The time to begin being rid of PG&E is here. Voting against Measure I and for Prop. F is the sensible, legally viable way to take electric power public in San Francisco.
Dennis Herrera, the next city attorney.
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Over the past month or so, I met at some length with the three candidates I considered best qualified to become the next San Francisco city attorney; oddly, I found none worth savaging.
Jim Lazarus, state director for U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, seems a quick-minded guy with a strong grasp on what a good city attorney can, and cannot, do in office, and the level of legal and governmental experience needed to be effective in the political minefield of City Hall. If one were of an Establishmentarian stripe (given that the Establishment in San Francisco would be considered quite liberal and quite Democratic anywhere else in the country), Lazarus might be a reasonable choice.
Steve Williams seems a genial (if excitable) man who sincerely believes that moneyed interests have gotten the upper hand at City Hall, and who also believes a city attorney ought to be focused on doing something about that imbalance. If one were well-planted at the "progressive" end of San Francisco's political spectrum, a vote for Williams could seem a vote well and dutifully cast.
But everyone who wants government to work as well as it must in these extraordinary times ought to vote for Dennis Herrera. He's been a top-flight attorney, an administrator (he was chief of staff at the U.S. Maritime Administration during the Clinton presidency), a labor negotiator of real accomplishment, and a president of the Police Commission who seems to have gained the confidence both of police and of those who have the job of investigating allegations of police misconduct.
Right now, we have a Board of Supervisors that is overconcerned with ideological windmill-tilting and a mayor overinterested in the cutting of deals and corners. Both need legal advice they can accept as well-researched and politically neutral, even when they disagree with it, and both need a counterbalance -- someone who will stand in public, and speak directly -- when they are poised to infringe the public interest.
I've heard Dennis Herrera speak in public, and I've sat across the table from him a couple of times now. He's not going to set any auditoriums on fire with his oratory. But I think you probably want him at the table, as your legal representative, when it's important that things get done competently, because what's being done is important, in a sense of the word most of us didn't fully understand before this September.
