Subject: David Chiu

• SF Dem Values: Friendship Don’t Mean Shit

  July 25, 2008

• Hot Off the Presses: Breaking District Returns

  November 4, 2008

• SF 2008 Election Winners & Losers

  November 5, 2008

• San Francisco Voters are Smarter Than They Look

  November 5, 2008

• Rookie of the Year: David Chiu Just the Latest Young, Inexperienced Smart Guy to Obtain Presidency

  Chris Daly Twirls His Mustache, Cackles at Ross Mirkarimi as Chiu Ekes Out Win By Joe Eskenazi Watching a man with mutton-chops every bit as stylish as his white overalls engrave the word "President" on Supervisor David Chiu's office door, one couldn't help but recall good ol' Will Shakespeare: "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them."Depending upon how surprised the rookie supervisor really was to win a back-and-forth election for Board P

  January 8, 2009

• How Could Progressive Coalition Shatter? Let Us Count the Ways

  Will it be the House of Harmony or the House of Pain? The answer is: Yes. Progressive Supervisors banded together last week to elect a compromise-candidate Board President, which raises a crucial question: "Since when have progressives compromised on anything?" In a town that views compromise as moral weakness (No Justice, No Peace), the fact that progressives were willing to make concessions to the people they hate most - each other - shows how concerned they are about their coalition fr

  January 14, 2009

• Newsweek: Gavin 'Has Become a Joke to Democratic Insiders'

  As part of its "Obama's America" package this week, Newsweek included a profile of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and his "crazy" crusade to legalize gay marriage and become governor. Reporter Jonathan Darman portrays Newsom as one of those all-too-rare politicians willing to stand on principle even if it hurts his career ambitions. Still, there are some unkind passages in the 2,100-word piece, especially when invoking the conventional wisdom of Democratic Party elders. To wit:"In 2003, when h

  January 21, 2009

• David Chiu's Proposed Vehicle License Fee Could Net City $70M -- But Requires 'Hail Mary'of a Senate Bill to Pass

  These guys could make San Francisco lots of moneyThe Vehicle License Fee proposed this week by Supervisor David Chiu could net the city as much as $70 million. And the lottery ticket you bought this week could net you $70 million, too. Okay, that's a bit of a stretch, and the VLF won't benefit local liquor stores. But just as a billiards shot grows ever less likely with each additional ricochet, the city's would-be windfall requires a number of interlocked events to come to pass -- and all of it

  February 5, 2009

• SF Gov InAction: Supes Stand by Each Other After Little John Avalos Has His Bar Mitzvah

  This is the week the new Board of Supervisors goes from JV to Varsity. I know it felt like they'd hit the big time before, what with hundreds of people crowding the hearing rooms to yell at them about stuff they hadn't done -- but that's just the crowd getting fired up by San Francisco's airheaded cheerleader, Gavin "I'm really a Mayor!" Newsom. I know they thought that holding big hearings on potential budget cuts -- without actually doing anything about them -- was a big deal: But no, it

  February 9, 2009

• Mayor's Answer to Budget Crisis: Expand Universal Health Care!

  This man wants to sell you health insurance. More of it.Mayor Gavin Newsom today announced an unexpected new initiative -- the expansion of San Francisco's universal health care program, Healthy San Francisco, to cover all city residents with incomes below five times the federal poverty level. Call us crazy, but we can already hear the Cuba Gooding Jr. imitations echoing in the chambers of the Board of Supervisors. So how, exactly, will Newsom show them the money?San Francisco is currently facin

  February 10, 2009

• Déjà Vu? Newsom's Big Announcement: He Wants to Cut Payroll Taxes -- Which David Chiu Proposed Two Weeks Ago

  Is this what is necessary for Gavin Newsom to deign to speak to David Chiu? Or would a phone call suffice?The "economic forum" Gavin Newsom needed to attend rather than accompany the mayors of San Jose, San Diego, and Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. to stump for federal funds turned out to be this morning's San Francisco Business Times' annual breakfast.The mayor made nice on the $95-a-head, business-friendly crowd -- that's no surprise. He also, according to a breaking blurb in the Examiner, pr

  February 11, 2009

• Mayor, Board President's Payroll Tax Plans are Different; Supes Notified Via Press Release

  It turns out the mayor does have a device for communicating with David Chiu. It's called a press release.Yesterday we wrote about how Mayor Gavin Newsom announced at the San Francisco Business Times breakfast that he was proposing an overhaul of the city's payroll tax -- which came as news to Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, who had proposed overhauling said tax two weeks ago. It turns out that the proposals are, indeed, different -- and the mayor's payroll proposition was just one of

