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Some TV ads, like this one claiming that proposed regulation of shortterm housing rentals would encourage “spying” on neighbors, misled voters.
SUMMER 2016
ISSUE 19
B
THE RISING
section
COST OF WINNING
DECEPTIVE POLITICAL ADS ON TV GO LOCAL PAGE B1 COMPETITION IN 2015: THE BIGGEST SPENDERS ALMOST ALWAYS WON PAGE B1 VIDEO TECHNOLOGY FACILITATES TELEVISION AD TRACKING PAGE B3 HALF-TRUTHS, SLANTED NARRATIVES DELUGED VIEWERS — NEWS? NOT SO MUCH PAGE B3 THE MOST MISLEADING POLITICAL ADS ON TELEVISION PAGE B4-B5 VIDEO SEARCH IMPROVING, BUT OBSTACLES REMAIN FOR ANALYZING TV NEWS PAGE B5
VOTES
2015 ELECTION WAS THE SPENDIEST IN NEARLY TWO DECADES PAGE B6 DATA ENTRY ERRORS, INCONSISTENT CODING MUDDLE PROCESS OF TRACKING CAMPAIGN FINANCE PAGE B8
Local tech and real estate interests take sides in City Hall, leading to record-breaking election spending
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an Francisco last year saw a high-water mark for spending on elections, with nearly $28 million flowing into slickly produced campaigns that flooded the airwaves and filled mailboxes with questionable claims about ballot measures and candidates. But the money was not evenly distributed. Airbnb, the short-term rental startup, crushed a proposal to regulate its industry, spending a whopping $9 million. The company’s efforts were endorsed by Mayor Ed Lee, whose allied campaigns for other issues and candidates dominated almost every race they invested in. The Public Press partnered with the TV Archive, a project of the San Francisco-based Internet Archive, to examine the facts, half-truths and misstatements that aired before November 2015’s pivotal election. Perhaps surprisingly in our tech-soaked city, political campaigns are still investing heavily in persuading voters on television,
BART CONSULTANT IS LIAISON BETWEEN HOMELESS PEOPLE AND POLICE, SERVICES PAGE A4
FOR REPORTERS, 8 TIPS TO COVER HOMELESSNESS RESPONSIBLY PAGE A4
HOUSING-RIGHTS ACTIVISTS CONCERNED ABOUT STARTUP THAT FACILITATES BUYOUTS OF RENT-CONTROLLED TENANTS PAGE A5 FOR ONE WOMAN, LIFE AFTER GETTING OFF THE STREETS PAGE A5
PUBLIC HIGH-SPEED INTERNET IN S.F.? PRICETAG: AT LEAST $867M PAGE A3
BARK BEETLES RAVAGE THOUSANDS OF WEAKENED TREES IN CALIFORNIA PAGE A6 S.F. JOINS WATER TRAIL, ENABLING LONGER TRIPS AROUND THE BAY PAGE A6 UBER, LYFT MIGHT HELP BOOST PUBLIC TRANSIT USE PAGE A7 NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENTS, WORKERS, DRUG DEALERS STRUGGLE ALONGSIDE ONE ANOTHER PAGE A7 TENDERLOIN NEIGHBORHOOD’S ANNUAL FESTIVAL DISSOLVES AFTER 25 YEARS PAGE A8
san francisco public press
section
CALIFORNIA’S CLIMATE CHANGE LAW PRAISED, BUT EXPENSIVE PAGE A3
STORIES BEGIN ON PAGE B1
44 page st., suite 504 • san francisco, ca 94102
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and investing in savvy national campaign consultants. At the same time, TV stations’ news programs devoted just a few seconds to independent coverage of the elections for each minute of political advertising. The ever-increasing involvement of moneyed interests worries ethics experts and has spurred reforms to rein in fundraising by lobbyists. While emblematic of the threat of corporate influence peddling in City Hall, lobbyists themselves raise comparatively little, and limiting their involvement would only scratch the surface of the spending expected in contests in 2016 and beyond.
A2 | SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, SUMMER 2016
SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS
FROM THE EDITORS
JOIN OUR ANNUAL CAMPAIGN
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he San Francisco Public Press received two notable donations early this year: a major gift of $25,000 from the craigslist Charitable Fund, and a $35,000 grant from the INNovation Fund to support community outreach and engagement. More recently, we received two $3,000 grants — one each from the Strong Foundation for Environmental Values and the Fund for Investigative Journalism — to do follow-up reporting on sea level rise in the Bay Area, and a $10,000 grant from California Humanities for an education project. These resources place us in position to do critical public policy reporting in 2016. And so with this auspicious beginning, we launched our first annual campaign to raise $250,000 by Dec. 31. For the Public Press to continue producing award-winning, data-driven investigative journalism, we need to be able to pay our journalists and support staff. That includes hiring for some part-time positions — a step up from our previous mix of volunteers and freelance contractors. Expanding our budget is critical to making this transition. As of publication, we have raised more than $97,000. Will you help make this annual campaign a success by becoming a member or renewing your membership today? $250,000 is an ambitious goal — raising that amount would double our budget from 2015. We aim to achieve this by increasing income from existing revenue streams: grants, memberships and large donations from individuals, newspaper sales and events. Over several years, we have raised the visibility of this small nonprofit newsroom, built valuable partnerships and engaged in consistent community outreach. These efforts have helped us reach an expanding audience — readers like you who value the well-researched, context-rich locally focused journalism that we produce for San Francisco and the greater Bay Area. We are grateful to craigslist founder Craig Newmark, who — in addition to the significant grant via the craigslist Charitable Fund — also supported the Public Press through craigconnects with a $5,000 contribution to the report on local campaign finance featured in this issue. The INNovation Fund is administered by the Institute for Nonprofit News with contributions from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Democracy Fund. Many people, even our most loyal readers, don’t know how much it costs for the Public Press to produce serious, data-driven investigative journalism. We promise to keep you informed about our sources of funding and how they’re Online: used. sfpublicpress.org/membership With a budget of $250,000, we can hire staff and increase payments to our Mail: freelance journalists, who have worked for modest stipends because they believe strongly in our mission. But integrity doesn’t cover the rent. We need to pay San Francisco Public Press competitive rates for the amazing work they do. 44 Page St., Suite 504 Making this campaign a success will require bold steps. We look forward to San Francisco, CA 94102 bringing you more good news about our audacious fundraising, reporting and Phone: community-building efforts throughout 2016! (415) 495-7377 Thank you for your continued support.
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Summer 2016 • Issue 19 (Vol. 7, No. 1) Published July 18, 2016
44 Page St., Suite 504 San Francisco, CA 94102 (415) 495-7377 info@sfpublicpress.org
BOARD OF DIRECTORS Patricia M. Bovan Campbell • David Cohn • Liz Enochs • Neal Gorenflo • Kari Gray Tom Honig • Maryann Hrichak • Lila LaHood • Marc Smolowitz • Michael Stoll
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
PUBLISHER
DIRECTOR OF DESIGN
ASSISTANT EDITOR
EDITORS
COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER
Michael Stoll
Lila LaHood
Erika Rae Lawson
Noah Arroyo
Michele Anderson • Michael Winter
Olivia Henry
MEMBERSHIP MANAGER Shinwha Whang
WRITERS
Sara Bloomberg • David Boyer (KALW) • Meka Boyle • Julie Cart (CALmatters) • Dayvon Dunaway • Byan Goebel (KQED News) • Erika Cruz Guevarra (KQED News Fix) • Sam Harnett (KQED News Fix) • Mark Hedin (Central City Extra) • Melanie Hess (Bay Nature) • Angela Johnston (KALW Crosscurrents) • Hye-Jin Kim • Holly McDede (KALW Crosscurrents) • Laura Waxmann (Mission Local) • Angela Woodall • Cody Wright
PHOTOGRAPHERS
GRAPHIC DESIGNERS
Hyunha Kim • Steve Rhodes Laura Wenus (Mission Local)
Yvonne Pingue • Sheena Tadifa
ILLUSTRATOR
CROSSWORD
Anna Vignet
Andrea Carla Michaels
COPY EDITORS
Richard Knee • Dean Takehara
BUSINESS & OPERATIONS: John Angelico • Lyndal Cairns • Mark Conrad • Mark Hedin Amanda Hickman • Aaron Kingon • George Koster • Eric Lawson • Holly Million • Glenn Nyhan
WH E R E TO BUY TH E N E WS PAPE R SAN FRANCISCO Aardvark Books 227 Church St. Alexander Book Company 50 Second St. Alley Cat Books 3036 24th St. Bird & Beckett Books and Records 653 Chenery St. Books Inc. 601 Van Ness Ave. 2275 Market St. 2251 Chestnut St.
Book Passage 1 Ferry Building #42 The Booksmith 1644 Haight St. Borderlands Café 870 Valencia St. Browser Books 2195 Fillmore St. Christopher’s Books 1400 18th St. Church Street Groceteria 300 Church St. City Lights Books 261 Columbus Ave.
Dog Eared Books 900 Valencia St.
Green Apple Books on the Park 1231 9th Ave.
Farley’s 1315 18th St.
The Green Arcade 1680 Market St.
Fog City News 455 Market St.
Juicy News SF 2181 Union St.
Good News 3920 24th St.
Jump Start Coffee & Whole Foods 1192 Guerrero St.
The Grand Newsstand 40 Market St. Green Apple Books 506 Clement St.
Modern Times 2919 24th St. Mollie Stone's 2435 California St.
Mo’z Café 36 Fifth St. Nick’s Newsstand 1A Sansome St. Nick's Super Market 144 Page St. Parkside Market 1600 Hayes St. The Pirate Store 826 Valencia St. Smoke Signals 2223 Polk St.
West Portal Daily 36 West Portal Ave.
Issues 20 Glen Ave. Oakland
PENINSULA
EAST BAY De Lauer’s Super News Stand 1310 Broadway, Oakland 1412 Park St., Alameda
Lucky 7 Shop 1525 Shattuck Ave. Berkeley
Compass Books SFO Terminal 2 & SFO Terminal 3
Pegasus Books 5560 College Ave., Oakland & 1855 Solano Ave., Berkeley
Kepler’s Books 1010 El Camino Real Menlo Park
Diesel, A Book Store 5433 College Ave. Oakland
NORTH BAY
Mac’s Smoke Shop 534 Emerson St. Palo Alto
Book Passage 51 Tamal Vista Blvd. Corte Madera
Farley’s 33 Grand Ave. Oakland
Split Pea Seduction 138 6th St.
PARTNERS FEATURED IN THIS ISSUE
INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORTERS
Bay Nature
Fund for Investigative Journalism supports investigative reporting projects around the world. fij.org
Primary funder of the Public Press since 2009 — Philanthropic community foundation for the Bay Area. sff.org
A daily news magazine exploring context, culture and connection from around the Bay Area. KALW Radio 91.7 FM and kalw.org/programs/ crosscurrents
CALmatters
KQED has served Northern California for more than 50 years and is affiliated with NPR and PBS. KQED Public Television 9, KQED Plus public television, KQED Public Radio 88.5 FM. kqed.org
A nonprofit journalism venture dedicated to explaining California policies and politics. calmatters.org craigslist Charitable Fund provides millions of dollars each year in grants to hundreds of partner organizations addressing four broad areas of interest: environment and transportation; education, rights, justice and reason; non-violence, veterans and peace; and journalism, open source and the Internet. craigslist.org/about/charitable
Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. The foundation believes that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. knightfoundation.org
The Investigative News Network consists of 60 nonprofit, non-partisan news organizations conducting investigative reporting in the United States, Puerto Rico & Canada. investigativenewsnetwork.org
Democracy Fund invests in organizations working to ensure that our political system is responsive to the public and able to meet the greatest challenges facing our nation. democracyfund.org
California Humanities promotes the humanities in California in order to help create “a state of open mind,” and aims to “inspire Californians to learn more, dig deeper, and start conversations that matter among our dramatically diverse people.” calhum.org
The Strong Foundation for Environmental Values makes grants to efforts that instill an ecological ethic in the individual and in our communities, and which encourage grassroots environmental action based on such an ethic. strongfoundationgrants.org
KALW Radio’s “Crosscurrents”
A quarterly magazine exploring nature in the San Francisco Bay Area, dedicated to educating residents about and celebrating the beauty of the surrounding natural world. baynature.org
CENTRAL CITY EXTRA
A monthly nonprofit newspaper for the Tenderloin, Civic Center and Sixth Street Corridor. Publishd by the San Francisco Study Center. studycenter.org/test/cce/
KQED News Fix blog
Mission Local
An independent news organization covering San Francisco’s Mission District online and in print. missionlocal.org
OTHER PUBLIC MEDIA AND CIVIC PARTNERS AlterNet • California Health Report • The California Report • Center for Investigative Reporting •Center for Public Integrity • Commonwealth Club of California • Earth Island Journal • El Tecolote • Grist • KALW Radio’s “City Visions” • KALW Radio’s “Philosophy Talk” • KALW Radio’s “Your Call” • KPFA Radio • KQED Radio’s “Forum” • KQED Science • Mother Jones • National Radio Project • New America Media • Public Policy Institute of California • Richmond Confidential • Richmond Pulse • RISE • San Francisco Neighborhood Newspaper Association • Shareable • World Affairs Council
The Force Awakens
Crossword Puzzle by Andrea Carla Michaels
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1. Stroke gently 4. Sixth sense 7. Word of encouragement 10. “Star Wars” letters 13. Chop 14. 1998 biopic about a model 15. Fish eggs 16. Buzz 17. Latest in the “Stars Wars” franchise 21. Type of type. 22. Barbie’s guy 23. Hosp. readout 24. Chocolate-and-cream cookie 25. Clothing store section 26. Jacket part 28. Co. name ender 29. Mathematical proof letters 30. “Hometown Proud” chain 32. Anonymous John or Jane 33. Bazooka, e.g. 34. Piercing 36. Bogart/Bacall film 38. Visit often 40. Bar quaff 41. Director Ang or Spike 42. Big slice of history 43. “All My ___ Live in Texas” 44. Male turkey 47. Tugs 49. Cunning 51. Handed-down stories 52. Hush-hush fed. org. 53. 52, to Flavius 54. Minds, as a bar 55. 1957 Tyrone Power movie based on a Hemingway novel 59. Tom, Dick and Harry 60. Big inits. in electronic games 61. Couple 62. Pique 63. ’70s self-improvement method 64. “Wow!” 65. Tennis term 66. ’60s counterculture hallucinogenic
DOWN 1. Troop group 2. Incite 3. Rained cats and dogs 4. Designer von Furstenberg 5. Title of respect 6. Prepared luggage 7. Passages 8. Obey the coxswain 9. Shout of approval 10. Pre-shearing bath 11. Medieval prison 12. AOL chitchat 18. Toy store___Schwarz 19. After-dusk time, to a poet 20. Mauna ___ (Hawaiian volcano) 25. Card carrier 26. Name tags 27. Pants part 29. Tech support may have long ones 31. Milky Way, for one
33. General headquarters, for short 34. Mil. bigwig 35. Speller's contest 36. Most minuscule 37. Very quickly 38. Skedaddle 39. Realizes, as a goal 43. Lives and breathes 44. Body part that may be removed 45. Asks for a burger, e.g. 46. Mismanaged, with up 48. ___ in “kangaroo” 50. Artist's medium. 51. Luau offering 54. Horse’s pace 55. Face-music link 56. Popular card game 57. “The Matrix Reloaded” character 58. Be behind Solution on page B8
SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, SUMMER 2016 | SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | A3
San Francisco offers free Wi-Fi at limited locations across the city. A public, fiber-optic broadband network would be a massive project.
