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The art of budgeting in an election year - 01 28 03

By law, Mayor Willie Brown must deliver a balanced budget and eliminate a projected $350 million shortfall by this summer.

To accomplish that in his last year in office, Brown will have to raise taxes or fees, cut expenses, or defer expenditures into the next administration. For example, he might reopen some labor agreements to defer some raises or benefits due to city workers.

And all that has to happen with the tampering and tantrums of new Board of Supervisors Budget Committee chairman Chris Daly.

That's quite an art.

Sixteen years ago budget balancing was also an Art - as in Agnos.

When campaigning for mayor in 1987, Art Agnos criticized outgoing mayor Dianne Feinstein, saying she might leave the budget cupboard empty upon her departure. After Agnos took office in January 1988, his budget team reported estimates of a $172 million shortfall. Basically, they put the blame on Feinstein, who had opposed Agnos and supported Supervisor John Molinari for mayor.

Feinstein, once she was out of office, defended herself. She claimed that the shortfall figures were only projections from Agnos. Further, she had left behind a $16 million surplus after offsetting an anticipated $77 million shortfall.

So, Agnos may have hyped the shortfall. That sounds like accusations made against Governor Gray Davis ' proposed budget for the coming fiscal year. The governor projected a $35 billion state budget deficit for the next 18 months. However, Elizabeth Hill, the state Legislature's nonpartisan legislative analyst, estimated a $26 billion budget deficit.

Feinstein's budget was balanced, but Agnos' charge still tarnished Feinstein in her June 1990 run for governor. Her opponents exploited Agnos' charges, and their campaigns featured efforts to cast doubt on her ability to handle a much larger state budget as governor. She survived to win the Democratic nomination against state attorney general John Van DeKamp, an Agnos-supported candidate.

That November she lost a close race to Republican senator Pete Wilson.

BUDGET FUDGET: Thus, Mayor Brown will need to balance the budget without leaving any financial booby traps for the next mayor. If an unexpected shortfall pops up, his successor could haunt him as Agnos did with Feinstein. A lingering budget shortfall could become a campaign issue against Brown if he runs for John Burton 's San Francisco/Marin state Senate seat in March 2004.

Echoing Agnos' campaign, mayoral candidates such as Supervisors Gavin Newsom and Tom Ammiano could balk against the budget. Newsom and Ammiano in particular will be scrutinizing the mayor's proposed budget this spring, looking for potential minefields. Either supervisor may end up in the Mayor's Office and disarm these budget time bombs in 2004.

ENTRANCE TO HOMELESSNESS: Mayoral wanna-bes Newsom and Ammiano proffered dueling November 2002 propositions, putting homelessness back on the front burner with voters.

Newsom overwhelmingly won with "Care Not Cash," while voters dumped Ammiano's own, hasty version, "Exits From Homelessness."

Following those measures, here's what we might call Entrances to Homelessness:

Mayoral aspirant Angela Alioto, unwittingly, has her own, real-life homeless symbol, right smack on her welcome mat.

Last Friday night, a fellow encamped himself in the stately facade of the law offices of Alioto & Alioto. The man smoked a cigarette while cocooned in a sleeping bag outside Alioto's law offices at Montgomery Street and Columbus Avenue.

He also had parked his loaded shopping cart near a parking meter that served as his coat rack.

On Saturday night, the same denizen appeared to be squatting on Alioto's doorway.

Welcome to Camp Angela.

BALLOT BLOAT: We've had ballot-box tops bobbing on the bay after the November 2001 election. We also have the only ballot book that sinks.

The city is the only California jurisdiction that pads its voter handbook with paid ballot arguments, resulting recently in a nearly one-pound voter "pamphlet." Last November, citizen activists crammed 81 of the 276 pages in the voter handbook with paid arguments for and against city propositions. A $250,000 subsidy allowed a maximum 300-word argument to cost $800 for last November's election.