  February 12, 2009

• SF Gov InAction: Supes Dream of Presidency, Take the Week Off -- Except For a Major Budget Showdown that Could Doom Us All

  For the last eight years in San Francisco, "President's Day" was a cruel joke on a city with no sense of humor about politics. Sure, America could boast Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and TWO Roosevelts -- but we were stuck with Bush. None of our traditional coping strategies worked. No matter how much we visualized change, no matter how many social networks we joined, no matter how "sex-positive" we were, and no matter how much fun we made of people who weren't visualizing sex-positive so

  February 17, 2009

• Labor Groups, Babies, Very Old People, Supes Rally Against Rec & Park Cuts -- But Layoffs May Already Be Fait Accompli

  Supervisor John Avalos told Rec & Parks workers he'd like to help them -- but he has no idea how. He still got a friendly round of applauseFashion-wise, children often make the best accessories. Far better than purple tchochkes -- but at today's SEIU City Hall rally on behalf of soon-to-be laid off San Francisco recreation directors, there were plenty of both. A succession of Recreation & Parks Department workers, labor leaders, baby-toting moms, little kids, a bevy of elderly Chinese pe

  February 19, 2009

• SF Gov InAction: Meet the Guardian's Imaginary Friend and Congratulate the Department of Technology on Its Fictitous $750,000 Tech Center

  When your whole government shuts down so that it can go to Washington D.C. and lobby for handouts, you know you've reached a point of no return. Economically it's a sign of total defeat, an acknowledgment that we are a zombie municipality that needs fresh infusions of federal blood just to go through the motions. Culturally it's a sign of egos run rampant over common sense. Or is there somebody in this town, besides David Chiu, who actually thought "Thank God David Chiu's going to Washingto

  March 16, 2009

• SF Gov InAction: Another Battle in the War on Fun, Children, and Food Made with Real Organic Cruelty

  Monday, March 23, 10:30 a.m. - City Operations & Neighborhood Services Committee It's hard to figure out what Sophie Maxwell and Gavin Newsom have in common. Sophie, after all, is a black woman who doesn't like technology but will answer her land line to talk to friends and critics alike, while Gavin is a white man who thinks that everything he texts should be secret because, hey, he did it on his iPhone, and you don't come between a man and his iPhone. That's personal -- way more pers

  March 23, 2009

• SF Gov InAction: Supes To Be Renamed 'The Super Friends' And Only Use Powers For Good. PLUS: Is Gavin Newsom a Cylon?

  Monday, March 30, 1 p.m. - Land Use & Economic Development Committee I'm thinking of holding a garage sale. My worldly possessions -- not to brag -- include a bag of kumquats, a DVD of Waking Life, a book of commonly used Scottish phrases, and a bottle of something that this guy on the corner swears is wine. The city is also planning to hold a little garage sale. Up for auction: Seven parcels of land along the former Central Freeway right of way and Octavia Boulevard. Their value is est

  March 30, 2009

• SF Gov InAction: What Kind of MONSTER Wouldn't Get a Candle Permit? Plus: Save the Budget Analyst!

  Monday, April 6 11 a.m. - Public Safety Committee Who watches the watchers? Why, the Public Safety Committee does. Every other week. Its recent agendas haven't actually involved DOING much -- there's not much legislation coming out of these meetings -- but they've been crammed with hearings looking into things. They've examined police procedures, crime trends, and best practices - to the extent that the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice has any. Today's agenda continues the committe

  April 6, 2009

• What’s in David Chiu’s political baggage?

  February 18, 2009

• New Board prez David Chiu meets da mayor

  January 28, 2009

• The Class of 2000

  Eight years after being swept into office, a once-disorganized band of neighborhood leftists tries to create a citywide political machine.

  October 29, 2008

• Chiu on This

  Troublemaker H. Brown makes trouble in District 3 supes race.

  July 23, 2008

• SF Gov InAction: Toxic Babies Are Not an Option!

  Sometimes ... and I want to make it very clear that this is not drug-induced ... I don't think San Francisco is a real city at all. I think that maybe we're a Lego city, populated by Weebles. It makes as much sense as anything Sophie Maxwell's said lately. Why would I think this? Well, have you ever seen our parades? Gavin weebles and wobbles...In addition, I've noticed that Gavin Newsom weebles and wobbles but won't fall down, and that an earthquake will eventually reduce us to

  April 27, 2009

• Someone's Getting Thrown Under the Bus on MTA Budget Battle. Who Will It Be?

