The Grid

Margo's Motor's Running
Strong poll showings for San Francisco Board of Supervisors candidate Margo St. James, the sex-workers' rights crusader and North Beach bartender, are being dismissed by some politicos as an amusing expression of S.F.'s well-known electoral whimsy.

Still, it's hard to deride St. James' choice of political targets. On Sept. 19, she assembled a small crew of supporters at City Tow on Mission Street, a most reviled municipal enterprise. She had a point.

"This isn't even a hidden tax," St. James said of City Tow's heavy fine structure, as a recent victim spit-cleaned the telltale tow numbering from her windshield in the background. "This is legalized theft."

By allowing an Anaheim company -- Pick Your Part Auto Recycling -- to hold an exclusive contract to run City Tow, says St. James, S.F. is unfairly allowing a for-profit tow-away and salvage operation to be run at the expense of S.F. taxpayers -- with the brunt falling on the backs of lower-income residents.

St. James objects to Pick Your Part being allowed to sell cars at auction to recover costs if the vehicles are not retrieved within 30 days. Retrieval requires paying off all outstanding parking tickets, shelling out Pick Your Part's $94.75 towing fee, a $30 city "administration" fee, and $25 a day in storage.

Naturally, St. James points out, the most likely bidder at these "abandoned" car auctions is Pick Your Part itself. Naturally, because the company then cannibalizes the automobiles and sells off parts for profit.

According to St. James' researchers, the Anaheim firm amasses $14 million annually in gross revenues from the deal, while S.F. gets a comparatively small $1.6 million.

Her solution: Withdraw the contract and have the city perform the service at cost, using an array of local tow truckers. No auctions. No $25 a day fee -- since the city owns the lots in the first place.

As a hedge, Pick Your Part is extending its friendship to the two supervisors with the strongest shot at the presidency this November. The company donated the legal limit of $500 to Supervisor Barbara Kaufman, and $250 to Supervisor Sue Bierman.

Thus far, St. James is having less success collecting contributions and, for that matter, big political endorsements (she got one vote at the Democratic Party Central Committee). But she sure was popular with the lost souls trickling past her Spartan press conference site outside the City Tow pay window. Maybe that's why she's matching poll showings of incumbent supervisors, such as Leslie Katz and Michael Yaki, in the hunt for one of six seats up for grabs on Nov. 5.

Buying Access
In an S.F. supervisor race, as in any campaign, "early money" in the bank is a crucial measure of political credibility. It also serves as a pretty good indicator of some hot public business that's just around the bend.

Consider the largess of Access Health Care Medical Group Inc. of San Francisco.

According to the most recent disclosures, Access Health, a physician-owned corporate affiliate of Davies Medical Center, wrote a $500 check to each of the four incumbents seeking re-election this fall -- Bierman, Katz, Kaufman, and Yaki -- and to the campaign of Carolene Marks. At the time, Marks, the wife of retiring state Sen. Milton Marks, was considered a sound bet for one of the two seats being vacated. Access Health even managed to peel off $125 to help retire the campaign debt of Terence Hallinan, the newly elected district attorney.

Marcia Smolens, a top-shelf local lobbyist for Davies, explains the donations as merely evidence of the physicians' civic-mindedness. "They are good citizens," says Smolens. "The hospital appreciates those in [elective] office." Might Access have anything else in mind?

Here's a guess: Davies operates an urgent-care medical clinic, whose bread and butter is the assessing and treating of work-related injuries. Access Health, the physician-owned entity writing the campaign checks, staffs that Davies clinic with its doctors, under contract with the hospital. (Just in case the link between the two isn't clear, keep in mind that Davies Chief Executive Officer Greg Monardo is the registered agent for Access on state incorporation records.)

In 1994, the city, which is S.F.'s largest employer, awarded a lucrative workers' compensation contract to a partnership between UCSF Medical Center and the city's S.F. General Hospital. The multimillion-dollar pact expires Oct. 24.

Two years ago, Davies planned to bid on that business but backed off at the last minute, in part, says Smolens, because it sensed a "fix" was in.

You can bet Smolens, who collected $20,000 in fees from Davies in the second quarter of 1996, will have the hospital and Access better positioned this time.

George Cothran (gcothran@sfweekly.com) and Chuck Finnie (cfinnie@sfweekly.com) welcome tips, suggestions, and innuendo. Complaints, on the other hand, can be sent to SF Weekly, Attn: The Grid, 425 Brannan, San Francisco,