The Weekly Digest (April 9, 2023)

Written By Bill Jackson

Happy Easter and Passover, Brionies! We hope you’re able to spend the holidays in good cheer and good company. Here’s what you need to know about San Francisco politics this week and beyond:

City Hall

  • Tuesday, April 11 at 2pm: Regular meeting of the Board of Supervisors (agenda and call-in instructions here)

    • Item 1 – The Mayor’s monthly appearance before the Board. Only one topic was put forth for discussion: “Reparations.”

    • Item 7 – Suing the City is something of a cottage industry, at least judging by the number of settlements that come before the Board on a weekly basis. This item approves a $3 million settlement for a man that was hit by a police car – while he was being arrested.

    • Item 11 – An ordinance proposed by Supervisor Hillary Ronen (of course) to add a seat to the Reentry Council, to be appointed by the Board of Supervisors and to focus on alternatives to incarceration. What does the Reentry Council even do, you ask? Well, they hold quarterly meetings where they receive updates from other councils, committees, and commissions on how to help those recently released from prison. Presumably, this new council member will be charged with important duties like briefing the council between Racial Equity Work updates and reports of the Direct Action Subcommittee (formerly the Direct Services Subcommittee – yes, the Council has subcommittees). Good thing the Supervisor is focusing on her constituents’ top priorities.

    • Items 12 and 13 – Lest ye think the City is always on the losing end of high-profile litigation, along come these two items authorizing a settlement under which San Francisco will receive as much as $18 million over the next decade from Walmart and CVS for their part in “allegedly improper and unlawful dispensing of prescription opioids at its pharmacies, which contributed to the epidemic of opinion abuse and misuse and caused a public nuisance.” If only the hundreds of fentanyl dealers on our streets were part of a large, deep-pocketed corporation…

Happenings around town

What we’re reading

  • There’s been a flurry of activity lately around paying police officers in San Francisco, including the $25 million approved for overtime last month. Next on the agenda is the SFPD base pay labor agreement, over which Supervisor Dean Preston expressed some sticker shock.

  • Yes, America’s Cities Can Be Saved. “Leaders… had developed a bad habit of aspiring to be the urban embodiment of the intellectual vanguard on issues from climate change to race to schooling, which ultimately meant sacrificing housing affordability, public safety, and parents’ best hopes for their children.”

  • It garnered fresh outrage because it involved a tech leader, but the stabbing death of Bob Lee – founder of CashApp – is only the latest evidence that San Francisco’s crime problem is out of control. It shouldn’t take a “high-profile” murder for our elected leaders to acknowledge that public safety is priority number one. All else flows from making people feel safe, period.

  • Not to worry, though, the Chronicle’s “data journalist” Susie Nielsen has produced some incredibly naïve and incurious analyses to assure us that crime is in fact down, for which she was roundly and deservedly ridiculed by practically every single person on Twitter and Reddit, and anyone with two eyes and lacking an ideological axe to grind.

  • The San Francisco Police Commission, which municipal disgrace John Hamasaki formerly called home, keeps the hits coming.

  • This Nonprofit Was Tied to a Corrupt SF Official. It Got New City Contracts. “The requirements were narrowly tailored, and they matched up with the particulars of Clean City. Clean City was the only bidder. It won the contract.”

  • Supervisor Matt Dorsey published this video to advance his commonsense argument that fentanyl dealers shouldn’t enjoy the protections of San Francisco’s Sanctuary City ordinance.

Quick hits

Palate cleanser

Bill Jackson
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