The Elections Commission has proposed eliminating the arguments for the 2003-2004 budget year to balance a potential $350 million shortfall. Thus, the city could save $500,000 by not subsidizing a bit of democracy in nearly 450,000 voter handbooks.

Ballot arguments survived for years in the worst of budget times and under the rocky management of the Elections Department. But in April 2002, the Elections Commission botched the firing of Elections Director Tammy Haygood. To oppose Haygood in her fight to win back her job, the panel hired independent counsel, a move that has cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars. In a state appeals court on January 17, the court agreed with the commission's legal team and overturned the Civil Service Commission's and a Superior Court judge's reinstatement of Haygood.

While the purpose of saving money has merit, another principle is at stake: A subsidy is an indirect form of public campaign financing. As I wrote in a previous column, political consultants received more than $3 million for work on behalf of campaigns last fall.

The subsidy levels the democratic playing field for underfinanced campaigns unable to match millions of dollars in electioneering costs. That was evident when PG&E and its allies outspent supporters of public power to defeat Proposition D.

Residents, however, might question the sincerity of some subsidized arguments. A few elected officials, community leaders, and organizations have signed arguments ghostwritten and bankrolled by the campaigns.

SPAM FOR SAM: E-mail samson@sfindependent.com, call 359-2899, fax 359-2655, or mail to Samson Wong at the Independent, 988 Market Street, sixth floor, San Francisco, CA 94102.

District elections: Pass or fail? - 01 25 03

The City Attorney's Office, at the request of an aide to Supervisor Gavin Newsom, is apparently crafting a proposal to replace the current 11-member district-elected Board of Supervisors with a board of five supervisors elected citywide, according to a January 19 Examiner story.

After two rounds of elections in only two years, is it ripe to repeal district elections? I'm not sure, given the mixed messages that the process has yielded:

.Women: Only two out of the 11 current supervisors are women - Fiona Ma and Sophie Maxwell.

.Asians: Only one. Ma has the double duty of representing District 4 (Sunset) and Asian Pacific Americans, who represent one-third of the city's population.

.Latinos: Two, in Gerardo Sandoval and Matt Gonzalez. A third could be on the way if Tom Ammiano is elected mayor and vacates his District 9 (Mission) seat, a scenario that could lead him to appoint a Latino to the board. Latinos make up one-seventh of the city's population.

.Neighborhoods: The 2000 elections brought authentic neighborhood advocates, such as Sophie Maxwell, Aaron Peskin, and Jake McGoldrick, to the board, along with legislators sympathetic to the neighborhoods. However, neighborhood groups felt left out of the board's appointments to two powerful land-use panels - the Planning Commission and the Board of Appeals. Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods president Barbara Meskunas made it plain in her January newsletter: "The performance of the board in the coming months may well determine the future of district elections."

.Left field and left out: One could argue that the board was out of step with San Francisco voters, who are middle-of-the-road overall, according to a David Binder Research poll conducted last year.

The supervisors are too progressive-liberal to accurately represent the electorate. Seven supervisors (Peskin, Ammiano, McGoldrick, Gonzalez, Sandoval, Maxwell, and Chris Daly ) are considered liberal to progressive.

The remaining four (Ma, Newsom, Tony Hall, and Bevan Dufty ) are moderate to conservative.

Moderates and conservatives, feeling underrepresented on the board, could line up to toss out district elections.

.Greens and Republicans: One unlikely source, former San Francisco Republican Party chairman Arthur Bruzzone, wrote in a January 22 Examiner opinion piece that Republicans and Greens shared a common interest - preserving district elections. The Democratic establishment, he opined, might overthrow district elections to prevent any further loss of political offices to Republicans or Greens.

District elections, Bruzzone noted, opened up opportunities for Gonzalez, a Green, to win election in District 5 (Haight Ashbury). However, Republicans have had a difficult time in winning a supervisor's seat citywide. In 1994, Annemarie Conroy, a Republican appointed to the board by Mayor Frank Jordan, lost her bid to retain her seat.