Map Designed by Jex Nguyen, Diego Aguila and James Chan // San Francisco State University, Map Illustration by Stamen Maps // Photo By Noah Arroyo // Public Press
Free Internet Access for Everyone in San Francisco Could Cost $867 Million Fiber-optic network would add to limited public Wi-Fi By Erika Cruz Guevarra // KQED News Fix
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report on how to provide free internet access to all San Franciscans found that a public fiber-optic network — while costlier — is more likely to reduce the city’s digital divide, than is a public-private partnership that would leave much of the work up to private compa-
nies. “Access to fast and affordable internet is no longer a luxury. It’s an absolute necessity,” said District 2 Supervisor Mark Farrell, who is leading the effort to provide all San Francisco residents with internet access. “As we are building the infrastructure of the 21st century here in San Francisco, I believe the residents of our city should be the owners.” The question remains, however: Exactly just how much of it should the city own? An advisory panel will determine whether the benefits of a public-private partnership outweigh the costs of a public fiber-optic network. The report by the Board of Supervisors’ budget and legislative analyst, which was requested by Farrell, analyzed the estimated cost of citywide gigabit-speed internet service made available through public, private and public-private partnership models.
“It is impossible to think that our public school students will be ready for the jobs of tomorrow –– even the jobs in our technology community that we’re creating here in San Francisco –– if they don’t even have internet access at home.” Mark Farrell, District 2 Supervisor The report found that a municipal fiber-optic network would cost the city $867 million to build, not including the annual cost of operation. The city had planned to spend only $5.45 million over the next three fiscal years to expand its already-existing fiber-optic network. While the city would maintain ownership of the network’s assets, a public-private partnership would leave the task of constructing, administer-
ing and operating to a consortium of private companies. A public-private partnership, which would split the bill between the city and private companies, would also mean a monthly utility fee of up to $26 would be imposed on owners of residential, commercial and industrial property for baseline internet access. The report determined that a private model, in which the city would assume no responsibility for the construction, operation and administration of a citywide fiber-optic network, is not feasible. Farrell stressed the importance of citywide internet access and accessibility, noting that over 100,000 San Francisco residents do not have access to the internet at home. “They’re disproportionately individuals and households of color, low income and a significant portion of our own public school students,” Farrell said. “It is impossible to think that our public school students will be ready for the jobs of tomorrow — even the jobs in our technology community that we’re creating here in San Francisco — if they don’t even have internet access at home.” The advisory panel plans to come up with recommendations this year. “It seems like every approach that’s talked about has its pluses and minuses,” Farrell said. “It’s time, in my perspective, that we start talking about this as an economic and social right.”
How Is California Doing on Climate Change? Experts praise global warming law’s ambitious goals but worry about costs By Julie Cart // CALmatters
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panel of energy experts gave mostly passing marks to California’s landmark climate change law, but raised concerns about the cost of implementing additional, more stringent, measures. In a spirited but cordial debate earlier this year in Bakersfield, lawmakers, regulators and advocates explored the state of play in the decade since the passage of Assembly Bill 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act, and the increasingly complicated trade-off between renewable energy sources and fossil fuels. “It’s wonderful to have ambitious goals, I appreciate that,” said Cathy Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association. “Let’s not forget that these programs and policies — all meritorious — have impacts to the consumer.” The forum was co-sponsored by CALmatters and the Bakersfield Californian. The panelists agreed that the goals of the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act — to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 — would be met.
Todd Strauss, senior director of policy planning for Pacific Gas and Electric Co., said the utility already derived 30 percent of its power from renewable energy. The most recent state benchmark is 50 percent by 2030. Although Dean Florez of the California Air Resources Board declared AB 32 an “absolute success,” others said the fact that the state’s power providers are on track to reach the renewable goals indicates that lawmakers set the carbon-reduction bar too low. “I give it an ‘F,’” said renewable energy advocate Paul Gipe, when asked to grade the law. “It’s a target that was built on hype. It was unambitious. It will easily be surpassed.” Gipe noted that much of the state’s renewable portfolio was built decades ago and new in-state generation accounts for only 14 percent. With the price of a barrel of oil plummeting, to $30 from $100 a few years ago, the pace and cost of weaning California off inexpensive, carbon-heavy fuels needs to be constantly calculated, panelists said. Gov. Jerry Brown’s goal is to reduce gasoline consumption by half by 2030. “I think we can hit the 50 percent goal with ease,” said state Sen. Jean Fuller, (R-Bakersfield). “The problem is, what human behavioral changes do we want to make in our society and how much do we want to pay for it?”
Fuller said that layoffs in the energy sector hit the Central Valley hard and that residents of the economically depressed region would bear the brunt of energy-reduction mandates. Geography and long distances between remote towns and business hubs mean Kern County drivers are on the road more than motorists in urban areas, Fuller said. “How are we going to truck our groceries? How are we going to move our [agricultural products]?” She said San Francisco is an example of a region that might easily reduce fuel consumption. “They have a harbor next door, they don’t have to truck stuff long distances. They can use electric cars,” Fuller said. “Our region is going to be hit the hardest so we have to speak up the most. Can we hit [the fuel reduction goal]? Yes. Some people will hit it with very little pain. Our area will hit it with a great deal of pain.” Next to Hawaii, California has the nation’s highest gas tax, Reheis-Boyd said, amounting to about 60 to 70 cents a gallon. She warned of unintended consequences should the state’s 126 million cars go on a fuel diet. “Our entire state infrastructure is built on the gas tax,” she said. “We haven’t figured out yet what will happen when we start to have less consumption.”
THANK YOU, STUDENTS OF SFSU JOURNALISM DEPARTMENT! The Public Press thanks the students of San Francisco State University’s News Publication Design class for their hard work creating this issue’s A Section during the Spring 2016 semester. We congratulate you for learning the skills of layout design, and employing them as a team to help keep print journalism alive! Page A3: Diego Aguila, James Chan, Jex Nguyen · A4: Sara Chretien, Jacqueline Haudek, Stephanie LaRue · A5: Christian Ramirez Balanzar, Nicolas Rincon A6: Liz Carranza, Ronald Epps, Jennah Feeley · A7: Erika Correa, Alex Muhn, Joseph (JJ) Valdez · A8: Cassandra Dimas, Desmond Miller, Sheena Tadifa
A4 | SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, SUMMER 2016
Grappling With Homelessness on BART, Station by Station Crisis intervention consultant makes the rounds to see if he can help By Holly McDede // KALW Crosscurrents
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here’s been a 45 percent increase in mental health-related calls to BART police since 2011. When officers don’t know what to do, they call Armando Sandoval. As BART’s community outreach liaison, Sandoval spends a big chunk of his mornings walking around downtown San Francisco BART stations, waking up homeless people and asking how he can help them. I meet Sandoval while he’s conducting a sweep of Powell Street Station one morning. “We’re just identifying some individuals who might need assistance,” Sandoval says. “As soon as BART opens, at 4 o’clock in the morning, we are conducting, you know, sweeps, for making sure that every entrance is safe, for the station agent and the customers that are coming in.” Sandoval says safety is paramount. That includes safety for the homeless people his team of police officers are waking up. After police shot and killed Oscar Grant, an unarmed man, in 2011, an independent auditor suggested that the agency make 127 policy changes. Hiring a crisis intervention consultant like Sandoval was one of them. Many of the people he meets struggle with addiction, mental illness or both. “With every level of contact here, we first go to safety, assess if the person is safe, just to make sure we know if they need medical or psychiatric attention,” Sandoval says. The team spots five sleeping homeless men and then splits up. Sandoval stops by one homeless man he’s woken up many times before. He asks him how he’s doing. “Staying warm, staying out of the elements?” Sandoval asks. The man seems too sleepy to know how to respond. It’s now a little after 8 a.m., and the officers say there were roughly 30 people sleeping in the corridors of the station just a few hours ago. That’s a normal number. “It’s well lit. It’s patrolled. It’s warm. It’s dry, you know?” Sandoval said. Technically, BART has an ordinance that makes it illegal for people to sleep, sit or lie down at Powell Street Station. But Sandoval sees people doing exactly that every day on his job. “There’s phases. There’s a morning crowd, an afternoon crowd, there’s an evening crowd,” Sandoval says. “But when we say repeats, it’s the same day, same people, kind of a groundhog effect.” There are the homeless veterans who are long overdue for social services, the people who cling to bottles of hard liquor as they sleep and the couples who cling to each other underneath a blanket. There are people suffering from mental illness. There are people who know they need help and people who are in denial. I ask Enrique Alfonso, the regular Sandoval woke up, if he slept at the BART station last night. “Here? No. I try not to sleep here at all,” Alfonso says. But he says he does sleep here. Sometimes he’s so tired he just passes out. And however he got here, he isn’t angry that Sandoval woke him up. “It’s a transportation network that needs to be open every day for customers, and unfortunately sometimes it’s seen as a refugee zone,” Alfonso says. But he’s not planning to go anywhere, either. Sandoval asks Alfonso if he’s had a chance to stop by St. Boniface, a Tenderloin church where homeless people can sleep. He also asks if he’s been in touch with Swords to Ploughshares, a group that helps veterans. Alfonso tells Sandoval he has too many friends who live on the street to try to change.
BART has an ordinance that makes it illegal for people to sleep, sit or lie down at stations. Creative Commons image by Flickr user Franco Folini “There are resources, but it does take quite a bit to commit,” Sandoval says as we walk away. “The lifestyles that this population are attached to are difficult to let go, for a variety of reasons.” After his morning rounds, Sandoval follows up with people whom BART officers have put on involuntary psychiatric holds, and he takes calls from other officers who need advice on dealing with the mentally ill. He also connects with different social service agencies to talk about ways to help solve San Francisco’s homelessness problem. “It’s definitely a bigger battle than what law enforcement can come up with as a remedy,” he says. At Civic Center, the officers wake up another homeless man, Michael Kripal. He tells them it’s hard for him to access services without a cellphone. The officer tells him they’re passing out free cellphones in the Mission with cheap plans. Kripal already knows.
“They call them ObamaPhones,” he says, as in phones that are cheap. “If that’s what you need to get some services, that’s what you need,” the officer replies. “That way you get out of the streets.” “It’s too damn cold to be out there,” Kripal says. The man’s a veteran, and so is the officer. The officer uses that to connect. “You gotta help yourself. You ever heard of the squeaky wheel gets the grease?” “You mean hurry up and wait?” Kripal replies. I ask him how he ended up sleeping in Civic Center BART Station. “I’ve been homeless pretty much since I’ve been out of prison a year and a half ago,” Kripal says. He adds that there are resources to help veterans, but that’s not the issue.
“I have some kind of chemical dependency, some addiction problems, so it’s hard for me to make appointments sometimes,” Kripal says. He tells me he stays awake, until he can’t anymore. He sleeps where he can. When I talk to Kripal, Sandoval watches closely, measuring if Kripal is a person he can engage with. Sandoval looks on and BART keeps moving. “I’m watching you interact and engage, so it’s my measure. I always do that. If they’re able to engage with an officer, there’s an underlining of being able to work with them,” Sandoval says. But just like the commuters, BART officers have to keep moving. We’re all in transit here, except for those who take refuge in the train station to lie still for a few hours to get some sleep, and the police officers who stop, for a few seconds, to ask why.
How Media Coverage on Homelessness Falls Short (and What Reporters Can Do About It) Panel of experts offers advice, such as providing context and avoiding stereotypes
By Hye-Jin Kim and Meka Boyle // Public Press
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n many newsrooms, “the homeless” is a well-worn catchphrase for the often-anonymous people on the street or in shelters. But many professionals who work with these populations find the term offensive and misleading. “People shouldn’t be defined by their housing status,” said Jeff Kositsky, director of the city’s new Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. “We don’t walk around and call people ‘the opulently housed,’ so I don’t think we should be calling people ‘the homeless.’” In an effort to increase media awareness and sensitivity, the Renaissance Journalism Center and the Community and Media Lab at San Francisco State University organized a June 10 briefing on homelessness in the Bay Area. Journalists heard from 21 panelists. The take-aways included eight key reporting tips:
1. AVOID STEREOTYPING HOMELESS PEOPLE Reporters should “give respect to the issue at hand by contextualizing the problem, describing its complexity and history, not just a story of cynical caricatures,” said Martha Ryan, executive director of the Homeless Prenatal Program. Not everyone who needs stable housing can be categorized. For example, quasi-homeless immigrant families who live out of their cars, or in make-shift housing units usually in the back of garages and yards: “How are they factored into the overall homeless population?” asked Sonny Le, an instructor for the nonprofit management program at San Francisco State.
2. SHED LIGHT ON THOSE WHO ARE ‘INVISIBLE’ Homeless families and youth are invisible to government agencies, Ryan said. Mothers often do not report their status out of fear their children will be taken away. While poverty is a major contributor, many families wind up homeless to escape domestic violence. Matt Bartek, program manager of Haight Street Referral Center, said homeless youth do not reveal their true ages because they are afraid they will be returned to their parents or state institutions they fled. The people who come through the outreach center for housing, food and job assistance frequently wait in limbo until they turn 18 and become eligible for housing programs, at which point they may have incurred too many sit-lie citations to be eligible for many of the options, Bartek said.
