic deaths; the 19 pedestrians killed through November 2015 represent 65.5% of all traffic deaths, with 30 days to go. Clearly, with traffic deaths remaining constant between 2014 and 2015 and more pedestrians killed, Vision Zero appears not to be working so well, no matter what the Bicycle Coalition may want you to believe.
There’s clearly a public health cost — along with patient trauma — from such injuries, which Ms. Breed must be aware is “important,” despite her protestations. Unfortunately, SFGH’s trauma system doesn’t capture data on pedestrians injured by cyclists who were transported to private hospitals, so comprehensive data isn’t collected citywide.
Another records request to San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management revealed the 9–1–1 dispatch system received 3,479 calls between calendar year 2013 and December 21, 2015 regarding automobile vs. motorized/non-motorized two-wheeled vehicle accidents, 56.5 percent of which (1,964) involved patients transported to hospitals during the three-year period. Of those transported, 76 percent (1,485) were transported to San Francisco General Hospital, and the remainder transported to other Bay Area hospitals.
It should be noted the national medical protocol used by San Francisco 9–1–1 dispatchers doesn’t differentiate the type of two-wheel vehicles involved (bikes vs. motorcycles, scooters, etc.), so it’s unclear how many of these accidents involved autos vs. cyclists. That said, the call volume clearly places an “important” strain on 9–1–1 dispatchers, as Breed should know, and impacts patient care at SFGH and other hospitals.
A records request to SFPD placed on December 14 revealed troubling data in its initial, flawed responses. After battling with SFPD for over a month, by January it was clear SFPD’s cyclist data lacks veracity.
There were nearly 5,000 bike vs. auto collisions across a decade. Wow! There were just 289 such incidents back in 2006, which more than doubled by 2013 to 654 incidents, and despite Vision Zero San Francisco hasn’t been able to reverse the trend to pre-2007 levels!
As troubling as SFPD’s collision data are, the dismal enforcement with citations issued by SFPD is more troubling. After pressing SFPD between December 14, 2015 and January 11, 2016 for clarification, a paucity of reliable data was provided by SFPD staff.
Data SFPD initially provided shows fully 3,413 citations were issued to cyclists between 2006 and 2015, but SFPD was only able to stratify by the type of violations just 935 citations issued to cyclists. Why was SFPD unable to stratify the difference — fully 2,478, or 72.6%, of citations — by type of violation, and stratified just 935, or 27.4%, by type of violation?
Of the 935 citations issued that PD was able to uncover the type of violation, only six were issued to cyclists across the three years for just two of the five “Focus on Five” strategies (five citations for running red lights and just one citation for failure to stop at stop signs). Seriously?
In stark contrast, 28 citations were issued to cyclists riding on sidewalks, which is not one of the five Focus on Five strategies, but a danger to pedestrians walking on sidewalks, nonetheless.
Of great concern, SFPD failed to stratify any of the other three Focus on Five enforcement strategies — including violating pedestrian right-of-way, turning violations, and speeding. Are we to believe SFPD issued zero citations to cyclists for these other three “Focus on the Five” enforcement strategies during the last decade since 2006? Seriously?
Fully 95% of the 935 citations were for violating CVC §21200(a), as if SFPD could not identify and include a specific violation documenting a precise transgression of the State’s vehicle code, and simply lumped 95% of all citations issued to cyclists into a broad catch-all category without stratifying which specific vehicle code violation had occurred.
Of note, CVC §21200(a) is not, in itself, a violation of the vehicle code — unless it is documented by an additional violation of some other section of the vehicle code. CVC §21200(a) is simply an identifier that another vehicle code section violation was committed by a cyclist, rather than a motor vehicle driver.
For over a month, SFPD attempted to uncover the actual moving violations cited on tickets issued to cyclists, but a disappointing January 8 records update from SFPD did not include further stratification about the types of citations issued. Instead, SFPD claimed that although the bicycle citations issued by the Traffic Company — using electronic handheld devices — were thought to be capable of generating a breakout of the type of citations issued, SFPD was unable to do so.
SFPD claimed it would have to manually print the 1,613 tickets issued to cyclists in 2015 and then have to manually tally the types of citations involved for the CVC §21200(a) tickets. This simply suggests sloppy record keeping at SFPD, or a lack of trained information technology staff to extract the data electronically.
By the time SFPD provided revised data on Jan 8, it turns out the Park Station — which includes the “Wiggle” — had issued just 3.2% (108) of tickets between 2013 and 2015 out of the 3,666 tickets issued to cyclists citywide. The Mission District and the Tenderloin District stations issued fully 41.1% of the 3,666 citations, not the Park District station.
The January update did indicate that the number of citations for violating CVC §٢٢٤٥٠(a) — running stop signs — between January and November 2015 grew from one citation across the entire City, to three citations. Really? Just three citations for running stop signs fueled the Bicycle Coalition’s drama and angst?
Sadly, the January update illustrated the “Seven Ate Nine” phenomena, since SFPD reported there were only 405 citations issued for CVC §21200(a) — the identifier code, for cyclists subject to same traffic laws as drivers — down from 408 SFPD first reported for this article.
So the “Seven Ate Nine” monster is now nibbling on SFPD’s bicycle violation statistics, in addition to SFPD’s crime stats, damaging the veracity of SFPD data every step of the way. It’s unacceptable that Vision Zero has to rely on unreliable SFPD data.
After all, in the absence of stratifying the volume of citations issued by the particular violation infraction committed, how can there be targeted enforcement or targeted education campaigns to change cyclists’ behavior if officials don’t know which sections cyclists are violating?
Bicycle apologists claim it appears most cyclists who caused collisions during that time frame appear to be, for the most part, injuring only themselves. Nonsense.
“Injuring just themselves” — when SFPD data shows 86 pedestrians were involved in collisions with cyclists — appears to be bicycle advocates just making stuff up notwithstanding clearly disproven by DPH and SFPD data.
Educating cyclists on the fines they face may deter their scofflaw behavior.
Has everyone forgotten that when laws are enforced, they’ll be obeyed, and when they aren’t enforced, they won’t be?
Apparently, millennial Katrina Sostek believes enforcement isn’t worthwhile and she shouldn’t have been singled out for having chosen to disobey the law. Chief Suhr disagreed when he noted it isn’t acceptable to encourage folks (like Ms. Sostek) to break a law that can result in injury or death because it is “inconvenient” for cyclists to come to a complete stop.
Given the paucity of data since 2006, the six Supervisors who passed this Ordinance were completely remiss in declaring these violations the lowest priority. How could the Board adopt legislation in the face of no data about the types of moving-violation offenses being committed by cyclists and in the face of data from SFGH’s Trauma Registry?
The Board of Supervisors now has 30 days to override the Mayor’s veto — until February 18 if it can muster the eight votes.
Contact the Board of Supervisors and urge them not to override the Mayor’s veto.
Your life — and mine — along with pedestrian safety, may depend on it.

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