In a district scheme, Republicans may have a shot at winning in District 2 (Pacific Heights/Marina), District 4 (Sunset), and District 7 (West of Twin Peaks). Each district contains a sizeable percentage of Republican registration or voters sympathetic to the GOP.

District 7's Tony Hall, an independent, might be the closest thing to a Republican that the party has on the board. Hall and the party share the same values: fiscal conservatism, promoting a business-friendly environment, respecting property owners' rights, and opposition to affirmative action.

NO BUCKS, NO BUCK ROGERS: With the city facing major budget shortfalls of up to $350 million (a sum that doesn't account for a war with Iraq), the supervisors' voter-approved 239 percent salary hike from $37,000 to $88,000 appears unlikely.

According to Proposition J, which passed last November, the Civil Service Commission could "amend the Supervisors' salary as necessary to achieve comparable cost savings in the affected fiscal year or years" if city unions or employee associations take pay cuts to help ease the budget crunch.

If city workers take a cut, does that mean that the supervisors have to take a cut in their current, $37,000 salary?

CAROLE OF SOMALIA? Attorney John Trasvina, an immigration-law expert, shares a plea from a Texas colleague: "Does any one know of an expert on the Migdans in Somalia? We have limited funds to pay for an expert witness or affidavit."

His reply: "I thought all the Midgens were in San Francisco!"

Board of Equalization chair Carole Migden - a tribe unto herself.

TAKING IT ON THE CHIN: Eric Mar 's crucial January 14 support of Emilio Cruz in Cruz's 4-3 victory over Dan Kelly for Board of Education president has miffed some leaders within the Chinese American Democratic Club. Adding further insult to injury, the school board elected Mar as its vice president and defeated Eddie Chin with a 4-3 vote. Mar voted for himself over Chin.

Ironically, both sit on the CADC board of directors. For two years, the club, out of spite, would not support anyone associated with Mayor Willie Brown. Instead, the club supported progressive-leaning candidates for supervisor and school board, such as Mar.

Now, the leadership is regretting supporting progressives, who have failed to support CADC candidates, such as Chin for school board.

WIRELESS POLITICIAN: Her rivals tried to classify her as a "machine" candidate and not a neighborhood candidate. But Supervisor Fiona Ma may have proved them wrong on January 13 when she successfully urged her colleagues to reject a Noriega Street cellular-antenna tower, a plan that her neighbors opposed and her predecessor, Leland Yee, supported.

SPAM FOR SAM: E-mail samson@sfindependent.com, call 359-2899, fax 359-2655, or mail to Samson Wong at the Independent, 988 Market Street, sixth floor, San Francisco, CA 94102. His columns at www.asianweek.com.

Maxwell's plum: the supervisor's new allies - 01 21 03

If the Board of Supervisors had given out an award for congeniality over the last two years, Supervisor Sophie Maxwell would have won, hands down. But during the vote for the board presidency on January 8, the usually restrained Maxwell demonstrated a rare fire in the belly by refusing to back off on her run for the board presidency.

In her 6-5 loss to Matt Gonzalez for board president, Maxwell discovered her true friends among the board's moderate wing.

In that board vote, centrists Gavin Newsom, Bevan Dufty, and Fiona Ma backed Maxwell for board president. Progressive outgoing board president, Tom Ammiano voted for her as well. Mayor Willie Brown, not a voting member of the board, also backed Maxwell.

Siding with Gonzalez were Supervisors Tony Hall, Gerardo Sandoval, Jake McGoldrick, Aaron Peskin, and Chris Daly. Excluding Hall, Gonzalez and his supporters represent the board's progressive-liberal faction.

Peskin and McGoldrick supplied Gonzalez's winning votes after a standstill prevailed for six rounds. Until then, no one budged. Peskin and Gonzalez received four votes apiece, while Maxwell trailed with three votes.