3. EXPLAIN WHY A RACIAL DISPARITY EXISTS Thirty-six percent of those who are homeless are black, while they make
up only 7 percent of the overall population, according to the San Francisco Homeless Count Report in 2015. “We can’t keep reporting and talking about homelessness without explaining race,” said Dr. Margot Kushel, a professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco. “San Francisco has a tiny AfricanAmerican community, but if you walked into our shelters it doesn’t look like a tiny African-American community.” Black families struggled to accumulate wealth during the 20th century amid racist banking policies, exclusionary zoning rules and workplace discrimination. More likely to lack intergenerational wealth, African-Americans have a harder time paying for housing. Recent studies from the book Evicted showed that black applicants are less likely to receive offers of affordable housing than white applicants with worse credentials.
4. LEARN SOME HISTORY OF U.S. WELFARE PROGRAMS Homelessness as we know it today is a relatively new phenomenon, said Stacy Murphy, a research director at California Housing Partnership Corporation. From 1980 to 2005, the United States lost 4.5 million manufacturing jobs, and welfare cuts allowed many people to slip from the middle class onto the streets. In California, 23 of 100 families below the poverty line have access to welfare, Murphy said, and affordable housing has declined 66.5 percent since 2008, the beginning of the Great Recession. “While Reagan’s welfare cuts exacerbated the issue, the housing crisis was created primarily by federal and state retreats from investments in affordable housing that has been going on since Jimmy Carter was in the White House,” Kositsky said.
5. KEEP IN MIND THE CITY’S CRIMINALIZATION POLICY San Francisco has a history of laws criminalizing homelessness, including a 1981 ban on sleeping in parks and the sit-lie law enacted in 2010. This policy of criminalization continues to trap people in the “cycle of homelessness,” Bartek said. In San Francisco, 90 percent of citations go unpaid, resulting in a warrant. Multiple warrants lead to jail time and a criminal record, makingit difficult to find a job and save money for permanent housing. “Police citations perpetuate homelessness,” said Chris Herring, a doctoral candidate at the University of California-Berkeley. One study, from UC-Berkeley, revealed that San Francisco has the most vagrancy laws among the 58 most populated cities in California. The city has 23 police officers employed full time to enforce sit-lie laws and “shuffle homeless people around,” Herring said. Though Kositsky agreed that arresting homeless people and “just moving
them around” was not a “common sense” solution, he said the same of allowing people to build shelters on the sidewalks.
6. LINK HOUSING STABILITY TO MENTAL HEALTH Mental illness can be both the cause and the result of homelessness. In 1963, the Community Mental Health Act replaced public psychiatric institutions with community-based service providers. But many communities were not prepared for the influx of patients following the Reagan administration’s welfare cuts in 1981. According to the 2015 city report on homelessness, 35 percent of those living on the streets suffer from psychiatric and emotional conditions. For the chronically homeless, the numbers are even higher, at 55 percent. “The mentally impaired and disabled should be the responsibility of the federal government,” said Dr. Joshua Bamberger, a clinical professor at UCSF who has worked for the city health department since 1991.
7. LINK HOUSING STABILITY TO PRIMARY CARE “Homelessness is devastating to health,” said Kushel of UCSF. “Chronic diseases are difficult to care for when people are homeless. How can you keep your insulin in a refrigerator, plug your sleep-apnea machine into the wall, when you’re homeless?” She added that in general, people who live on the streets age much faster and have a shorter life expectancy.
8. FOCUS ON SOLUTIONS, NOT JUST PROBLEMS The media were criticized for being too cynical in their coverage of local responses to homelessness. “Another news article that just says, ‘They’re not doing enough,’ is so defeatist,” Francis said. Instead of focusing on what’s not working, journalists should ask what is working and how it could be scaled up. “Exposing the problem isn’t always enough. People and society need ways to respond,” said Rikha Sharma Rani, a director at the Solutions Journalism Network. Solutions-based reporting sets benchmarks for what is and is not possible to hold people accountable for solving the problem to the best of their capabilities. This is a condensed version of a story published online, at sfpr.es/coveringhomelessness. It was part of a partnership among Bay Area news organizations, who all agreed to cover the topic of homelessness on July 29. See sfhomelessproject.com.
SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, SUMMER 2016 | SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | A5
Tenant Advocates Denounce Startup Offering Buyout Services Critics fear that renters will be on losing end of deals By Laura Waxmann // Mission Local
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ent Masters, a startup offering to help tenants willing to move out of rent-controlled housing figure out what they would be owed in buyout money, has come under fire from the city’s housing rights community. In a buyout, a tenant agrees to vacate a unit in exchange for a payout by the landlord. Negotiations in this process can be lengthy and taxing, and tenants are often left with a compensation that sounds big, but vanishes quickly as the tenants search for new housing. Rent Masters founder Brian Bensch, however, argues that there are situations in which both parties can benefit equally from a buyout. His company, he said, taps into a “unique but necessary” market by using technology to empower tenants. He cautioned, however, that his service and buyouts are not for lifelong San Francisco residents. “If you want to stay in the city, any lump sum of money isn’t going to be enough to compensate you for leaving a rentcontrolled apartment,” he said. Instead, Bensch said, “this service could make sense to you,” if you are a newcomer who has rented a place for a few years and are ready to leave San Francisco “to go back to the Midwest” or to “buy a place in the suburbs.” “We’re looking to facilitate deals between landlord and tenant where there is truly a mutually beneficial interest,” said Bensch, who launched his company out of a downtown co-working space in February. But tenant advocates are wary of the service and wondered about the presumption that it was needed. “If someone already wants to leave, they’ll leave. That’s what people have always done. So why suddenly are we throwing this buyout thing in there?” said Tommi Avicolli Mecca, of the Housing Rights Committee, an organization that provides free counseling on tenants’ rights. “I don’t want to see this become a business.” “There is no reason for a landlord to give money to [a tenant] who was truly leaving voluntarily,” said Deepa Varma, executive director of the San Francisco Tenants Union. “The whole reason the tenant is getting money, new or old, is because the landlord wants their unit and the tenant doesn’t want to give it up. There is no need for a middleman linking scared tenants to greedy landlords and taking a cut.” Any unit built before 1979 — about 170,000 units — remain under rent control in San Francisco. Once a unit is vacated, its rental price may rise to market level for the next tenant, but annual rent increases for the new tenant are limited by rent control laws. Bensch, who said he expected “some level of debate” about his company, knows his service isn’t for everyone, and a disclaimer on his website makes that clear. Still, the entrepreneur views his service as being at the forefront of measuring the effect of buyouts on the housing crisis. Bensch promised to share his data with the San Francisco Rent Board and the Tenants Union to comply with a buyout ordinance passed last year to ensure transparency by requiring buyouts to be dis-
Rental units built before 1979 – about 170,000 of them – remain under rent control. Laura Wenus // Mission Local their rent is comclosed to the Rent Board. “If someone already wants to leave, what pared to what I can get for “With respect to lowthey’ ll leave. That’s what people it. It’s an equation.” income tenants for whom Still, tenant advocates rent control is most imporhave always done. So why suddenly balked at what they say tant, we have absolutely zero intention of doing are we throwing this buyout thing in is a businessman turning a law that is meant as a such deals,” he said. there? I don’t want to see this protection for tenants into Geoffrey Squires, a a cash grab. landlord in the Mission, become a business.” A fear shared across the said that it is important board by housing activfor both landlords and tenTommi Avicolli Mecca ists is that Rent Masters, ants to know their rights, Housing Rights Committee which offers to negotibut that tenant-initiated ate relocation payments buyouts do happen and upward of $20,000, could that in the end, it is up to be leading inexperienced tenants into being low-balled the landlord to agree to a deal or not. when it comes to accepting buyouts. “If [a rent-controlled unit] is the only asset that some As a tenant lawyer and law educator, Ora Prochopeople have, and they can go wherever they were thinkvnick said she has negotiated six-figure buyouts for ing of going anyway with some money in their pockets, rent-controlled units, and fears that renters who turn to why wouldn’t they?” said Squires, adding that although an online service to sign away the rights to their home he has a good relationship with his tenants, he would may be selling themselves short. most likely refrain from offering a buyout. Prochovnick and others also questioned the wisdom of “If they said $20,000 is the difference between them working on a buyout without the counsel of an experistaying or going somewhere else, I might consider it,” enced lawyer. said Squires. “It depends if the unit needs work and
Navigating a Path From Homeless to Housed Mission District hotel is next step for those leaving shelters By Sam Harnett // KQED News Fix Photo by Hyunha Kim // Public Press
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enay Nonog does not have a bed. She decided to get a futon instead. Every morning she folds the futon into a couch and tucks away her blankets. This way visitors like me have somewhere to sit. Nonog likes guests, but she is not used to welcoming them into her home. This is the first one she has had in six years. Nonog is living in a room at the old Henry Hotel at Sixth and Mission streets, one of the city’s toughest corners. The city has collaborated with Episcopal Community Services to lease the run-down SRO and transform it into supportive housing for the homeless. Nonog says she feels blessed to have a home for the first time in six years. Many of the new residents, like Nonog, are coming from the city’s Navigation Center. The year-old shelter has different rules from most and promises a quick transition from the street to housing. The city is touting the shelter as an innovative approach to reducing homelessness. City officials are so confident about the Navigation Center that San Francisco is in the process of opening a second one, along with 200 more supportive housing units for those transitioning out of these shelters. The idea is that this housing, like the old Henry Hotel, will be a next step for those leaving the shelters. Nonog moved into her room about a month ago. The place is about 8 feet by 12 feet. The room is packed with her belongings — her collection of baseball hats, a stand with cosmetics, a television. There is a little sink, which is great, Nonog says, because she can hand-wash her clothes. She tells me not to look in her closet. It’s too messy. Near the end of her six years of homelessness, a man she thought was her friend started abusing her. She had to get off the street, she says. “I was determined because I was tired,” she says, “This foot says, ‘I’m tired.’ This one says, ‘Me, too.’ I’m sorry to get sentimental. It’s just a blessing, you know, that I did this, this far.” Nonog went to the Navigation Center, which is located at an old public school site on Mission Street between 15th and 16th streets. Residents are expected to work with case managers to get signed up for benefits and housing. Nonog followed the rules, she says, so after about a month the shelter staff sent her to the hotel. They gave her a little housewarming package before she left — a toaster oven, soup pot and some other kitchen supplies. “I love to cook,” Nonog says. Nonog also brought some things she had been carrying around with her for years. She has a sound system she found on the street. She tied it in plastic bags and let it sit for a week to kill any bugs that could be living inside it. Next to the sound system are all the CDs she’s picked up over the years. At the top of the stack are Beethoven and Al Green, two of her favorites. The Navigation Center is designed for the chronically homeless, people who have been on the street for over a year. As of this spring, 142 people
have passed through the center into housing. That is a fraction of what the city estimates to be about 1,700 chronically homeless in San Francisco. Sam Dodge is director of Mayor Ed Lee’s office of Housing Opportunity, Partnerships & Engagement, or HOPE. “We’re struggling, clearly, on the street with so much inflow, so many people becoming homeless,” he says. Dodge says the Navigation Center is just a start, a way to show that the city can actually address homelessness. It pursued a lease of the Henry Hotel in part to provide a next step for those coming out of the shelter. The Henry “is not the end for them,” Dodge says. “It’s just a vehicle that they can land in permanent housing and then work on for the rest of their lives for whatever goals they are pursuing.” Dodge says there is no quick fix. The chronically homeless often do not have IDs, bank accounts or health care. They suffer from physical disabilities, mental illness or the trauma that comes with living on the street. The Henry Hotel is now operated by Episcopal Community Services, which provides on-site case managers to help out residents. Loretta Olivencia runs the support services at the Henry Hotel. She says that new tenants have many questions. Some are big ones like how to manage money, get health care or apply for a job. But sometimes residents just need to know where to buy furniture and food. The Henry Hotel has not always been a place to go for answers. It has a dark history. There are bullet holes in the front facade. And the furniture in the rooms is still bolted to the floor. But the building has been made over — cleaned and repainted. For many here, like Phillip Torres, it is the best housing they have had in years. When I ask Torres to introduce himself, he says he is “a 31-year old Puerto Rican male from San Francisco.” Torres says he has been homeless since he was 11. Torres is showing me his room. It takes him a minute to open the door. He is not used to using a key. “When I walked in here I was like: ‘Wow, this is what I was looking for all my life.’ ” Torres is in a relationship with Nonog, but they are staying in separate rooms, getting their own lives together. Torres says that for years he has had no real family. He relied on a gang for support and often had to fend for himself. “I’ve slept under cardboard,” Torres says. “I’ve went couch-hopping. I’ve went into abandoned homes. I’ve put a .357 to my head because I wasn’t loved.” Torres tells me there were four times he prepared to shoot himself. We are sitting on his bed. On a side table there is a yellow notepad. It’s opened to the sketch of a flower, a tulip. Torres has written rap lyrics next to his drawing. He says the song is all about leaving gang life behind. Torres says the hotel is only temporary. He wants to move with Nonog into their own place and have a normal life. He doesn't know exactly how they will do that yet.
With a background in marketing and development, Bensch does not claim to be a lawyer and says he does not expect to work with low-income tenants. Instead, he sees his company as offering information and providing a negotiating service. For legal matters, he relies on a handful of attorneys. For legal issues that are out of his realm, clients will be referred to one of these trusted partners, he said. Scott Weaver, a tenant attorney, said that it sounded as if Bensch is offering legal advice without a license. “And if he’s not, then he should be practicing law if he’s advising people about their rights in buyouts. If you’re going to do this right, you have to know the law, you have to understand risks.” After witnessing several close friends engage in buyouts, Bensch said he saw an opportunity to serve a group of people who may have been approached with a buyout offer by their landlord and who are unlikely to remain in San Francisco indefinitely. Though admittedly small, this group could include the city’s wave of tech newcomers, recent college graduates, and young professionals who have lived in rent-controlled apartments for at least four years, said Bensch. Bensch said he is consciously serving this small niche and has no plans of displacing people who do not wish to leave. With roughly 70 percent of the city’s housing protected under rent control, the entrepreneur added that “even a single-digit percentage of that number turning over” could yield a modest profit. A new company, Rent Masters works similarly to an online do-it-yourself tax service — a $99 deposit fee gives renters access to a 30-minute consultation and supplies them with a basic contract template to present to their landlords. For a more tailored representation, Bensch charges 10 to 20 percent of the buyout on top of the initial deposit. “We will basically go to bat for [the tenant],” said Bensch. A free estimate of how much a tenancy is worth based on market-rate rents in the neighborhood and the building’s “specs” is what Bensch calls the service’s “secret sauce” — a formula that he has made accessible on the Rent Masters website as a free public resource. Prochovnick, who also serves as a pro-bono tenant lawyer at the Tenants Union, advises renters to think twice before using a service that charges for any buyout service. “It’s very simple to determine what your tenancy is worth – take your rent, and see what the market-rate comparables in your neighborhood are going for,” said Prochovnick. Paul Cohen, executive director of the Eviction Defense Collaborative, an organization that works to protect affordable housing and has a sliding-scale policy when it comes to service fees, is also skeptical of Rent Masters’ payment structure. “If you want to save affordable housing, you would discourage buyouts entirely and not capitalize on them,” said Cohen. “Anytime I hear about a fee being charged to do something that is not very well spelled out as far as whose side people are on, the renter should beware.”
