Grading the Mayor’s Performance

“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.” Those are the cogent 1944 words of George Bernard Shaw in “Everybody’s Political What’s What?”

As our new mayor settles into Room 200 at City Hall, San Franciscans often ask me to grade his performance. He’s certainly chosen an extremely well-qualified person (Staci Slaughter) as his chief of staff, replacing Sean Elsbernd, Esq., a former Board of Supervisors member before ex-Mayor London Breed hired him. Slaughter is a long-time San Francisco Giants executive and daughter of Dan Walters of Cal Matters, who knows more about California politics and government than anyone in our state.

Mayor Dan Lurie, however, has acted twice in a questionable manner insofar as taxpayers are concerned. In January, almost as soon as he was sworn in as mayor, he unilaterally created four new jobs for so-called “policy directors” who recommend creation or termination of city departments and positions. One newspaper reporter was reminded of former Mayor Art Agnos who created “deputy mayors” without voter approval. Later, I led as a state senator a successful charter prohibition campaign agains “deputy mayors,” thereafter this started by Charter “revision” in 1996.

Then, last month the Board approved an Administrative Code amendment to suspend until January, 2026 the competitive bidding requirement for City public works contracts funded by taxpayers (!) and allow Mayor Lurie to hand contracts, grants and leases to chosen businesses dealing with homelessness, drug overdoses, substance use, disorders, mental health and public safety hiring, together with certain leases under the rubric of “core initiative,” such as homelessness, drug overdoses and substance use disorders. The mayor may designate additional departments with Board of Supervisors approval, including leases without competitive bidding and contracts for commodities. Only one supervisor, Shamann Walton from the Bayview, voted against this power grab.

With Mr. Lurie, I’m not afraid of corruption but his ordinance specifically permits him to raise private funds to pay for the foregoing services and equipment. That arouses interest in whether mayoral donors will wind up with aforementioned sole source contracts. Our budget analyst notes the “total grant and contract budget for the departments … subject to the … ordinance totals $1.1 billion of General Fund money in fiscal year 2024-2025.”

He also notes waiving competitive bidding requirements “may increase the cost of these contracts.” Additionally, the ordinance, according to our budget analyst, “reduces key protections for procurement integrity and generally reduces the Board of Supervisors’ authority.” He’s advised our Board of Supervisors to amend the ordinance, limiting the scope and duration of the requested (mayoral) authority and associated risks. So, what did 10 of our district-elected knuckleheads do on Feb. 18? They finalized passage for the instigating mayor to sign last month!

These supervisors are products of “ranked-choice” voting which, as a Wall Street Journal reader observed last fall, “overcomplicates voting and results.” Its only advantage is saving election run-off costs. In runoff elections, usually decided by thin margins, the traditional system is imperfect, but clearly preferable! Nevertheless, more states and local cities have adopted “ranked choice” voting, including Seattle, Portland, Fort Collins, Colorado, Alaska, Maine, Nevada, New York City, Salt Lake City (on a six-year test basis). Virginia, Kansas, Wyoming and Hawaii used it in presidential primaries, with favorable reactions by Democratic voters. Coupled with overpaid district-elected S.F. supervisors, voters here are beset with the worst burden imaginable in a democracy.

It was revealed in January that San Mateo County does not maintain records of illegal immigrants with felony convictions, and, like San Francisco, does not cooperate with federal immigration employees. It’s a “sanctuary” county like the City and County of San Francisco. (No, don’t refer to such law-breakers as “undocumented aliens.”) Some estimate California has approximately two million such law breakers, which constitutes 5% of our total state population.

Later that month, the Migration Policy Institute, an immigration “think tank,” revealed the true number of San Mateo County alien lawbreakers to be approximately 55,000, or 7.2% of the that county’s population (in 2019, San Francisco had about 43,000) and that doesn’t include children born in the U.S.A. who are deemed citizens by the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment and federal court decisions. Of course, Donald Trump, the legal genius, challenges those facts. His Attorney General Pam Bondi last month sued Illinois and New York over their “sanctuary” laws prohibiting law enforcement from aiding federal authorities in detaining and giving illegal immigration records to the “feds.” Note Trump on Feb. 23 joining of Putin in opposing a U.N. General Assembly resolution which condemned Russia for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Trump wants to be “buddies” with Putin at Ukraine’s expense.

For collegiate sports lovers, the amateur myth has disappeared. A Harvard alumnus from Greensboro, N.C. put it bluntly in this month’s Harvard Magazine, recommending Harvard drop football, just as it “ditched college boxing” some years ago. College boxers weren’t paid like college football and basketball players are today. Dartmouth’s basketball team, for example, voted 13-2 to join the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) last year but my alma mater’s president early this year rejected the idea, (to my surprise, as she grew up in Berkeley!). College sports have turned professional with free and easy college transfers for athletes, and amalgamations of West Coast and East Coast athletic conferences in major sports. The only amateur athletic endeavors appear to be intramural sports like touch football, softball and basketball, unless library visits count.

Even the Wall Street Journal in its crusty view of government devoted a Jan. 22 editorial to Trump’s unconditional pardon of nearly all the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters at the U.S. Capitol, including men convicted of bludgeoning, chemical spraying and electroshocking police to thwart presidential election results. That includes 14 people already convicted and more than one-third accused of assaulting police officers. It’s anathema for the GOP to free cop-beaters. As columnist Peggy Noonan wrote on Jan. 26, “When you pardon virtually everyone who did Jan. 6, you get more Jan. 6ths.”

In March 1880, Jeremiah S. Black, explained why there’s no third term for U.S. presidents: “How shall we avert the dire calamities with which we are threatened? The answer comes from the graves of our fathers: By the frequent election of new men. Of help or hope for the salvation of free government, there is none under heaven. If history does not teach this, we have read it all wrong.”

Quentin Kopp is a former San Francisco supervisor, state senator, SF Ethics Commission member, president of the California High Speed Rail Authority governing board and retired Superior Court judge.