MAXWELL'S PAST SUPPORT: Two years ago, when running for supervisor, Maxwell received overwhelming support from anti-Brown and anti-development Potrero Hill voters in her election over Brown's candidate, former planning commissioner Linda Richardson.

Once in office, the mostly white male majority of supervisors seated in that election made enormous efforts to blunt criticism of the board's lack of ethnic and gender diversity by protecting Maxwell, the only female and African American supervisor. For example, she benefited from Supervisor Chris Daly's November 2001 measure that delayed the redrawing of supervisorial districts and changed the membership of a redistricting task force.

Last April, when the task force realigned the district boundaries, it left Maxwell's Potrero Hill home within District 10. That also left Maxwell without any challengers for reelection last November.

So, she's safely in office for an additional four years. After losing the board-presidency vote, she's not obliged to vote with the Gonzalez majority.

But the Gonzalez majority could relegate Maxwell to the political backwaters of the board committees. That could prod her to assert her independence from the Gonzalez majority.

She's already shown her independence with her support, several months back, of the mayor's veto of Tom Ammiano's legislation to rein in "big box" retail. The legislation, had it passed, could have killed a proposed Home Depot store and economic development along Bayshore Boulevard in a zone located in Maxwell's District 10 and barely outside of Ammiano's District 9.

YEAR OF THE RAM: Senator and Sinophile Dianne Feinstein, while speaking about U.S.-China relations 10 years ago, quipped that "in another life" she was Chinese.

Ten years later, on February 18, she'll usher in the lunar Year of the Ram by delivering the keynote address at the annual Chinese American Voters Education Committee dinner, at Empress of China.

Of equal import, mayoral aspirant Gavin Newsom will introduce the former mayor. Feinstein and Newsom should be a major fund-raising draw for the nonpartisan group that has registered and turned out Chinese American voters. CAVEC's work led to Frank Jordan 's election as mayor in 1991 and Willie Brown's reelection in 1999. In the December 2002 runoffs, the committee mobilized 13,000 Chinese voters crucial to the victories of Fiona Ma and Bevan Dufty in their supervisorial races.

LOONY LUNAR NEW YEAR: Speaking of Ma, the supervisor was born in the Year of the Horse, has a surname that means horse in Chinese, and won her seat in the Year of the Horse.

February 1 ushers in the Year of the Ram. Who's the lucky one?

By coincidence, Newsom's birth date and candidacy coincide with the Year of the Ram. Butting heads with Newsom will be Malinka "goat slayer" Moye. Police once arrested the former District 6 supervisorial candidate for killing and skinning a goat at a Potrero Hill community center.

LOSER GOT A REPRIEVE: Henry Der, speaking about the future of Asian American leadership at a January 16 Japantown forum, sounded a little relieved about not being superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District.

Der, a state administrator with the Emeryville school district, finished as one of three finalists for San Francisco schools superintendent in 2000. He lost when the San Francisco Board of Education selected Washington, D.C., superindendent Arlene Ackerman.

That same year, most of the original pro-Ackerman gang - Juanita Owens, Mary Hernandez, and Steve Phillips - did not run for reelection, leaving Jill Wynns as Ackerman's only remaining supporter.

With the current school board, Ackerman will have to work with six members who did not support her for the post in 2000. Mark Sanchez, Emilio Cruz, Eric Mar, and Sarah Lipson were either elected or appointed after she was appointed superintendent. Reelected board members Eddie Chin and Dan Kelly supported Der for the post.

SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL: One of San Francisco's "progressive" reforms, November 2001's Proposition E, supposedly depoliticized one of the city's most powerful positions - the City Attorney's Office.

But a year later, it turns out not to be so simple. For one thing, City Attorney Dennis Herrera cannot endorse local candidates or propositions, but he can endorse contenders for state and federal offices.

Also, Proposition E doesn't apply to the city's two remaining major legal officeholders supported by the city's progressives: Public Defender Jeff Adachi and District Attorney Terence Hallinan. Both have made their share of endorsements for local measures and candidates.