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Infestation Killing Thousands of Trees in California Beetles are the culprits in the demise of pines weakened by climate change and record drought Story and Photo by Angela Johnston // KALW Crosscurrents
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f you need help finding dead trees and bark beetles, Tom Smith is your guy. He works for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, identifying and managing tree diseases and pests. He calls himself a “bugs and rot” man. Smith says if you want to find bugs and rot close to the Bay Area, head up to Mount Diablo, in Contra Costa County. So we meet there, in a parking lot at the base of the mountain. He points up a steep hill to a green pine forest blemished by brown, dying trees. “Those are evergreen trees,” Smith says. “When they’re brown like this, they are dead, they’re not coming back.” Smith grabs his pocketknife and we hike up the hill. “What we’ve got here is actually the northernmost stand of Coulter pine in California, and it’s getting really walloped by what are called ips engraver beetles.” Ips engravers are just one of many species of bark beetles. “The big one in California is Western pine beetle and it’s the one that’s killed, we’re guessing, around 29 million pine trees,” he says. “That’s a lot of dead trees.” Smith says that estimate is on the low side. The dying ones out here on Mount Diablo probably weren’t counted when the state did a flyover survey last October. Usually, 1 percent of trees die each year, due to insects, disease, overcrowding or fire. Right now, Smith says we’re dealing with annual mortality rates in the 20 percent to 80 percent range. Climate change and the past four years of record drought have made the trees weaker. “The bark beetles really like trees that are under stress, and the drought puts the trees under stress,” Smith says. We eventually reach a group of small pine trees. The needles on some of them are green; others have a singed look. Their branches droop, and some have no leaves at all. “In fact, we might be able to see some beetles on them — they’re feeding right under the bark,” Smith says. “Most of them are about the size of a grain of rice or smaller, blackish in color — pretty nondescript-looking unless you know what you’re looking for. But they’re attacking it by the thousands.” Bark beetles can fly up to 2 miles to find a tree to attack. Once they find one, they bore their way inside. If the beetle is successful, it releases pheromones that tell other beetles to come on over. Inside the tree, the beetles eat the inner layer of bark. “And they’ll girdle the tree so no water and nutrients are moving up and down the tree anymore,” Smith says, pointing to a tree that’s on its way out. If you look closely at the bark, you can see tiny holes
Tom Smith inspects a Coulter pine for bark beetles.
where the beetles have bored through. Smith cuts into one of the trees with his pocketknife. Trees that have been attacked by bark beetles have squiggly carvings inside the bark called galleries. They’re strangely beautiful, even though it means they’re a sign of the tree’s impending death. Smith can’t tell me how many trees on Mount Diablo are infested with bark beetles. But he does say it’s nothing compared to how many trees are dying in the Southern Sierra Nevada — almost 80 percent. And right now, the dead trees are a major fire hazard. “They’re around all these communities, and they’re just going to sit there and be more fuel that can burn in more fires, more huge fires in the future. So I’m really concerned [about] what we’re going to do with all this material, and I don’t have answers right now,” Smith says. That’s where the state comes in. Last fall, Gov. Jerry Brown issued an emergency proclamation urging city, regional and state agencies to bypass environmental regulations to cut down trees — ones that have already burned and ones that are losing the bark beetle battle and in danger of burning later. But right now, sawmills around the state are completely full, and there aren’t enough bioenergy facilities to turn 29 million dead trees into fuel. So the state is looking to create new markets
for dead California trees. And you don’t have to look further than Lake County, two hours North San Francisco, to see this happening. On Cobb Mountain in Lake County, the land still bears the scars from last fall’s devastating Valley Fire. Most of the hills are still charred black. There are patches of green forest here and there where a sudden change in wind steered the flames in a different direction. But these green, surviving trees may not be here for much longer, because in Lake County bark beetles are killing most of what is left. Danny Prather is a fifth-generation timber operator. Basically, that means he has a permit to cut down trees. This year, he says, more than half the trees he’s cutting down are ones that have already been infested by beetles. “Even with that, and removing the ones with active beetles still in it, they still come back and spread,” Prather says. Today, he’s cutting down, or felling, a few ponderosa pine trees to thin out the forest near his house. A sparser group of trees makes it harder for bark beetles to move from tree to tree. Prather says mills in California don’t want to buy pine; it’s not as valuable as redwood or cedar. And because the local mills are all full, he — along with the rest of the
state — has to find other markets for the wood. This tree and the dozens of others he’ll fell this year will be put on a truck bed, transported to the Port of Richmond, put on a boat and shipped to China. Prather will make just enough money to break even. “They’re paying more than our own mills, which I don’t know how that can work out financially; but more importantly it gets our dead wood out of the forest, which is a good thing,” says Prather. Clearing trees that are already dead is a good thing for preventing fires. But some experts think we shouldn’t be so quick to cut the green ones down and ship them away. “One of the concerns is that if people cut trees instead of letting the beetles kill the trees, in the long run that may actually interfere with the ability of these forests and these pine species to adapt to the future of climate change,” says UC Berkeley environmental law professor Eric Biber. Biber co-authored a paper with environmental scientist Diana Six that suggested waiting to see what bark beetles could tell us about climate change, and how trees might fight back. “The argument would be that the trees that survive bark beetle infestations are likely to be adapted to better resist. Those are the trees that will reproduce going forward, so over time the beetles will select for the trees that are best able to resist them,” Biber says. Basically, they want to let natural selection run its course. “We will not be as effective in selecting for bark beetle resistances as the beetles themselves will be.” So, Biber suggests slowing down and considering all the options. But he admits it’s hard to sit by when beautiful green vistas around California are starting to fade away. “A lot of places in ecosystems that we’re used to living with, that we associate looking a certain way and feeling a certain way will start changing, and we’ ll have these urges to do something about it. And it’s not clear to me that we will be doing good things,” says Biber. On the ride back down from Danny Prather’s land on Cobb Mountain, I pass the Boggs Mountain Demonstration State Forest. It was a public recreation area, but there was a lot of research that took place on the mountain, too. Now it’s completely charred — 90 percent of the trees burned in the Valley Fire. For many here in Lake County, the view is a constant reminder of the huge loss the fire brought to this community. But some people see an opportunity. The forest could be a blank slate: a place to plant and test different trees that could resist future bark beetle attacks. And maybe, to find a way to manage the bark beetle-fueled epidemic by planting trees instead of cutting them down.
San Francisco Joins the Water Trail Baywide network adds facilities for boaters to explore marine vistas By Melanie Hess // Bay Nature
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slais Creek Park sits on a small creekside beach just off Highway 280, on the outskirts of San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood. A small patch of sand and marshy shrubbery that slopes gently to the water, the beach is surrounded on all sides by signs of industrial development: an abandoned five-story copra crane, warehouses and a heavy metal drawbridge that hardly ever has need to rise. Islais Creek, a once-thriving waterway bottled into a dead-end channel, has served many needs through San Francisco’s history — transport during the Gold Rush, a channel for industrial and wartime trade during World War II. Now, though, the creek has added a designation: In September, it became the first official San Francisco site on the San Francisco Bay Area Water Trail. The Water Trail is meant to serve as a kind of marine parallel to the well-established Bay Trail, and when completed would offer paddlers and recreational boaters sites to launch boats or haul out, as well as bathrooms and other facilities, to enable longer trips around the bay. The trail added two sites in December and is expanding in 2016 to add more, says Ben Botkin, a planner with the Association of Bay Area Governments, which leads the Water Trail project. Bo Barnes, the president and founder of Kayakers Unlimited, and Fran Sticha, a longtime member of the group, helped us fit our spray skirts and life vests on the beach of Islais Creek. Barnes emphasized the importance of knowing the paddling conditions for the day. Currents, winds, tides — even on the often placid-looking bay, it’s foolish and can be downright dangerous to embark on a paddle without knowing what you will be facing. “When people lived in Nature, they understood these things,” Barnes said, opening up an app on his phone. “But we have electronics now so there’s still no excuse.”
REQUIREMENTS FOR WATER TRAIL SITES • • • • •
Waterfront access Bathroom Facilities to store boats General accessibility features – such as a launch point and parking. Elsewhere around the bay, Water Trail sites also have facilities for overnight camping.
Botkin, four Kayakers Unlimited members and I pushed off into calm water off Islais Creek Park. The air was still and though it was still early, the sun had burned away residual fog and promised a clear, warm day. Egrets soared close over the surface of the water as the kayaks cut through the protected creek, passing industrial service towers and under a low bridge that forced us to duck our heads. A salty wind was behind us, just strong enough to provide a boost. As we paddled, the narrow channel broadened and steep concrete walls replaced the marshy sand banks. Approaching the mouth of the creek, the wind picked up and the water became choppier, slapping insistently against the side of the kayaks. “Get ready for the bay!” Barnes yelled as his kayak emerged from behind the protection of the concrete jetty and entered open water. This particular morning, the waters were calm, the winds were mild, and the air was comfortingly warm — an exception of a day, the kayakers assured me. The giant towers of Pacific Gas and Electric’s decommissioned Potrero power plant rose up over a small cove called Warm Water Cove — another site Botkin has considered for the Water Trail. The park contains abandoned warehouses and graffiti, and has become a gathering ground for DIY music and touring musicians. Nicknamed “Toxic Creek,” the site has been undergoing restoration and cleanup efforts in recent years. It would still require several specific assets — a boat launch and storage facilities, for example — to be considered for an official Water Trail designation. For the kayakers, the experience of being on the bay in their human-powered crafts is communion with nature, even when surrounded by the urban landscape. “I love it — nobody’s out here except seals and birds,” said kayaker Mark More. San Francisco’s bayfront legacy of industry and commercialism pervades the view. But even amid the towers of the power plant and the industrial concrete warehouses rising up on either side, the deep blue-green waters of the bay remain populated with fish, birds and seals. Unpredictable currents and constantly changing winds remind the smart kayaker that the bay is a force of nature that for all of the development hasn’t been tamed. Paddling north past Pier 70, we approached Crane Cove Park, where a warehouse had been torn down for multiuse development. Currently, the lot is conspicuously empty — a flat concrete slab framed by two multistory cranes — but Water Trail advocates like Kayakers Unlimited are helping to incorporate boat launch ramps and storage facilities into the development plan, which could allow it to be added to the Water Trail once the project is finished. In an area as developed as San Francisco, ev-
ery ramp counts. “You can only get into the water at certain points,” Botkin said. It’s not just the developed waterfront that’s a challenge to expanding the Water Trail: Even in areas where there’s water access, it has traditionally been devoted to commercial and government barges, which don’t mix well with small human-powered canoes and kayaks. To become an officially designated part of the Water Trail, a site needs waterfront access, a bathroom, facilities to store boats and general accessibility features such as a launch point and parking. Elsewhere around the bay, Water Trail sites also have facilities for overnight camping. The longterm goal is a site every 2 to 3 miles and places to stay overnight every 8 miles. “The idea is if you’re going from place to place, where are you going to stay?” Botkin said. “It’s like backpacking in the Sierra Nevada — but instead, you’re kayaking.” North of Crane Cove Park we enter China Basin and then McCovey Cove behind AT&T Park, where two huge barges loom over us. As we edge around the nearest one, a sea lion pops up out the water to take a look at us, so close to the kayaks that someone could have reached out to pat its head. The sea lion submerges again and re-emerges suddenly with a burst of power, landing on the lower hull of the barge, where it settles down to soak up the sun and watch us paddle by. For the first time since beginning the paddle, we encounter other people on the bay — in kayaks and smaller motor-powered boats, floating outside the stadium to enjoy the festivities of a late-season baseball game. The smell of butter, popcorn and hot dogs wafts from the vendors, and cannons explode spectacularly over our heads. The slight turbulence of the bay fades away as we turn up Mission Creek. We pass the row of charmingly dilapidated houseboats that fronts the shiny, new, glass facilities of UCSF’s Mission Bay campus. The sounds of the stadium and the bay fade again, replaced by mostly quiet, except for the interruption of squawking gulls. Mission Creek would be yet another good San Francisco Water Trail site, Botkin says. It has a low freeboard dock, an important and rare boon for kayakers. Most docks on the bay are high freeboard that accommodate motorboats, but make it more difficult for paddlers to climb in and out of their water-level boats. It would be a nice spot, Botkin says, for novice kayakers to easily launch and gain paddling experience without the hazard of the bay, where traffic and currents can be dicey. “Trying to incorporate a variety of experiences is a great part of the Water Trail,” he said. Mission Creek could be a “destination” location, Botkin says, meaning its main use would be for people to hop off their boat. Other such sites include Schoonmaker
Locations where recreational boaters can access water. The Water Trail is meant to serve as a kind of marine parallel to the well-established Bay Trail. Map Illustration: Stamen Maps // Creative Commons, Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA, ABAG, State Coastal Conservancy, Designed by Erika Rae Lawson.
Beach in Sausalito, where it’s possible to pull a kayak onto the sand and have a picnic. Water Trail organizers have also worked with the owners and managers of historic ship bunks around the bay, such as Cass Gidley Marina in Sausalito, to add boatbuilding workshops, boat launches and campsites to existing facilities. In other words, not only would travelers be able to attend unique and historical programs on how boats were built, but also they might get the chance to stay on an old one. “It would be a neat experience to bunk up on an old ship,” Botkin said. But overall, access to gear and the water are the Water Trail’s top priorities. “Having a lot of clubs, storage options and rental
facilities are all important for getting more people into the sport,” Botkin said. So far, the Association of Bay Area Governments has approved 14 sites for the Water Trail. Botkin said that much of the past decade has been spent figuring out how to structure the trail and get bureaucratic approval for new sites, and he hopes now to grow it more rapidly. The Trail has no official trajectory, but, Botkin said, “the goal is as we’re able to get more sites designated, there will be a natural trend towards developing certain routes for trips involving one-night stays, or two-night stays.” But that’s in the future. For today, there’s nowhere to camp and nowhere to stop, so we turn our kayaks and fight the currents to head back to Islais Creek.
SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, SUMMER 2016 | SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | A7
Many Lyft and Uber Riders Also Use Public Transit, Study Says
PERCENTAGE OF TRANSIT USERS BY INCOME LEVEL
Study shows public transit agencies could learn from high-tech startups to attract riders By Byan Goebel // KQED News
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ne of the big questions surrounding Uber and Lyft’s growing popularity in cities has been: Are ride services taking passengers away from public transportation? Now comes a study conducted for the American Public Transportation Association. It found that people who use ride services and other options, such as bike sharing and car sharing, rely on public transit as their most common mode of transportation. The survey of 4,500 people in seven cities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, says that half reported using transit frequently. The most popular time for ride service trips was between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m., and on weekends — an indication that use peaks for social outings or at times when public transit service isn’t as widely available. “This suggests that people use ridesourcing situationally, and not daily — as a mode that fills in gaps or works under specific circumstances rather than as the core of their commute,” the report said. Instead of reducing public transit trips, the study said ride services are
A Lyft driver at work in downtown San Francisco. Photo by Ericka Cruz Guevarra // KQED, Graphic Courtesy of American Public Transportation Association
Ridesharing “fills in gaps or works under specific circumstances rather than as the core of their commute.” Report by American Public Transportation Association largely replacing private auto and taxicab trips. Many are also using ride services as the first mile/last mile connection to public transit. In San Francisco, some of the most common spots for ride service pickups and drop-offs are around public transit hubs.
The average salary for those surveyed was around $90,000 and the average age was 41. About 34 percent were between the ages of 25 to 34. Twenty percent made less than $50,000 a year. Besides public transportation, the study noted that car sharing was the most popular alternative mode for low- to moderate-income residents, followed by ride services. The study recommended that public transit agencies embark on more public-private partnerships, and encouraged companies like Uber and Lyft to “make use of new technologies’ rich data-gathering capabilities.” Ride-service companies have been reluctant to release data, even to public transit agencies, which would shed light on how and where their services are getting the greatest use in cities like San Francisco. However, one study is underway that should offer the first comprehensive glimpse at how ride services are affecting congestion and the environment.
THE INTERSECTION: How Drugs Shape Life in the Tenderloin The strained relationship between the dealers who work the corner and the people who live and work nearby By David Boyer // KALW
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his is an excerpt from THE INTERSECTION, an audio documentary series that explores the changing Bay Area — one corner at a time. It originally aired on local public radio station KALW. Hear the entire series at www.TheIntersection.fm San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood is home to much more than homeless encampments and addicts. It is filled with families, seniors and new immigrants. But at the corner of Golden Gate Avenue and Leavenworth Street, the realities of the open-air drug market are hard to avoid. “This is our pills block,” explains Del Seymour, a community historian. “Every block is a different drug.” While that might make someone feel unsafe, it’s actually the opposite. “There’s a guy on every block. His whole job is to make sure nothing like that happens. That’s like the Safeway security guard,” he says. “Cause if someone snatches that microphone you’re going to call the police and shut the block down. It’s going to cost him a whole much more than that microphone. In an hour they’ll lose four or five thousand dollars.” That’s cold comfort to the people living here, according to Capt. Jason Cherniss, the former captain of the Tenderloin Police Station. “When we walk outside and we see this kind of blatant criminal activity, that makes us feel unsafe in our community.” The situation has gotten worse at the intersection in recent years, said Kim Jackson, who works at UNITE HERE, the hospitality union on the corner. “My members are afraid. They don’t want to come to a union hall when people are trying to sell them Oxycontin,” she says. Dr. Joseph Pace, medical director at the Tom Waddell Urban Health Clinic, worries about his clients as they walk past the dealings just outside his building’s entrance. “A lot of our patients will discuss how challenging it is for them to get to see us here when they’re being approached either to sell their medications or to trade medications for other substances.
“ This is our pills block. Every block is a different drug.” Del Seymour Community historian And especially for people who are trying to change towards a clean and sober living. This can be really triggering for them.” But for the dealers, many of whom commute from the East Bay, selling drugs is one of the few means of survival. That’s why Carla, who asked to be identified by her first name only, is out here. “When you have a record and you go try to get a job, and you be honest on the application, and you tell them, ‘Yes I have a record,’ they never call you back. But if you say, ‘No, I don’t have a record,’ then they run the background and they call and say ‘Well, you lied.’ So I do what I’ve got to do to take care of my kids. By all means necessary.” How are residents responding to the very real consequences of the dealing on their doorsteps? The answer will surprise you. Find out at www.bit.do/drugsintl
UPDATE Much has changed at this intersection since David Boyer finished reporting this story in January 2016. The high-profile nonprofit 826 Valencia has moved into the former home of a corner market known for selling drugs and stolen goods, police presence has increased, and the hospitality union installed big windows right on the corner. These and other factors have largely pushed much of the drug dealing away from this intersection, but it’s up dramatically one block west on Hyde Street.
Neighbors clean sidewalks every day at the intersection of Golden Gate Avenue and Leavenworth Street, and often find discarded needles. David Boyer // KALW
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Gentrification Casualty: The Tet Festival Tenderloin celebration canceled for first time in 25 years them. But that’s in the past already.” The Tenderloin was the beating heart of the Vietnamese refugee newcomers in the ’70s and ’80s, their first n the gentrifying Tenderloin, the party’s over for stop out of the old country into the new, a starring role tens of thousands of Vietnamese Americans. For the neighborhood no longer enjoys. Le said that a couple the first time in at least 25 years, there was no Tet of years ago, 4,000 to 5,000 Vietnamese Americans Festival, the Vietnamese community’s Lunar New were living in the Tenderloin. The 2010 census counted Year celebration. 12,800 citywide, about 10 percent the size of San Jose’s “Tet is a very big celebration,” said Judy Young, VietVietnamese community. namese Youth Development Center executive director. Le remembers organizing the neighborhood’s first “Families come out, children come out.” The festival Tet Festivals in the early ’90s, when they offered free would feature “food, flowers, entertainment and a fashtelephone lines for refugees to make calls to family and ion show showcasing the beauty and clothing of Vietfriends in Vietnam. namese culture.” Over the years, fesAfter Little Saigon “The festival is meant to highlight the tival guests included became a destination, Leland Yee — from the annual party values and culture of the community, his time on the would extend along a way to create visibility and embrace the Board of Supervisors a T-shaped constelthrough his stint as lation of closed-off community, making sure we’re honoring state senator — and Tenderloin streets, Mayors Art Agnos, and respecting elders, those who Larkin between Eddy Frank Jordan, Willie and O’Farrell, and came before us.” Brown and Gavin O’Farrell from Hyde Newsom. There was to Polk. Judy Young, “deep access to the But the organizer political machine,” Le of the Tet Festival Vietnamese Youth Development Center said. over the past several executive director In lieu of the years, the Vietnamfestival this year, the ese Community CenVietnamese Youth Development Center ter, shut down a few months ago and was unable to foland Vietnamese Family Services hosted a modest low through on its grant from the city to help fund this celebration in February at 201 Turk St. that was open year’s event. Grants for the Arts had approved $15,920, to the community. Young introduced Garden Grove up from $14,210 in 2015. The grant reimburses expens(Orange County) Mayor Bao Nguyen as the es, so with no festival the city money wasn’t lost. festivities began. “I’m here to inspire you to rise up and “This year is the first year that Little Saigon is not fight for justice,” he said. “And it’s worth fighting for. having the festival. It's not right, it’s not good,” Young Our parents and grandparents risked so much for us to said. “It’s important that we continue to voice our need. be here. We’re the survivors.” We’re really losing slowly the culture. It’s bigger than Tet is celebrated differently in San Jose, where it’s just the closure, our folks just can’t afford to be here held at the county fairgrounds and organizers charge anymore. It’s been going on for a long time, but it's $10 admission, said Danny Nguyen, brother of Margabecoming more pronounced. ” ret Nguyen of Vietnamese Family Services. He arrived “Not enough people, not enough finance, not a lot of in the United States 37 years ago, at 14. There’s also support, booth sponsors,” Tony Nguyen, manager of a free festival in San Jose’s Vietnam Town, he said. community development at Southeast Asian Commu“I’m sad a little bit,” he said at the Turk Street party. nity Center, told the Extra. When Tuong Vi of the Viet“I think they should have the festival, new year, for the namese Elderly Mutual Assistance Association learned that there would be no Tet Festival, she was “really sad. children. We miss it. Somebody should organize it, for the children.” I did not know until last month,” she told the Extra. Mac-Quoc-Cot, speaking through an interpreter, The association, with two paid staff members, helps said, “We celebrate here to make sure the kids don’t 135 disabled and low-income seniors each year, she said. forget, know which day is the New Year.” For “at least 10 years,” it has had a booth at the Tet Tet is for the kids to learn about their traditions,” Festival to highlight its presence in the neighborhood. said Linh, another celebrant. “Without this, they will “Usually, I can ask them for the booth,” Vi said. But this forget their culture.” year, they said, “Oh, no, we won’t have it. No money. ” “It’s really about remembering the past, paying “We still see the TL as a center of the Vietnamese homage and bringing in prosperity and luck in the New community, whether that community is there or not,” Year,” Young said. “The festival is meant to highlight said Sonny Le, census expert, media consultant and the values and culture of the community, a way to creSan Francisco State Extension instructor.” I know that ate visibility and embrace the community, making sure people will come back to the TL to celebrate. I feel sadwe’re honoring and respecting elders, those who came dened.” before us.” Philip Nguyen, executive director of the Southeast When the speeches on Turk Street had finished, Asian Community Center, told the Extra that the festipartygoers lined up for food. Twins Kayle and Kayla, val’s cancellation was a big loss to the community. “We both dressed in pink, adorably worked their way need this festival,” he said. “We should have something through slices of melon and plates of rice with chicken, to showcase the community, especially Little Saigon. seafood or pork. But the gathering really rocked when Every time we have the festival there’s a big promotion the games of chance came out. Seniors and teens, with to support and attract businesses.” strips of raffle-type tickets in hand, crowded around Losing the festival this year was a surprise, in the two tables: One featured a game called BaiCao, played wake of the demise of the Vietnamese Community Cenwith a deck of cards, the other, Bau Cua, a dice game. ter, which Nguyen said had organized the festival since When it was time to go, Margaret Nguyen had her work 1996. “We didn’t know about it,” he said. “Otherwise, cut out for her breaking things up. we would work together, to see how we can help support
By Mark Hedin // Central City Extra
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Top left: Miss National Asia 2011 poses in front of the entrance to the 2011 San Francisco Tet Festival. Far left: A crowded street of booths during the 2011 San Francisco Tet Festival. Left: A performance stage at the 2011 San Francisco Tet Festival.
Photos by David Yu Photography, Creative Commons
For our new Public Press Live program, we are visiting groups around San Francisco to share our experiences doing issue-based investigative reporting and solicit ideas for future projects. Connect with us! Email community@sfpublicpress.org to schedule a Public Press Live event for your group, school, company or nonprofit. To receive alerts for upcoming events, sign up at sfpublicpress.org/newsletter. Public Press Live is supported by an INNovation Fund grant from the Institute for Nonprofit News. Read more about that grant in the editors’ note at the top of page A2.
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SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, SUMMER 2016 | SPECIAL REPORT ON CAMPAIGN FINANCE | SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | B1
RECORD SPENDING DROVE 2015 RACES IN $28 MILLION CAMPAIGN SEASON, BIGGEST SPENDERS — LED BY AIRBNB — WON 9 OF THE TOP 10 CONTESTS
$10M
PROPOSITION F: Airbnb single-handedly funded a campaign that outspent its opponents 8-to-1, preventing new regulations on short-term rentals. Against: $9M For: $1.1M
$9M
PROPOSITION A: 74 percent of voters approved Proposition A, establishing a municipal bond to pay for building affordable housing. City legislators unanimously supported the measure. Against: $0 For: $2.9M
$8M
PROPOSITION D: Facing little opposition, the San Francisco Giants almost exclusively backed Proposition D. Voters overwhelmingly approved it, enabling the baseball team’s real estate project near AT&T Park to move forward. Against: $0 For: $4M
$7M
PROPOSITION I: This measure would have paused market-rate housing development in the Mission District to indirectly encourage affordable housing construction. Developer Robert Rosania, the top contributor to the campaign against the measure, was behind a controversial housing project. Against: $1.9M For: $670,347
$6M
MAYORAL RACE: Mayor Ed Lee retained his seat after outspending five relatively unknown opponents. Lee: $1.6M All other candidates combined: $61,614
$5M
DISTRICT 3 SUPERVISOR: Aaron Peskin defeated Supervisor Julie Christensen, even though her campaign and unaffiliated allied campaigns outspent his. Peskin: $945,239 Christensen: $1.2M
$4M
PROPOSITION H: A compromise measure between the Board of Supervisors and one of PG&E’s unions, which co-wrote the measure after being at loggerheads over Proposition G. Against: $0 For: $447,865
$3M $2M $1M Against
For
PROPOSITION F
For
Against
For Against
PROPOSITION A
PROPOSITION D
Against
For
Lee
PROPOSITION I
All Others
MAYOR
Peskin Christensen
For Against
DISTRICT 3
PROPOSITION H
Randolph Aragon Mirkarimi Temprano Robinson Hennessy SHERIFF
CITY COLLEGE
Campaigns that spent the most during the November 2015 election prevailed in all but one big-money race: District 3’s supervisorial seat. Races costing less than $90,000: city attorney, treasurer, Proposition B, Proposition C, Proposition E, Proposition G, Proposition J, Proposition K. SOURCE: San Francisco Ethics Commission
Gascón DA
SHERIFF: HENNESSY: $337,665 MIRKARIMI: $126,344 ROBINSON: $9,871; CITY COLLEGE: RANDOLPH: $112,758 TEMPRANO: $40,344 ARAGON: $28,527; DA: GASCÓN: $96,880 Graphic by Sara Bloomberg, Illustration by Anna Vignet // Public Press
In Bid for Dominance, Mayor’s Allies Flood S.F. Politics With Corporate Cash
MICHAEL FRANZ, POLITICAL AD SCHOLAR Throughout this report on the 2015 election you will find insights about or from political strategists, scholars and key players in City Hall.
Tech, real estate donations made 2015 election the most expensive on record, posing challenge for campaign finance reforms this fall
“Campaign ad makers aren’t interested in accurate sources, but they want those facts in there.”
