Tag: city hall

Posted on

No Public Funds for Politicians!

I am beginning to really get fed up with politicians. When Gavin Newsom left for the Lt. Governor’s position he ended up leaving us in a state of chaos. I read an article today that really horrified me. It said that San Francisco would be paying out $6-8 million dollars in campaign funds to anyone who runs for mayor and raises at least $25,000.

Here’s how it works. If you get $25k in contributions, the city will give you double that amount. If you bring in $125k you’ll get $450k from the San Francisco and if you get  $500k in private funds you’ll get an additional $800k from the city.

Let’s make it a little bit worse. The new rules call for a $1.3 million spending limit per candidate, but if just one campaign – or even an independent expenditure committee, which isn’t subject to the same limits – breaks the cap, all candidates may all be able to get even more money from the city.

Many candidates are already well on their way. City Attorney Dennis Herrera has collected $250,000 in private donations, state Sen. Leland Yee has raised $165,000, and businesswoman Joanna Rees has brought in $150,000. Other candidates who have already qualified for public cash are former Supervisor Bevan Dufty, $100,000, and Controller Phil Ting, $50,000.

The city’s deficit is expected to reach $750 million dollars this year so I suppose adding another $6-8 million won’t help. I’ve done a little math here. Gavin Newsom tried to put into effect his own version of the old JobsNow program which reimbursed employers for the payroll of unemployed parents, but that didn’t work too well. If you took that money and put it into $40k/year jobs it would get 200 people off of unemployment. Not a very big deal in a city of 850,000 people. OK how about this, take that money and divide it equally to all the San Francisco public schools and how much would they get? Almost $51,000 per school.

Our schools are short on cash. My daughter’s teacher has to ask parents if they can donate supplies because she doesn’t have the funding to purchase them. I bet she wouldn’t have to ask for donations from the parents if the money was distributed. Hell, she even had to go out and buy paint to repaint her classroom by herself.

This is wrong and I’m putting a call out to our new Mayor Ed Lee to do the right thing and stop this. Anyone who can fill out the paperwork and raise $25k in funds will get $50k free of charge from the city and that is wrong. This is one of the biggest problems we have to fix and we have to fix it NOW!

Posted on

Goodbye to Gavin!

Gavin, Gavin, Gavin. You’ve had quite a time being Mayor haven’t you? In a few days Gavin Newsom will be running away to be Lieutenant Governor of California–Like it or not! I have to look back and think about what’s happened in the City since Gavin Newsom has been Mayor.

I know he’s done a lot, like the care not cash program, starting the gay and lesbian weddings, yelling at Muni. I’m sure there’s more, I just can’t think about it. I know that when I went down to the main library the other day I noticed the park wasn’t full of homeless people anymore. San Francisco has become a bit more pleasant to live in. OK, we still have a lot of crappy roadways and if you don’t believe me take a short trip back east [just not New York City] and you’ll find roads as smooth as glass.

Gavin Newsom did a few bad things, at least for a politician. He had an affair, had to go for alcohol addiction treatment, but he still managed to remain the Mayor. Most people would lose their jobs and get black listed if they admitted that and yes, that holds true for politicians as well. Yet he still won his race for Lieutenant Governor.

I think what I’m going to miss most is that he had the face for San Francisco, just like Willie Brown did. He was a politician in a big city, yet if you ran into him you could talk to him [which I got to do on two occasions]. He was like a rockstar Mayor, kind of bigger than life, but also like many other rockstars he had a bit of a dark side that would pop up. Will he ever live down the, “Like it or not!” comment about his authorizing gay marriages? That’s probably going to be like water off a duck’s back.

We have a few other people leaving office as well, but the only one who made anyone know he even existed was Chris Daly. Chris was the foul mouthed Supervisor with a love for dropping F-bombs during meetings of the Board of Supervisors, then pulls an “Ed Jew” and buy a house outside of San Francisco and moves in with his family all the while Ed Jew is still being talked about for being a Supervisor who doesn’t live in the City. Chris, thank you and good night. Now get the fuck out.