Migden sworn into Equalization post, eyes state Senate seat - 01 18 03

Newly sworn-in state Board of Equalization chair Carole Migden jingled in Wednesday to clarify Tuesday's column item about her calling local supervisors to urge them not to vote for Matt Gonzalez, a Green Party member, for Board of Supervisors president.

All she did was make one inquiry to Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval about what was up with the board-presidency election, she said. Other than that, she wasn't mucking around in the matter, unlike Democratic Party cohorts Nancy Pelosi, John Burton, Willie Brown, and Kevin Shelley, as reported by columnist Warren Hinckle in the Examiner last week.

MIGDEN'S PRIVATE SWEAR-IN: Most of the state's 12 constitutional officers - which include governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general, among others -were sworn in during highly public but financially frugal ceremonies in Sacramento. Notably, 11 of those state officials are now male Democrats, with the departures of controller Kathleen Connell and schools superintendent Delaine Eastin.

That same week, the state's only female and lesbian constitutional official - Carole Migden - was hidden in the inner recesses of the City Attorney's Office at City Hall.

There, pal and city attorney Dennis Herrera swore Migden into office without fanfare in a low-key ceremony attended by Migden's partner, Cristina Arguedas, and a few friends.

STAYING IN TOUCH: Migden has the challenge of maintaining a public presence on a relatively obscure board, on which she represents a district stretching from Del Norte to Santa Barbara.

The state Board of Equalization's main task is to make sure that more than $41 billion in annual tax revenue generated from sales, property, and other sources are "equal and uniform" throughout California. Once a backwater where members served until retirement, the office has more recently served as a launching pad to higher office. For example, the office propelled Matt Fong to state treasurer in 1994.

While she maintains an office in San Francisco, Migden, as chair of the five-member board, will spend time in Culver City, San Diego, and Sacramento.

But in between those points, she'll have to find time to spend in San Francisco, Sonoma, and Marin counties, especially since she's aiming to win the March 2004 Democratic primary for state senator in the 3rd Senate District - an office that John Burton will vacate because of term limits.

Unlike her races for city supervisor and state Assembly member in the 13th Assembly District, the senatorial contest won't offer Migden her full lesbian/gay base.

In the 2001 reapportionment process, the state Legislature decided to remove the Upper Market/Castro area bounded by the eastern slopes of Twin Peaks and Castro Street, between 17th and 23rd streets, from Burton's liberal 3rd District and plopped it into the more conservative (by San Francisco standards) 8th District, represented by Jackie Speier.

That translated into fewer lesbian/gay voters for the liberal Migden in the 3rd District and, interestingly, more African American voters for Willie Brown, should he choose to run for the seat after leaving the Mayor's Office in January 2004.

That means that Migden should be spending a lot of time on making new friends.

NO CAROLE AT THE CAUCUS: Migden, however, wasn't present on January 11 for the California Democratic Party Central Committee's 13th Assembly District caucus election of 12 delegates for the March 2003 state Democratic convention.

Down the road, the central committee could endorse a candidate in the 2004 state Senate race to succeed Burton.

A few caucus organizers anticipated that Migden or her surrogates might organize a rival slate of delegates on the morning of January 11.

So they conducted a major push and turned out more than 260 Democrats from the 13th Assembly District - the largest such gathering in California, according to California Democratic Party chairman Art Torres - for the caucus meeting.

Then, at the meeting, the organizers pushed through a slate of candidates sponsored by Assemblyman Mark Leno, who was joined by city treasurer Susan Leal, Supervisors Bevan Dufty and Sophie Maxwell, and Assessor-Recorder Mabel Teng.

Missing from the all-star lineup: Migden, the former 13th District assemblywoman.

On Wednesday, Midgen told me that, following the January 11 caucus meeting, she received inquiries about whether the caucus had given adequate public notice to Democrats in regard to attending the meeting.