  Perhaps this graffiti artist was displeased with Muni's budget as well...When Supervisor David Chiu last month placed an item in the Budget and Finance committee's Wednesday agenda rejecting the Municipal Transportation Authority's controversial budget, he wasn't doing it to merely test out the buttons on some new legislative assignment gizmo he found on Craigslist. In crafting such a motion even before the MTA deigned to pass a budget, Chiu presciently took the Groucho-as-Professor Quincy Waggs

  May 4, 2009

• SF Gov InAction: Gavin Newsom Will Be Told That David Chiu Is Rejecting MUNI's Budget Sometime In Early 2011

  From a numerical standpoint, the Supes are finally getting their act together. At the beginning of the year, we were lucky if they made it through four meetings a week. Now they're hitting six or seven almost every time. That's the good news. The bad news is that the number of meetings apparently has no relationship to the quality of work done. Perhaps that means what we really need is a "slow legislation" movement in which proposals made of fresh ingredients are allowed to stew in their

  May 4, 2009

• Building & Trades Unions Say City Hall Protest Isn't Political Show -- It's All About Jobs, Jobs, JOBS!

  Joe EskenaziMike Theriault, head of the Building & Construction Trades Council, wants jobs. When does he want them? Now.A crowd of 300 to 400 soggy, hardhat-and-overalls-wearing union men and women -- many of whom, sadly, had no other engagements at noon on a working day -- stood at City Hall Plaza throughout a persistent drizzle for a demonstration today. We know they were there; we saw them. We don't know exactly why they were there because everyone seems to have a different answer to that

  May 5, 2009

• Supes Punt MTA Budget Imbroglio To Special Meeting Next Wednesday

  Oh, they're dragging this out...The ongoing rancor over the Municipal Transportation Agency's woeful budget has transformed into quite a cliff-hanger: First Board President David Chiu fired a shot across MTA and the mayor's bow by crafting legislation allowing the supes to scuttle the budget. Then, at the last minute, Chiu signed off on a tepid compromise -- earning the enmity of his peers. Then said peers resurrected the threat of voting down the budget and Supervisor John Avalos marched over t

  May 19, 2009

• Bus-ted: David Chiu Triggers Supes-Mayor Showdown Over Muni Budget

  Supervisor David Chiu gives Muni budget the whammy...Whatever David Chiu needs in life -- a faster bike, a more stylish helmet -- he doesn't require assertiveness training. The rookie supervisor and president of the board last month audaciously engineered a motion that would allow the supes to shoot down the Municpal Transportation Authority's budget. Yesterday, he audaciously carried it off -- and he notes that, yes, he has lined up the seven votes required to send MTA's budget back to the bus

  May 7, 2009

• SF Gov InAction: Madatory Composting -- And Your Mother -- Are Back In Town

  Well, that's the thing: I thought my mom would know the Snuggie was a gag gift, but she actually thought it was a real gift. So here I'd planned this completely ironic moment, and she was starting to tear up. She actually said "It looks so comfortable, and I get so cold in winter!" Shit! So what could I do? I ... Oh! Hello! I didn't see you there. It's all right, you're not interrupting anything. I was just explaining how my mother got arrested on her special day. Funny story: Apparently

  May 11, 2009

• SF Gov InAction: Supes To Spend Week Memorializing Extra, Extra Hard

  Most Government offices in America took Monday off to honor those who fell in our nation's defense. For the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, however, Memorial Day is really about honoring what all the other holidays, from Veterans Day to Christmas, are really about honoring: the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. That's why, whenever there is a holiday -- of any kind, at any time -- they try to take the entire rest of the week off. Because to take any less vacation time would be to disho

  May 26, 2009

• Terminus: Progressives Stymied as Supes Can't Muter Votes to Reject Muni Budget

  Today's very special noontime Board of Supervisors meeting clocked in at an extremely svelte 50-odd minutes. But, as was always the case in the ongoing wrangle over the Municipal Transportation Agency's budget, you could have boiled the whole thing down to a momentary exercise: Clerk: What'ya think, Sophie Maxwell? This Budget good enough? Sophie: Suits me! And there you go. Once again, Maxwell decided that the act of rejecting Muni's budget and forcing the MTA to draw it up again from scratch w

  May 27, 2009

• SF Gov InAction: Mandatory Composting Gets Some New Sponsors. Which Bin Do We Put 'Futility' In?