By Angela Woodall and Michael Stoll // Public Press
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ast year spending on local elections was the highest on record, reaching nearly $28 million. The infusion of cash demonstrates how politicians and their powerful associates wield an influence on the political process that our campaign finance laws cannot effectively or appropriately manage. Large corporations may spend without limits on issue advocacy and influence the fate of proposed reforms, as illustrated by Airbnb’s successful 2015 attack on expanding regulation of its core business, short-term housing rentals. The outsized and increasing power of the tech and real estate sectors threatens to overwhelm any constituencies that might seek to challenge them. And politicians are able to act in careful concert with allied forces to exert influence over races and issues, thereby circumventing the campaign contribution limits that are designed to minimize the influence of donations to political candidates, as illustrated by a private meeting convened by Mayor Ed Lee to organize donors in a failed effort to defeat a supervisorial candidate challenging his hand-picked incumbent. Reformers in San Francisco say a proposed ballot measure to limit political donations by lobbyists would curtail some of the most blatant influence peddling in City Hall. But even if passed by voters this fall, it would do little to curb the kind of lavish corporate spending and coordinated fundraising that allowed the mayor and his allies to dominate most of the hotly contested items on the 2015 ballot. If the recent past is any indication, the fall 2016 races will see another lopsided contest in which San Francisco’s business leaders attempt to beat back an underfunded if spirited opposition.
Slick, Misleading TV Ads Paid Off Airbnb’s multimillion-dollar blitz was key to killing measure aimed at short-term rentals Mayor Ed Lee appears frequently on and offstage with tech investor Ron Conway, who last year fundraised for Lee’s causes, including a housing bond and key supervisor race. Creative Commons image from TechCrunch via Flickr
Last year’s election was the most expensive, even adjusted for inflation, since the city implemented a digital tracking system in 1998. More than a quarter of the spending in 2015 came from Airbnb, which pumped $9 million into defeating Proposition F. In all but one major campaign last fall, the winner was the side that spent the most. The exception was Lee’s effort to block the self-identified progressive caucus from retaking control of the Board of Supervisors. Though outspent, former board president Aaron Peskin and his supporters defeated Julie Christensen, whom the mayor had appointed in District 3.
ABOUT THIS REPORTING PROJECT The Public Press compiled campaign finance records to show a pattern of massive spending by big businesses and allies of Mayor Ed Lee. Our reporters also logged and evaluated the claims of hours of political ads and TV news coverage from the 2015 elections in collaboration with the TV Archive, a project of the Internet Archive. REPORTING: Angela Woodall, Michael Stoll, Sara Bloomberg, Meka Boyle, Cody Wright, Dayvon Dunaway PROJECT EDITORS: Noah Arroyo, Michael Winter
DIRECTOR OF DESIGN: Erika Rae Lawson PHOTOGRAPHY: Steve Rhodes, Hyunha Kim ILLUSTRATIONS: Anna Vignet ONLINE: John Angelico THIS PROJECT WAS MADE POSSIBLE BY GRANTS FROM THE CRAIGSLIST CHARITABLE FUND, THE FUND FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM AND DONATIONS BY PUBLIC PRESS MEMBERS.
DATA GRAPHICS: Amanda Hickman
This coming fall will see a rematch on housing-related ballot initiatives, and six supervisor seats are up for grabs, which will again determine which faction controls the board. The massive sums flowing into local elections can drive sitting or aspiring politicians and their surrogates to push up against the limits of what is allowable under campaign finance laws. One private meeting in April 2015, attended by the mayor, lobbyists representing several campaign committees and union representatives and other donors, raised eyebrows among journalists and ethics experts, and apparently led the San Francisco City Attorney’s office to make inquiries to find out whether any laws were broken. The meeting included a who’s who of more than two-dozen well-connected insiders, including corporate representatives who “bundled” — or collected personal contributions on behalf of other people — tens of thousands of dollars for Lee and other candidates. Proposed ethics reforms might restrict such bundling. San Francisco has a mixed record of limiting the role of money in politics. Though a single campaign contributor can give no more than $500 to a candidate or ballot measure committee, lobbyists can legally bundle those contributions ad infinitum, transforming the personal donation into just another type of fundraising. And ballot initiatives and candidate-controlled “issue committees” — local versions of what are known nationally as super PACs — may accept unlimited contributions. Most campaign money comes from donors who want something — labor unions negotiating contracts, developers wanting permits or businesses seeking tax breaks, said Bob Stern, a political finance and ethics expert
MORE ONLINE: SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG/COSTOFVOTES FINANCE continued on B6
By Meka Boyle, Cody Wright and Michael Winter // Public Press
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ear, disinformation, deception. That’s what San Francisco voters were bombarded with last fall through record-setting, multimillion-dollar TV advertising crafted to crush progressives, defeat restrictions on short-term rentals and reshape the city’s housing map for decades to come. The 2015 election united the political clout of two rich, powerful industries that will exert an enduring influence across the city, Bay Area and nation: real estate and technology. The campaign demonstrated that despite a changing society increasingly consumed by social media and online video, television remains a potent, persuasive force, even for disruptive tech giants like Airbnb. The record off-year campaign spending — which totaled $27.8 million for all measures and candidates — also offers a preview of what is expected to be an even bigger media onslaught this year, as a presidential election draws more voters to the polls. In November, multiple seats will be up for grabs at the city’s Board of Supervisors, and at least one likely ballot initiative threatens the soda industry, which has a history of throwing big sums into local elections to protect its bottom line. By Election Day 2015, more than $6.4 million had been poured into TV advertising alone for five ballot initiatives and three candidate races: Propositions A, D, E, F and I, as well as the contests for mayor, sheriff and District 3 supervisor. The vast majority of that money went to defeating Proposition F, which tried unsuccessfully to expand regulations on short-term rentals of homes and apartments. The “No on F” campaign, funded chiefly by San Francisco-based Airbnb, outspent proponents on television 45-to-1, buying nearly two hours of opposition advertising for every minute of “Yes on F” ads, based on a San Francisco Public Press review of TV advertising, which included national and local stations.
Shaped by national political consultants, the big-money campaigns created an echo chamber, aided by local broadcasters. Superficial TV reporting parroted claims in the ads, which were notable for distorting or obscuring facts, attacking a candidate’s character or conjuring menacing images of Big Brother intrusions into people’s bedrooms and personal information. Misrepresentations big and small pervaded the airwaves: • Claims inaccurately attributed to the official ballot initiative text of Proposition F; • An attack on District 3 challenger Aaron Peskin, who was seeking to regain his old seat from the supervisor Mayor Ed Lee had installed. The ad portrayed the Board of Supervisors’ former president — and mayoral foe — as an aggressive late-night caller; • A questionable claim that Lee’s $310 million housing bond, Proposition A, would not cost taxpayers anything. “Campaign ad makers aren’t interested in accurate sources, but they want those facts in there, they want a newspaper quote, they want some sort of backup information,” said Michael Franz, co-author of “The Persuasive Power of Campaign Advertising.” “They might cite some sort of voting records, but you’re not going to get the exact citation that would let you easily track down the information,” he said. “It’s a feature of our ads — there’s too much info in politics today to fact-check all of this.” To Franz, that information overload poses a challenge to democracy. “Organized groups are sending out information at light speed, and in a sense this is a crisis of journalism,” he said. “How to help voters sort through it.”
ANALYZING THE ADS The Public Press collaborated with the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based
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Election Ads Overshadowed TV News 7-to-1 For the 10 weeks between Aug. 25 and Election Day in 2015, San Francisco’s five English-language commercial television stations serving the San Francisco Bay Area (KRON, KTVU, KNTV, KPIX and KGO) aired a combined 25.8 hours of paid political ads. By comparison, the same stations aired about 3.5 hours of election news coverage. In all 11 major stations we monitored, including those producing no original news, ads took up 47.4 hours. These findings are based on data made available by the TV Archive, a project of the Internet Archive, which conducted a search of televised political ads, noting the times and durations that each type of ad aired. The Public Press analyzed those results. To tabulate news coverage, we manually searched closed captions of programs that the Archive publishes online.
It is possible that we missed some news reports. Keywords could have been misspelled within the television stations’ captions, or the on-screen reporter may have referred indirectly to an election topic without explicitly naming it. In the case of then-Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, he sometimes appeared in the news for reasons unrelated to the election — we chose to omit those instances to the best of our abilities. No stations provided us with counts of their total ad and news coverage airtimes, and some said that they do not track this. This graph does not incorporate news aired on KOFY, which rebroadcasts KGO’s news. DATA SOURCE: Internet Archive GRAPHIC: Noah Arroyo RESEARCH: Noah Arroyo, Meka Boyle and Cody Wright
A TORRENT OF CAMPAIGN MESSAGING Local election news (hours)
Televised political advertisements (hours)
Time period: Aug. 25 to Nov. 3, 2015
Misleading TV ads paid off as companies got political JOE SLADE WHITE, POLITICAL STRATEGIST
Vice President Joe Biden calls White “the preeminent storyteller” who “makes voters want to listen.” His ads helped Airbnb beat Proposition F.
TV ADS from B1
nonprofit that catalogs electronic media worldwide, to analyze 27 distinct TV spots that aired on 11 stations during the fall campaign. We looked closely at five Bay Area stations that accounted for more than half of the airtime for the ads and virtually all the televised news coverage of the election: KPIX, KRON, KGO, KTVU and KNTV. Ads also ran on Chinese-language station KTSF but were not reviewed. All told, almost 26 hours of ads ran on these five stations from after Labor Day until Election Day, compared with a total of 3.5 hours of TV news coverage — a ratio of about 7-to-1. Of the total ad time, “No on F” dominated with about 20 hours, compared with 16 minutes for the “Yes” effort — a 76-to-1 imbalance. By far the most contentious citywide issue was Proposition F. Sponsored by ShareBetter SF, the initiative tried to toughen the ordinance, passed and signed in October 2014, that legalized short-term rentals and established a system of registration and taxation. Though renters still widely outnumber homeowners in San Francisco, many from both groups are united in the opportunity to reap windfalls from short-term rentals, even though they may contribute to rising costs and the overall housing crisis. The campaign to defeat Proposition F pitted Lee, Airbnb, real estate interests, tech venture capitalist Ron Conway and some labor unions against tenant activists, neighborhood groups, hotel unions and wealthy property owners, who were badly outgunned and outspent on all media. Airbnb led the “No on F” television blitz, ponying up $4.7 million in TV buys alone to beat back broader control of its business model, according to city data. The “Yes” campaign mustered only about $104,000 for television, and about $1.1 million overall. All told, Airbnb spent more than $9 million to be victorious. That number has been exceeded only once since San Francisco began reliably tracking campaign finances online in 1998: when PG&E spent $11 million to defeat a renewable-energy measure in 2008. “The campaign had all the modern bells and whistles you would expect of an effort backed by a Silicon Valley giant,” “No on F” consultant Nicole Derse, co-founder of 50+1 Strategies, wrote in the online journal Campaigns & Elections in January.
CASTING DOUBTS ON PROPOSITION F Crucial to victory were several slick, 30- and 15-second TV spots that skillfully — if misleadingly — sowed doubts about Proposition F. To craft more than a dozen complementary TV ads, San Francisco for Everyone — No on F, funded primarily by Airbnb, turned to noted Democratic strategist Joe
Slade White & Co. Based outside Buffalo, N.Y., the firm has deep ties to the party and top Democrats, including Vice President Joe Biden, Gov. Jerry Brown and state Attorney General Kamala Harris. White worked on George McGovern’s failed 1972 campaign against President Richard Nixon. Biden’s sister, Valerie, is the firm’s executive vice president. Joe Slade White has also handled media campaigns for AT&T, Uber and other corporate heavyweights. It boasts that it has not lost a ballot initiative in 18 years. Following the firm’s much admired playbook — “9 Principles of Winning Campaigns” — No on F proponents worked to create uncertainty about the measure before going in for the kill. “We start with the simple notion that campaigns cannot move a ‘No’ to a ‘Yes’ or vice versa,” Joe Slade White declared. “You must first move initiative voters to undecided. Only then can you persuade them the rest of the way.” Vice President Biden has called White “the preeminent storyteller” who “makes voters want to listen.” In July, a poll by David Binder Research, which was hired by the “No on F” campaign, showed public opinion was almost evenly divided. In September, “No on F” cranked up the volume, running 12.5 hours of ads, about 60 percent on local stations. The “Yes” campaign was silent, airing not a single spot all month, the Public Press analysis found. The barrage paid off, according to Binder polling in mid-September. “No” led by 16 points. “After just three weeks our ‘No’ vote jumped to a dramatic double-digit lead while the ‘Yes’ vote dropped like a rock,” Joe Slade White’s website said. “In Prop. F, we focused on a broad theme that the proposal was ‘just too extreme,’” Ben Nuckels, senior vice president of Joe Slade White, told the Public Press. “Strategically, we had undermined the ‘Yes on Prop. F’ before our opponents could react. That made it ultimately impossible for them ever to fully recover or to ever regain the lead.” The “No on F” blitz hammered home the idea that the measure was “just too extreme,” a “new threat” that would “violate people’s privacy,” encourage “spying on your neighbors” and result in “thousands of new lawsuits.” The ads capitalized on growing concerns about privacy, personal rights and government intrusion following revelations that the National Security Agency was amassing phone and email data on Americans in its efforts to thwart terrorism. Lee and his predecessor, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, smoothly reinforced the themes that the measure “goes too far” and “is just too extreme.” Allied with five supervisors, the Democratic and Republican parties, the Chamber of Commerce and others, they trumped a long list of influential “Yes on F” backers that included Sen. Dianne Feinstein; former mayor Art Agnos; five city supervisors; Democratic clubs; teachers, nurses and hotel workers unions; tenants rights groups and neighborhood associations. “The way people learn is through endorsements,” said Jason McDaniel, a political scientist at San Francisco State University who specializes in urban politics and voting behavior. “People are generally skeptical of ballot propositions if there is opposition. That’s the endorsement thing. It’s not the ad, it’s the endorsements,” he added. “You can spend a lot of money to make those endorsements obvious, or that conflict obvious. Then people are skeptical and it fails to pass.”
‘LEAVE SPYING TO THE MOVIES’ Beyond endorsements, memorable Joe Slade White
The day before the November 2015 election, dozens of protesters entered Airbnb headquarters with a brass band and large paper signs shaped like houses that leveled scathing critiques of the company. Steve Rhodes // Public Press
spots turned to the dark side to cast Proposition F as a sinister Big Government effort to monitor residents’ bedrooms and create personal dossiers. One depicted a “creepy neighbor” peering through night-vision-like binoculars at Victorian houses, followed by images of aerial surveillance video and a “data scan” of a palm print. “Let’s leave the spying to the movies, not the neighbors,” the narrator said over a James Bondian soundtrack of surf guitar. Another spot showed shadowy fingers on a laptop keyboard as the narrator warned that the initiative would “allow the government to collect people’s private information.” Voters were never told that the existing ordinance already required hosts to register with the city and
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GAVIN NEWSOM, LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR
Appeared in an ad attacking Proposition F as “just too extreme.” Later received donation from Airbnb CEO.
SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, SUMMER 2016 | SPECIAL REPORT ON CAMPAIGN FINANCE | SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | B3
Dale Carlson, inside Airbnb’s San Francisco headquarters. Carlson co-founded the group ShareBetter SF in a bid to get Proposition F passed, and helped write the ballot measure. Sara Bloomberg // Public Press TV ADS from B2
maintain quarterly records of their residency and rentals, thereby compelling them to share certain “private information”: demonstrating “primary residency,” the number of days they occupied their unit, and the dates and the duration of each short-term rental. As it stood, last year’s ordinance required that the city create a “registry” of short-term-rental hosts and that the information “shall be available for public review to the extent required by law” — with one exception: “to the extent permitted by law, the (Planning) Department shall redact any Permanent Resident names from the records available for public review.” San Francisco is not alone: Portland, Ore., officials may subpoena much more personal information to enforce the city’s short-term-rental laws, including phone, tax, vehicle and real estate records. Another notable ad was called “Night,” featuring the simple imagery of a half-asleep woman between crisp white sheets. “What if the government required you to report when you’re sleeping in your own home, or even in your own bed?” a gravelly male voice narrated over the tune “Lullaby and Goodnight.” “If Prop. F passes, San Francisco will be the only city in the country where residents will be forced to do just that.” The ominous warnings in both ads were attributed to the “Official Text San Francisco Measure F” and “Consumer Watchdog” — a nonprofit advocacy group listed as an ongoing client of Sheri Sadler, the media buyer for “No on F.”
causing rents to skyrocket,” citing news articles in the San Francisco Examiner and the New York Times. Neither article contained the ad’s wording, however, and its claims have not been established conclusively. Nearly three-quarters of San Francisco units are covered by rent control, and it is illegal for landlords to evict tenants and begin renting to visitors. Although evictions jumped between 2011 and 2014, the Rent Board reported, it is not known whether the units were subsequently rented out to visitors or to new long-term tenants at much higher market rates. In a May 2015 report, the San Francisco Budget and Legislative Analyst’s office estimated that Airbnb listings may have been responsible for removing between 925 and 1,960 housing units from the residential market, based on data from 2013 and 2014. That could
represent between 11 percent and 23.2 percent of the city’s vacant housing units, the report said, noting that its estimates and conclusions were “conservative” and “understate the full short-term rental market by an unknown amount.” Regardless of the accuracy of the ad’s claims, it was virtually invisible compared with the “No” onslaught. For all of October, the “Yes” ad aired a total of only 16 minutes. Ultimately, the No on F ads epitomized the art of political persuasion and spin. “Night” earned industry recognition and awards for the campaign team — Joe Slade White, 50+1 Strategies, San Francisco media buyer Sadler Strategic, campaign manager Patrick Hannan and senior adviser Chris Lehane, Airbnb’s head of global policy and public affairs and an adviser in the Clinton White House. TV was not the only vehicle the campaign used to drum up opposition to F, however. “We sent 16 pieces of mail to a universe of approximately 100,000 households and made sure it mirrored the content of the TV ads,” wrote Derse, of San Francisco-based 50+1 Strategies. “We put up massive campaign billboards around town using the same binocular image of the spying neighbor that voters saw in the TV ads and in their mailboxes. And we ran a robust online campaign led by Social Stream to reach those same voters digitally. “We also ran one of the most aggressive field campaigns San Francisco has ever seen,” she added. “Over the course of 11 weeks, our staff and volunteers knocked on more than 300,000 doors, made some 300,000 phone calls and had over 120,000 conversations with real voters.” Two key voting blocs were targeted: Chinese-Americans, who she said “disproportionately owned and occupied” the in-law units that would be banned, and young voters, “our largest group of supporters,” though one with a historically low turnout in off-year voting. Airbnb’s roughly 138,000 users in the city played a big role, Derse explained, “hosting house parties, organizing their friends and neighbors, and leading dozens of earned media events.” In the end, Proposition F was trounced, 56 percent to 44 percent. Airbnb did not reply to questions about its ads. For privately held Airbnb, with an estimated value greater than $25 billion, the ads were money well spent in its hometown, the poster child for tight, expensive housing. The results demonstrated Airbnb’s popularity and growing influence in spite — or because — of the housing crisis.
NICOLE DERSE CO-FOUNDER OF 50+1 STRATEGIES, A CONSULTANT FOR “NO ON PROPOSITION F”
“All the modern bells and whistles you would expect of an effort backed by a Silicon Valley giant.”
As the company extends its reach, driven by a new generation, technology and an economy in flux, the campaign may offer a blueprint for success.
‘MAD MEN’ ATTACK ON PESKIN “No on F” wasn’t the only campaign that used a combination of well-funded research, technology and distortion to create a negative image. In the District 3 battle, incumbent Julie Christensen and her allies slightly outspent Arron Peskin to try to prevent him from reclaiming his seat, which he had held from 2001 to 2009. In the end, the race cost $2.1 million, a record for a supervisorial contest, according to San Francisco Ethics Commission data. The Committee for a Progressive and Affordable San Francisco Opposing Peskin for Supervisor 2015, backed mainly by Conway, spent $313,380 in the failed bid to take down Peskin, according to Ethics Commission filings. Mark Armour of Armour Media was hired to create an anti-Peskin spot. He modeled it after the hit show “Mad Men.” Armour used Peskin’s past behavior — notably instances of bad temper and apparent intoxication — to undermine his bid, albeit unsuccessfully. In the ad, Armour cited a San Francisco Chronicle column that had quoted Lee, criticizing Peskin for his reputedly aggressive behavior with his City Hall colleagues (see “The Most Misleading Political Ads of
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Online TV Archive Preserves History of Politics Coverage
MANIPULATION AND MESSAGING The truth, however, was something else. Nowhere in the official ballot text — which amended the existing code covering short-term rentals — did it require hosts using Airbnb, Homeshare or VRBO to report when they were sleeping in their own homes or beds. Proposition F reiterated the language from the ordinance backed by Lee, approved by supervisors and enacted in February 2015: quarterly reporting of the number of days a primary residence was “occupied” and the days it was rented out. No bed checks. Consider that if you go out of town for a weekend or two months, you are still considered to be legally “occupying” your home or apartment, even if you were away or let friends or family “occupy” it in your absence. Certainly, not all San Francisco residents read the official ballot text or the new ordinance that took effect months earlier. The initiative just went further, too far for a majority of voters who turned out. Some of the most controversial provisions called for cutting annual short-term rentals from 90 days to 75; banning use of in-law units; tightening registration and reporting, and bolstering the neighbor complaint process and enforcement by bringing Airbnb and its rivals into the process. Additionally, residents would have needed permission to operate as a bed and breakfast for rentals beyond 75 days. The “No on F” campaign apparently persuaded many voters to believe that it would be the ballot measure that would make already existing provisions law. And Airbnb disguised two of its biggest concerns, which it had fought to keep out of the ordinance Lee signed in October 2014. Not surprisingly, the “No” campaign did not point out that the Proposition F would have required Airbnb and its competitors to closely monitor listings and remove illegal units and those that had been rented out for more than 75 days over the course of a year. Failure to do so could have resulted in fines up to $1,000 a day per listing, potentially costing Airbnb and the others tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Proposition F also would have cleared the way for residents and other “interested parties” — neighbors and landlords among them — to directly sue Airbnb and its competitors, which under the current law can be done only by the City Attorney’s Office. The opposition took no chances on finding the most potent message. “Yes” ads were also created to test against focus groups watching “No” spots, said Nuckels, of Joe Slade White. “There was one ad we produced to test for the ‘yes’ side that would have likely won the race for them had they aired it,” he said, without revealing the ad’s content. “Our opponents’ greatest strength was the simplicity of their message” — the housing crisis — “and, frankly, they swung and missed.” The “Yes on F” campaign mustered only one TV ad. It claimed that “illegal Airbnb hotels” were “evicting thousands of San Franciscans from their homes and
JASON MCDANIEL, POLITICAL SCIENTIST AT SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY
Campaigns can kill propositions just by casting doubt, he said. “It’s not the ad, it’s the endorsements.”
Roger Macdonald, director of the TV Archive, at the headquarters of the nonprofit Internet Archive in the Richmond District of San Francisco. Noah Arroyo // Public Press
‘Audio fingerprinting’ makes it possible to track political ads By Noah Arroyo // Public Press
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vision — “our most pervasive, and it’s also our most persuasive, medium,” said the TV archive’s director, Roger Macdonald. “We think it’s important that everybody’s able to reflect on what the messaging is, who the messenger is, and what the propagation of that message is,” Macdonald said. “In the case of political ads, here people are spending enormous amounts of money, and local television stations are raking in tons of money to
or this look-back at the November 2015 election, the Public Press spent many hours tracking down televised political ads and related news coverage of local campaigns. Once we found them, we assessed the accuracy of their claims (read “The Most Misleading Ads of 2015” on pages B4 and B5); figured out which races were the targets of the most ads; and compared the “In the case of political ads, here total number of minutes that stations ran ads and election-related news coverage (page B2). people are spending enormous We crafted these analyses using a database creamounts of money, and local ated by the Internet Archive. The pioneering San Francisco-based nonprofit is probably best known television stations are raking in tons for its Wayback Machine, which catalogs previous of money to broadcast these ads.” versions of webpages. Through the organization’s TV News Archive, Roger Macdonald, TV Archive Director users can search for phrases that appear in the closed captions of television broadcasting. They can filter those searches by the dates those terms were broadcast these ads.” spoken, the stations and shows that featured them, Political ads have proved difficult to track. The Fedthe programs’ language and other criteria. All search eral Communications Commission does not require results are shareable on social media. The archive advertisements to be closed-captioned if their run records 36 TV channels, from the major local stations times are shorter, and the archive’s team found that in the Bay Area, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. about 70 percent of political ads lacked captions and The project has compiled more than 1 million clips were therefore not searchable. since 2009. The ads that ran for San Francisco’s November 2015 This publicly accessible tool helps journalists (and election were no exception. For the Public Press to anyone else who’s interested) for the first time to pertrack them, the Internet Archive used a tool under deform data-driven analyses of the content found on tele- velopment since 2014 that records “audio fingerprints”
of specific ads and then locates other instances when those exact sound sequences play. The team has fine-tuned audio fingerprinting and scaled up its use. Today it is applied to all the television that is recorded, and Macdonald said it can track almost all types of TV content. Many organizations and analysts have used the archive’s raw metadata to tell stories and create visualizations. Data scientist Kalev Leetaru has illustrated news stations’ editorial choices, showing how often coverage made reference to international locations by causing those places to twinkle on an animated world map with every utterance. In another, he graphed the mentions of 2016 presidential candidates’ names in the news. “You can see this incredible differential between Trump and the rest of the field, where he’s mentioned so often,” Macdonald said. Journalists have repeatedly used this tool to show that Trump gets outsized free publicity from news stations eager to snag viewers. Macdonald said that when the TV News Archive first went online in 2012, journalists didn’t flock to it. “If you build it, they will come?” he asked. “Nah.” The database is somewhat nonintuitive, he said, and his team has been actively contacting news organizations and offering to train them to use its interface and the underlying raw data. As a result, journalists are using it more often, working its data into an increasing number of articles and infographics.
Visit the TV Archive at archive.org/tv
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The Most Misleading Political Ads of 2015
FOR PROPOSITION F CLAIMS:
By Noah Arroyo and Meka Boyle, Illustrations by Anna Vignet, Designed by Erika Rae Lawson // Public Press
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“Illegal Airbnb hotels are evicting thousands of San Franciscans from their homes and causing rents to skyrocket. — SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER, 5/14/15 — NEWYORKTIMES.COM, 7/16/15”
olitical ads are ephemeral — or so we thought. The Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that started out cataloging the entire web on a regular basis, has branched out to recording television channels 24 hours a day in some major metropolitan areas. As part of a collaboration with news media, it established the TV News Archive, a digital tool anyone can use. The Public Press reviewed more than 3½ hours of television news in the two months leading up to the November 2015 election, and found that ads far outstripped news about the elections in terms of airtime. That might not have been a problem, had the ads not contained a slew of misleading claims, circular citations and inflated numbers. Here is a sampling of some of the worst offending pre-election manipulations, mostly sponsored by short-term rental company Airbnb in its attack on Proposition F last year.
OUR ANALYSIS: When a property is perpetually rented out through Airbnb or similar services, the pool of residential housing shrinks. But because hosting platforms do not share all their data with local government, it is impossible to know how much the market has been restricted. The ad’s wording cannot be found in articles on either the San Francisco Examiner or New York Times websites. But an article published in the Examiner on May 14, 2015, described a report from the city Budget and Legislative Analyst’s office, which posits a connection between high eviction rates and the prevalence of short-term-rentals in some neighborhoods.
FOR PROPOSITION A CLAIMS: “Critically needed homes for low- and middleincome San Franciscans without raising taxes.”
OUR ANALYSIS: In an ad for his signature measure, Mayor Ed Lee reassured voters that taxes would not go up if they passed the $310 million bond for affordable housing. But prior to the election, the City Controller’s office estimated that passing the bond could cause property taxes to rise from fiscal year 2015-2016 through 2038-2039 by an annual average of $0.0077 per $100 — or about $40 per year — for a half-million-dollar home.
To watch this ad, go to: SFPR.ES/RAISINGTAXES
To watch this ad, go to: SFPR.ES/EVICTTHOUSANDS
AGAINST PROPOSITION F AGAINST AARON PESKIN
CLAIMS:
CLAIMS:
“It goes too far.” “It’s just too extreme.”
“Drunken calls at midnight. — SF Chronicle 4/10/15, Mayor Ed Lee”
OUR ANALYSIS:
AGAINST PROPOSITION F
OUR ANALYSIS:
CLAIMS:
The TV ad seems to attribute the quote to both the San Francisco Chronicle and Lee himself. In reality, Chronicle columnists Phil Matier and Andy Ross had been told by unidentified attendees that Lee said this — though the authors named 10 “bigwigs” who were there. The columnists wrote: “Lee darkly warned them that a Peskin victory over Christensen would mean a return to ‘the days of drunken calls at midnight.’”