The other concern raised, she said, was that "[ballots] weren't supposed to be pre-printed" with the names of the 12 nominees supported by Leno, Leal, Dufty, Maxwell, and Teng. Voters were supposed to nominate names and then write them onto the ballot.

Sounds like the fix was in.

SOPHIE'S CHOICE: In a rare moment on January 8, two supervisors came together to vote for Sophie Maxwell in her 6-5 loss to Matt Gonzalez for the Board of Supervisors presidency.

Through six rounds, Tom Ammiano had voted for Aaron Peskin to be president. On the last round, after Peskin bowed out, Ammiano joined Newsom to vote for Maxwell. Newsom stayed entrenched for Maxwell for all seven rounds.

Ammiano and Newsom will likely fish for mayoral votes in the African American community, a large part of which Maxwell represents as the supervisor for District 10 (Bayview-Hunters Point).

Undoubtedly, the African American community will be in play for this mayoral election, having overwhelmingly supported Willie Brown in 1995 and 1999.

Whom will the community support? It may look to Sophie Maxwell's bid for board president and consider which mayoral candidate strongly supported Maxwell for the post.

Gang Green strikes the Democrats: Gonzalez becomes prez - 01 14 03

Two years ago, Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader siphoned enough votes from Al Gore to send Gore's race against George W. Bush into the political equivalent of extra innings in baseball.

Last Wednesday's election of the Board of Supervisors president also played into extra innings.

This time, the Green won. After seven rounds of balloting, Supervisor Matt Gonzalez won a 6-5 decision, even though the city's pantheon of Democratic leaders tried to prevent the nine Democratic supervisors from supporting him.

Of the nine, Aaron Peskin, Gerardo Sandoval, Jake McGoldrick, and Chris Daly stood behind Gonzalez, making him the city's second-most powerful elected officeholder next to the mayor. Tony Hall, a conservative independent but a key ally, staunchly supported Gonzalez, who pledged to advance a progressive course.

Gonzalez defeated Democrat Sophie Maxwell, who had the support of four remaining Democrats - Gavin Newsom, Tom Ammiano, Fiona Ma, and Bevan Dufty.

Hall implored his colleagues to support Gonzalez, citing the supervisor's integrity. At the same time, he urged them to ignore the pleas of several influential Democrats who had urged the supervisors to vote for Peskin or Maxwell on the basis of political party or race.

Hall did not name these Democrats, but three high-ranking state officeholders -Senate president pro tem John Burton, Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, Board of Equalization member Carole Migden - along with U.S. House of Representatives minority leader Nancy Pelosi had tried to persuade the supervisors not to support a non-Democrat for board president.

LACK OF PARTY MUSCLE : The Gonzalez victory shows that major Democratic leaders are impotent when it comes to enforcing party discipline. In particular, Peskin and Sandoval had disregarded the calls for party loyalty, even though the two supervisors once served on the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee. In the future, more local Democrats and organizations may be emboldened to endorse non-Democrats for office.

At the same time, party leaders have a catch-22: Disciplining the rank and file for supporting Greens could result in the defection of progressive Democrats to the Green Party.

For more than two years, the Harvey Milk Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender and the Latino Democratic clubs have flouted party rules and endorsed non-Democrats, even though the local party chartered them with the provision that they would not endorse non-Democrats.

However, the 33-member elected county committee has taken no action to enforce the Democrats-only endorsement rule, even though the elected organ is supposedly dedicated to supporting local, state, and national Democratic candidates and issues.

Committee chairwoman Jane Morrison would not comment on how her party would react to the Gonzalez election. The local county committee includes Milk Club members who have both supported her as party chair and supported Greens.

On the other hand, California Democratic Party chairman Art Torres said at a 13th Assembly District caucus last Saturday that the party should examine why voters were leaving to join the Green and Republican parties.

Torres said he would work with Gonzalez, but he reminded 300 caucus Democrats of Al Gore's controversial loss for the White House two years ago.