  I hope you'll forgive me if I keep this week's Gov InAction curt: I told WAY too many David Chiu jokes over the weekend, and now I'm worn out. I've got to remember to pace myself. However, in case you're wondering, here's how many David Chius it takes to change a light bulb: • None: Aaron Peskin already changed it. • One: and he will change it, assuming no one else can agree on a consensus candidate for the job. • Two: it takes two David Chius to gloat about a major accomplishm

  June 8, 2009

• S.F. Supes Discover The Internet Is a Series of Tubes for Sending Pennies to Your Cronies

  'We don't bid, or go in for these city contracts, and we don't intend to do it now.'If one attends any meeting, at any time of day or night, at San Francisco's City Hall, one's likely to find buzz-cut shutterbug Luke Thomas taking photographs for his Web site Fogcityjournal.com. His 10,000 monthly readers tune in for inside-inside-local-government stories such as the Jan. 4 headliner "The Case For John Avalos" by Chris Daly, in which Board of Supervisors member Daly used the site to urge his col

  June 16, 2009

• Sf Gov InAction: Special Faux-Guest Edition!

  Do you ever get tired of doing the same thing every week? Me too. So this week I decided to imagine how SF Gov InAction would look if it were written by five of this city's most ... um ... noteworthy ... pundits. You say "parody," I say "homage." Either way: Enjoy. Monday, June 29 11 a.m. - Budget & Finance Committee (as written by TIM REDMOND, San Francisco Bay Guardian Managing Editor) I was driving back from a trip to wine country last week and noticed that there were a lot fewer

  June 29, 2009

• SF Gov InAction: The Budget's All finished, Except for the Backstabbing

  Our story so far: The Supervisors were drinking champagne in City Hall last week after reaching a budget deal that restored an unprecedented amount money to programs that Mayor Gavin "Call me Governor" Newsom cut from San Francisco because he thought it would play well in Fresno. Par-TAY! But then Chris "Cassandra" Daly, the Supervisors' progressive Id, ruined the vibe by going to the budget committee and yelling lines from Jerry Maguire at it. In other cities, people would be surpris

  July 6, 2009

• For Entertainment Purposes Only

  July 8, 2009

• Mayor's Office Strikes Back at David Chiu In Memo On Nightclub Violence

  It's gettin' hot in hereThe Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice has sent a memo to Board of Supervisors President David Chiu asking him to back off efforts to set up a stricter nightclub permitting process, the latest volley in an intensifying intra-city feud over how to handle rising club violence.The memo, dated June 19, was recently obtained by SF Weekly. It concerns legislation that would affect how the San Francisco Entertainment Commission -- a seven-member board of political appointees who

  July 15, 2009

• SF Gov InAction: Peace Between Bloggers and Journalists for Our Time!

  Print journalists and bloggers are feuding again. It's a quiet feud so far -- an incendiary article here, a subtle dig in a blog post there -- but it's real, it's between people I know and respect, and it makes me want to hide under the bed the way I did when the monsters attacked mommy and daddy. At least, I think they were mommy and daddy. This all happened after the nice man with candy lured me into the van . Adolescence is a confusing time when you're tied to a chair. The point is:

  July 21, 2009

• San Francisco Has a Budget -- and Chris Daly Has Left the Building

  Once more, for old time's sake. Lost somewhere between the news of Sacramento's impending raid upon municipal revenue streams and President Obama's comfy jeans, San Francisco's Board of Supervisors yesterday passed the city's contentious, agonizing $6.6 billion budget. This wasn't done without Supervisor Chris Daly's acknowledged "best friend" John Avalos -- whom he so designated during an awkward public browbeating/recitation of the second-most famous line from Jerry Maguire earlier this month

  July 22, 2009

• SF Gov inAction: All Chris Daly Jokes Must Now Be Translated Into Chinese, Spanish, and Tagalog Upon Request

  There are only three meetings left standing this week: By contrast, four meetings were supposed to happen, but canceled. Is it just me, or are city hall meetings increasingly resembling network programming? "Well, we would LIKE to have a City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee meeting, but we don't feel that Neighborhood Services appeal to educated males ages 17 to 34, so we'll just stick with reruns of our old City Operations instead." I guess that's what you get with a mayo

  July 28, 2009

• SF Gov InAction: Big money! Big money! Oh God, Make It Stop!