"We will work with you, but don't be misled - we're not going to be succumbing to you either," he said inside the State Building. "I didn't forget what my ex-friend [Ralph Nader] did in Florida."

PESKIN BLINKED: In the six rounds of ballot gridlock, Gonzalez, Peskin, and their supporters tried to persuade Maxwell to drop out of contention for the board presidency. And Maxwell and her supporters stood firm by asking that Gonzalez or Peskin drop out.

Serving as board president will require the skills of ABC - accommodation, bargaining, and compromise - to find the six votes necessary to pass legislation or the eight votes needed to prevent a mayoral veto.

ABC didn't show up until the seventh round when Peskin magnanimously offered to withdraw and release his supporters - Fiona Ma, Tom Ammiano, and Jake McGoldrick - to vote for either Maxwell or Gonzalez.

Maxwell and Gonzalez did not budge. On the other hand, with this move to concede to allow for consensus - a trait essential for a successful board president - Peskin should have become board president.

GREEN INFLUENCE AT SCHOOL BOARD: While leading Democrats have disapproved of supporting Greens, one leading Democrat has solicited Green support.

On the Board of Education, Democrat Emilio Cruz is a favorite for the post of president. Cruz has a pedigree that reads establishment Democrat: He's the husband of former public defender Kimiko Burton and the son-in-law of state senator John Burton. Last year, Mayor Willie Brown appointed Cruz, his former chief of staff and Muni director, to fill the seat vacated by Mary Hernandez.

But to be president, Cruz may need the support of the board's two Greens and two teachers - Mark Sanchez and the recently elected Sarah Lipson.

AFRICAN AMERICAN SETBACK: The unsuccessful try by Sophie Maxwell for board president reflects ebbing African American political power in San Francisco, coinciding with the sunset of Willie Brown's reign as mayor.

Maxwell's loss came on the heels of the November 2002 election defeat of Daniel Guillory, an African American lawyer appointed to the school board by the mayor. Guillory barely lost to Lipson, a Green Party member. He may have lost because he ran in a crowded field with two other African American candidates: Whitney Leigh, a Green running jointly with Lipson, and James Calloway.

The Guillory and Maxwell setbacks capped off a year of political losses for the African American community: veteran assessor-recorder Doris Ward lost to former supervisor Mabel Teng, and then-supervisor Mark Leno easily defeated former school-board member Steve Phillips for the Democratic state Assembly nomination in the 13th District.

Only Community College Board trustee Johnnie Carter, among African American candidates, emerged victorious, a year after the mayor appointed him.

E-mail samson@sfindependent.com, call 359-2899, fax 359-2655, or mail to Samson Wong at the Independent, 988 Market Street, sixth floor, San Francisco, CA 94102. Wong's columns appear at www.sfusualsuspects.com and www.asianweek.com .

Tipping the balance on landlord-tenant issues - 01 07 03

As I've written before, the numbers "4" and "8" symbolize the importance of the December 10 supervisorial runoffs.

The new members of the Board of Supervisors representing Districts 8 (Upper Market/Castro) and 4 (Sunset) could determine whether a centrist-conservative minority of four supervisors will sustain a veto by Mayor Willie Brown or a progressive-liberal majority of eight will overturn a mayoral veto.

By sustaining a veto, the supervisors could provide the mayor with greater leverage on the board in navigating, for instance, a budget that needs to balance a deficit of more than $200 million.

Early consensus among pundits suggests that the mayor may have the upper hand. Theoretically, the mayor has the support of Tony Hall, Gavin Newsom, and newcomers Bevan Dufty and Fiona Ma. He might have Sophie Maxwell.

However, whether they will support a veto will vary with each issue.

"I'm my own person . I'm representing a district," said Dufty, dismissing any notion that he's an automatic vote for the mayor.

Holdovers Hall and Newsom have supported the mayor on a couple of vetoes. Leland Yee supported the mayor on the same two votes, but he has departed for the state Assembly.

Hall, Newsom, and Yee supported the mayor's failed 2001 veto of a cap on tenancy-in-common conversions.

The same three, along with Maxwell, were instrumental in sustaining the mayor's successful 2002 veto of Tom Ammiano 's attempt to limit "big box" retail development - particularly a Home Depot project along the Bayshore Freeway.

So, will the rookie supervisors - Dufty and Ma - stand with the mayor?

Their stands could put them in an important negotiating posture to exact concessions, such as a key committee assignment, or support for legislation or projects in their district, such as a park, a youth center, or a senior center.

Both new supes find themselves in a very interesting position, but for now let's look at what's at stake with Dufty.

DUFTY'S LONE DISSENT: Dufty could become the fourth vote for a mayoral veto on some landlord-tenant issues.

He was the lone voice of dissent on December 16 in a veto-proof 9-1 vote against the first reading of a capital-improvement compromise between landlord and tenant groups proposed by board president Tom Ammiano.

Dufty said on Monday that he opposed the compromise because the 2,000-member Small Property Owners of San Francisco was not a party to the negotiations. Dufty said that the SPOSF provided a "substantial amount of housing."

The accord broke what Ammiano called an "unholy war" and "philosophical apartheid" between the pro-landlord San Francisco Apartment Association and Coalition for Better Housing and the pro-tenant Housing Rights Committee and Tenants Union.

Ammiano's deal served as a court settlement resulting from the invalidation of parts of Proposition H, a November 2000 initiative that voters approved to alleviate the burden of capital-improvement costs that landlords had levied on tenants. A court found the measure unconstitutional because it denied landlords the ability to obtain a fair return on their buildings.

MOMS-AND-POPS: In his compromise, Ammiano negotiated how much and how fast landlords could shift building-improvement costs to tenants.

However, SPOSF leaders believed that the Apartment Association and the Coalition for Better Housing did not represent their perspective as small landlords.

Further, SPOSF members had argued against the pact because it would not allow them to recover building-improvement costs fast enough. They would wait 10 to 20 years to recover costs instead of the current seven to 10 years.

Ammiano argued that the measure would have allowed owners of buildings containing five units or less (such as most SPOSF members) to pass through all building or capital-improvement costs to tenants. Meanwhile, landlords of buildings containing six or more units could pass down only half of such costs to tenants.

Dufty said Monday that he was undecided on whether he would vote against the Ammiano compromise at its second reading on January 13.

Should he vote against it, the SPOSF would gain Dufty as an ally. The group strongly supported Dufty's election last year.

From an SPOSF perspective, Dufty is an improvement over his predecessor, Mark Leno. The former supervisor, now an assemblyman, had supported the original capital-improvement measure, Proposition H, by cosigning a ballot argument with then-supervisor Sue Bierman.

FOURTH VOTE ON FUTURE TIC VETO: Leno also had sparked calls from some SPOSF members for his recall when he supported a cap on the conversion of apartment units to tenancies-in-common in 2001.

Dufty said that, if he had been in office in 2001 instead of Leno, he would have become the fourth vote the mayor needed to veto Jake McGoldrick 's cap on tenancies-in-common. In that vote, Brown had the support of Tony Hall, Gavin Newsom, and Leland Yee - one vote short of killing limits on conversions of apartment units to affordable-home units. Tenant groups feared that real-estate speculation of TICs would spur evictions of long-term tenants.

In Superior Court last month, Judge James Robertson ruled McGoldrick's legislation unconstitutional. So, an attempt to reintroduce constitutional legislation to limit TICs might be vulnerable to a veto that Dufty and perhaps Fiona Ma could sustain.

Dufty was "strongly against" McGoldrick's TIC cap and a voter-defeated November 2000 TIC-cap measure.

"I think TICs are a good thing," Dufty said.

CORRECTION: The December 31 column should have reported that Eric Jaye of Storefront Media had lost on Proposition C (Veterans Building bond), not Proposition B (affordable-housing bond).