  What an exciting week! Your Host Gaaaaaaavin Newson! will be giving away big money prizes! And how much would you pay for this PUC headquarters? Find out in our Showcase Showdown! That's not actually a joke. In fact, there is an awful lot of government happening this week, squeezing big money into small meetings. It's been a while since we've seen small meetings this packed with concentrated government goodness -- the kind of meetings that are organic, locally grown, and pesticide free. T

  August 10, 2009

• Chiu Says It's Second Chance -- And Last Chance -- for the Entertainment Commission

  Is the party almost over?​Board of Supervisors President David Chiu appears to have the wind at his back in his growing crusade to impose reforms on the San Francisco Entertainment Commission, a seven-member panel of political appointees that has come under fire for not properly doing its job of regulating the city's nightclubs.As we reported in a cover story last month, Chiu has faced a lonely political battle with his efforts to make the commission more accountable to police and residents, w

  August 13, 2009

• SF Gov InAction: The Supes Have SUCH Good Intentions This Week That One of These Laws Just HAS to Work!

  Monday, Aug 17 11 a.m. - Public Safety Committee A lot's happened to the Public Safety Committee since the last time I wrote about it -- and there's one thing I just don't understand. Ross Mirkarimi used to be the chair of the Public Safety Committee, and he was exceptional at pulling the many tangled threads of San Francisco's attempts to keep its citizens safe from crime (the better to lecture us about not smoking) into an organized weave. City crime mattered to him both as a humanitarian

  August 17, 2009

• SF Gov InAction: Your 'Labor Day' Guide to What the F*#@k Happened in the Last Eight Months

  With a federal holiday appears on the calendar, city hall's motto becomes: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but how much time off you can take from your country". In this particular case, The supervisors like to celebrate Labor Day by pretending to have labored, while their staff likes to celebrate Labor Day by pretending to rest. (The one exception to this rule is Michela Alioto-Pier and her staff, who celebrate Labor Day by going into labor). The result for both is a three week "v

  August 24, 2009

• City Gave Lobbyist the Go-Ahead to Push For Controversial Assembly Bill -- Or Did It?

  Whether you're a king or just a street-sweeper, sooner or later you dance with the ... State Legislation Committee​We've written a bit about how San Francisco recently officially lobbied for a state Assembly bill that would limit public access to government data. AB 1336 would allow cities to mount cameras on street-sweeping vehicles to bust parking scofflaws -- but declares the resultant footage is not subject to the California Public Records Act, making it inaccessible to the public. Governm

  September 2, 2009

• SF Gov InAction: In S.F. Math, 2 2 Does Not Equal Four, But Sexual Harrassment = $90,670.20

    Here is the exact moment when covering San Francisco government goes from sad to pathetic: It's when you come home after a nice vacation, dust off your lap-top to catch up on what you've missed, and realize that San Francisco has no idea how many working fire engines it has.I'm pretty sure that if we were a real city, with a functioning government, this kind of thing wouldn't happen.I would, in fact, like to use this as a defense against all those who claim that my coverage of San Fran

  September 14, 2009

• SF Gov InAction: City Brings Hammer Down on Anti-Prostitution Program, Then Forms a Glee Club to Sing Social Services to Sleep

    I've had a really busy few weeks, and I haven't been able to catch up on any of the new fall shows yet. So I tried to cram a lot of television in this weekend while writing SF Gov InAction. Just so you know. Monday, Oct. 19, 10 a.m. - Public Safety Committee Somebody has to say it: the Public Safety Committee we have in San Francisco isn't nearly as good looking as the one they have in CSI Miami. Can we get them re-cast? I wouldn't mind if the supervisors stay around a

  October 19, 2009

• 'Friends of Entertainment Commission' Web Site Traced to Controversial Entertainment Commissioner

  The San Francisco Entertainment Commission has been having a rough go of it lately. The seven-member board of political appointees, tasked with regulating the city's nightclubs, has presided over a local nightlife scene that has become infamous for its violence. The commission has also come under fire for its often cozy ties to the industry it is supposed to be watch-dogging -- as we reported in a July cover story, five of the seven commissioners (two have since stepped down) had direct financia

  October 22, 2009

• Entertainment Commission Reform Legislation Passes in Supes' Committee, Headed for Full Board

  Legislation that would reform how San Francisco's nightclub-industry watchdog agency operates was approved by the Board of Supervisors' City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee today, and is headed for a vote by the full board next month.Are changes coming to SF nightlife?​Following a three-hour hearing that featured extensive public comment from both supporters and opponents of the legislation, the three-member committee unanimously approved the new law, which would grant the Enter

  October 26, 2009

• List: City meetings open up to mo' comments

  October 28, 2009