“What if the government required you to report when you’re sleeping in your own home … or even in your own bed? If Prop F passes, San Francisco will be the only city in the country where residents will be forced to do just that. — Official Text San Francisco Measure F”
OUR ANALYSIS: As of February 2015, the city had begun regulating how living spaces were rented out through sites like Airbnb. One rule stipulated that hosts could only rent out entire homes, without being present themselves, for a maximum of 90 days per year. Hosts are supposed to track the days they occupy their homes, and city staff can request those records. Proposition F would have continued this practice — but it would not have required hosts to note which beds they slept in. San Francisco’s government is not the only one with this level of regulatory power. Portland, Ore., requires hosts to live in their homes at least 270 days per year, and the city may subpoena personal records to verify this. Aside from Proposition F’s clauses maintaining the current self-reporting requirement for hosts, the measure’s “official text” did not contain these other statements.
To watch this ad, go to: SFPR.ES/MADMEN-PESKIN
These phrases were the backbone of the antiProposition F television ad campaign, created by Democratic media strategist Joe Slade White & Co. Politicians and TV news reports parroted these statements, creating an echo chamber for voters. At no time did the ads explain what was “too far” or “too extreme” about the measure. In one ad, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, Lee’s predecessor as mayor, repeated the same phrases. The wording, verbatim, also appeared in arguments opposing the measure in the city’s voter pamphlet.
To watch this ad, go to SFPR.ES/TOOEXTREME
To watch this ad, go to: SFPR.ES/INYOURBED
AGAINST PROPOSITION F
AGAINST PROPOSITION F
CLAIMS:
CLAIMS:
“Prop F will allow government to collect people’s private information and then make that information … public. — Consumer Watchdog 6/9/15 — Official Text San Francisco Measure F”
“NY hotels are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to tell San Francisco how to vote. They want to protect price-gouging rates to maximize their corporate profits.”
OUR ANALYSIS: Ethics Commission records show that ShareBetter SF, which supported Proposition F, reported Oct. 23 that the Hotel Association of New York City Inc. had contributed $250,000. But four days later the committee amended its filing, saying that all but $25,000 had been “cancelled by contributor.” The next day, this “No on F” ad ran during “Family Feud” on CBS affiliate KPIX, citing the original figure. Timing aside, the airwaves were thick with hypocrisy — a $9 million campaign funded by the $25 billion hotel competitor Airbnb, which sought to guard its bottom line, attacking hotels for trying to “maximize their corporate profits.” Family feud indeed.
OUR ANALYSIS: This wording did not appear in Proposition F’s text. And the Consumer Watchdog article that featured it, if it ever existed, is no longer available online. Proposition F would have required listing sites like Airbnb to hand City Hall quarterly reports showing how many nights each property had been used as a short-term rental. Officials would use this information to locate the hosts who rented out their homes for more than the allowed number of days per year. The reports would have identified each property by a registration number. The city’s voter pamphlet featured an argument, paid for by technology advocacy group sf.citi, that stated Proposition F would make the reports “public information available to anyone wishing to peek into people’s private lives.” That argument did not mention that a host “registry” already exists and is available for public review. The registry does not account for the many hosts who choose not to identify themselves to City Hall.
To watch this ad, go to: SFPR.ES/NYCITYHOTELS
To watch this ad, go to: SFPR.ES/HOSTSINFO
2015,” above). The mayor had appointed Christensen to a vacancy and was pulling out all the stops to get her elected to a full term. Taken out of context, the quote was, at best, misleading. “As a creative guy, I have two messages,” said Armour, whose work includes campaigns that elected presidents Obama and Clinton, and Sen. Barbara Boxer. “One, this is a candidate who has a history of drinking and going off on city employees, and two, I've got a narrative about a throwback to the past — a former supervisor who had gotten out of office versus a new candidate.” And while the ad didn’t stop Peskin — who had vacated the seat because of term limits — from winning the campaign, it presented him as an obstructionist, a
characterization that Armour believes will stick. “His opponents should be emboldened from the campaign because it was such a narrow win,” said Armour, who won an industry award for the “Best Ad for Independent Expenditure Campaign.” He added that bringing up Peskin’s previous mistakes forced him to express “contrition about his past and pledge to operate differently.” Peskin’s team fired back, hitting Conway’s contribution to Armour’s attack. “Tech billionaire Ron Conway says Aaron Peskin is a ‘mad man,’” the rebuttal stated, as a segment of the “Mad Men” ad played in the background beside a photo of Conway looking off into the distance. The spot claimed that Conway had spent “$128,250 to smear Aaron Peskin.” Peskin regained his seat, handily defeating Christensen by 9 percentage points, a bitter defeat for the mayor, Conway and their allies.
BEN NUCKELS, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT JOE SLADE WHITE & CO.
MISLEADING CLAIM FOR PROPOSITION A
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“Strategically, we had to undermine ‘ Yes on Prop. F’ before our opponents could react.”
One other major measure also relied on misleading information to persuade voters. Proposition A ads claimed that the mayor’s $310 million housing bond would not raise taxes. The “Yes on A” campaign ran 10.5 hours of ads on stations that aired in the Bay Area. There was no opposition on TV. The claim that Proposition A would not raise taxes was reinforced in a commercial narrated by Lee, who reassured viewers that the proposition would build “critically needed homes for low- and middle-income San Franciscans without raising taxes.” But according to a July report from the City Control-
Fact-check them yourself: archive.org/tv ler’s Office, the no-new-taxes claim would be nearly impossible to keep. The report states that if implemented, Proposition A would cause the city to raise property taxes from fiscal years 2015-2016 through 2038-2039 by an annual average of $8.09 per $100,000 of assessed valuation, according to the city controller’s “best estimate.” That would be an additional $89 a year for a $1.1 million dwelling, the median home price as of May 2016. In the Public Press/Internet Archive review of Proposition A coverage, only one TV news segment we identified, “Reality Check With Sam Brock” on KNTV, addressed its discrepancies. For four minutes, Brock deconstructed the ballot initiative, stating that Lee’s promise of no additional taxes was unfounded. The segment, which first aired Oct. 23, was repeated eight days later. It was the most comprehensive look at any of the 2015 propositions by the five news stations, our research found. Former KTVU political reporter Randy Shandobil, who worked on Airbnb ads early in the campaign, said it has become more difficult to be a watchdog in the news environment of today because of staff cuts at TV stations, increased competition from digital sources and a near-24-hour news cycle. The stations are still profitable, but “they’ve got to feed the beast because their costs are higher,” he said. That includes political reporters, who are more expensive than their general-assignment counterparts. “They could spend more money on hiring staff but they don’t,” he added. Because news programs are driven by ratings and increasingly forced into short, simple formats, Shandobil said, it is easier for a campaign to bamboozle voters. “Who’s there to police?” he asked.
Tracking TV News – and the Challenges Involved By Meka Boyle // Public Press
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hen the Public Press analyzed TV news data derived from the Internet Archive’s television database, three important factors influenced the conclusions: • Human limitations in rounding up a comprehensive list of search terms to capture the majority of election coverage. • The search engine’s sometimes over-general results. For example, the term “proposition a” also yielded segments that had to do with the word “proposition” or that had the letter “a” as a stand alone. • Errors found in the captioning provided by the TV stations. The Internet Archive’s database of TV news makes closed captions searchable. The text, which is the responsibility of the station providing it, is at times inaccurate, incomplete and/or misspelled. The Archive’s Trevor von Stein said the closed-captioning process is “fairly antiquated and mistakes are common.” Misspellings can make it impossible to locate certain news clips, even if the user searches with the correct term. Many news segments contain multiple search terms, meaning that each one would have to be spelled incorrectly for the clip to be missed by the search engine — but this does occur. For instance, “hotly contested” was transcribed as “hot lincoln” and Julie Christensen’s
last name was frequently spelled “Christiansen.” “Unfortunately, both local and national broadcasters put little attention into accurate closed captioning,” said Roger Macdonald, director of the TV Archive, an initiative of the Internet Archive. “Broadcasters are required by the FCC to caption what they air, generally if it is longer than 10 minutes,” he added. “Hence, most ads, political or otherwise, fall outside those rules.” Macdonald said captioning is inexpensive — “like $100 to create if there is no script.” During the 2015 election cycle, reporters occasionally referred indirectly to certain measures without explicitly naming them. For example, though we searched with the keywords “housing bond” and “moratorium” to locate coverage of Propositions A and I, respectively, it is possible that we missed segments that used neither the proper term for a measure nor the common phrases associated with it. When trying to locate TV news coverage for incumbents and well-known political figures, we recorded only spots in which the person was mentioned as a candidate. Ross Mirkarimi, the former sheriff who lost his re-election bid, and Mayor Ed Lee both were mentioned during the election cycle for reasons not directly related to their candidacies, and we omitted these segments from our analysis. Despite these challenges, our findings quantified how the local election was covered. Not only was coverage
scarce, with the majority of it occurring on the eve of the Nov. 3 vote, but it also was repetitive. For instance, while KNTV had an impressive amount of coverage about Proposition A, it relied almost completely on reruns of a three- to four-minute clip of reporter Sam Brock examining the measure. SEARCH TERMS: proposition, prop, prop A-J, proposition A-J, measure, measure A-J, ballot measure, ballot race, vote, voters, election, November election, election day, November 3rd, district 3, mirkarimi, ed lee, mayor, mayoral race, aaron peskin, peskin, christensen, hennessy, sheriff, sheriffs, housing bond, housing crisis, rent control, moratorium, legacy business, bond, mission rock, 2020, spying, no on f, airbnb, evicted, 18-month, supervisor, city college board, community college board, board of supervisors, supervisor, re-election, parental leave, $310 million, waterfront, market-rate, longtime businesses, government transparency, lobbyist accountability, city workers’ paid parental leave, parental leave, District Attorney George Gascón, District Attorney, George Gascón, City Attorney Dennis Herrera, City Attorney, Dennis Herrera, Treasurer José Cisneros, Treasurer, José Cisneros, Alex Randolph, Wendy Aragon, Tom Temprano, Jason Zeng, Ed Lee, Lee, 1-2-3 Replace Ed Lee, Amy Farrah Weiss, Francisco Herrera, Stuart Schuffman, Reed Martin, Kent Graham, John Fitch, Daniel Kappler, Robert L. Jordan Jr., Karla Gottschalk.
The team behind the Internet Archive’s searchable database of televised news and political advertisements. From left to right: Jeff Kaplan, Tracey Jaquith, Dan Schultz (on monitor), Roger Macdonald, Robin Chin, Nancy Watzman (on monitor), Carolyn Madeo, Trevor von Stein, Ralf Muehlen. Absent is team member Alexis Rossi. Photo by Noah Arroyo // Public Press
AIRTIME DEVOTED TO NEWS SHOWS PER WEEK: AUG. 25 TO NOV. 3 KTVU: KRON: KGO: KPIX: KNTV:
55.75 HOURS 49.75 HOURS 42.5 HOURS 34.5 HOURS 33.5 HOURS
DATA SOURCE: PROGRAMMING SCHEDULES, AVAILABLE ON EACH STATION’ S WEBSITE. THESE COUNTS INCLUDE COMMERCIALS THAT AIRED DURING SHOWS.
B6 | SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | SPECIAL REPORT ON CAMPAIGN FINANCE | SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, SUMMER 2016
KGO, owned and operated by ABC, aired the most paid political advertising but was second to last in producing election news coverage, among English-language San Francisco Bay Area TV stations. At right, KRON aired the least political advertising among local stations that aired their own news. Photos by Hyunha Kim // Public Press
In S.F. electoral politics, money is a potent megaphone FINANCE from B1
who helped write California’s Political Reform Act of 1974. Officials often decide in favor of the people donating, he said. “That’s worth a lot of money,” said Stern, who was the state Fair Political Practices Commission’s first general counsel. “It’s human nature. It’s not corrupt.” Some of these rules would change under a measure proposed for the fall 2016 ballot that would strictly limit lobbyists’ direct and indirect involvement in political fundraising. But the amount of money this would affect is minuscule: Last year this activity added up to less than 1 percent of the total amount spent on elections, according to campaign finance records compiled by advocates for the initiative. And plenty of other loopholes remain.
MILLIONS FOR TV ADS Last year, a small number of businesses paid for gigantic campaigns that deluged TV airwaves, mailboxes and inboxes with slick — and often very misleading — advertising. On Nov. 3, 2015, voters soundly defeated Proposition F, which supporters said would have prevented landlords from displacing renters and driving up housing prices amid a shortage of affordable units. But advocates for the proposition never had a chance. The $9 million from Airbnb represented the secondlargest political expenditure by a single company on record in the city. Its campaign to defeat the initiative included $4.7 million for television advertising, 45 times what ShareBetter SF, the primary committee supporting the measure, spent on TV ads, city records show. The effort enabled the company to run 30 hours of ads on TV channels broadcast in the Bay Area, claiming that the measure would encourage neighbors to spy on neighbors — for profit — and report to the city who slept where and when, among other sensational claims. The San Francisco Public Press, in collaboration with the Internet Archive, reviewed ads and news from the two months preceding the election. The ads, produced by expensive campaign consultants who usually work on high-profile national and statewide campaigns, overshadowed election news. On five local English-language stations with original news programs, ads exceeded coverage by a factor of 7-to-1. In some news programs, TV journalists repeated several questionable statements, including language directly from ads and indirect citations that traced back to the campaigns’ own paid sloganeers (see “The Most Misleading Political Ads of 2015,” page B4). The campaign against Proposition F also relied on endorsements from Mayor Lee and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, Lee’s predecessor. (Separately, Brian Chesky, Airbnb’s CEO, donated $36,400 to a committee controlled by Newsom, who is considering a 2018 run to succeed termed-out Gov. Jerry Brown.) These and other pricey tactics worked. More than three-
BRIAN CHESKY, AIRBNB CEO
Donated to Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s campaign shortly after Newsom appeared in a televised antiProposition F advertisement.
quarters of voters rejected the measure. In a way, the attack on Proposition F was a trial balloon: This kind of political spending could help Airbnb fend off future challenges to its business model in scores of cities across the country and abroad. It was also a closely watched test of the power of money in politics for other technology-based businesses facing regulatory scrutiny. Despite Airbnb’s electoral victory, the Board of Supervisors dealt the company a blow in June by enacting one of the major provisions of Proposition F. The revised ordinance requires hosting platforms to list only addresses that are registered with the city, and fines companies up to $1,000 per violation per day. Airbnb responded quickly by suing the city, arguing the new regulations violate federal statutes and the U.S. Constitution. Valued at more than $25 billion, the company appears willing to spend millions to influence San Francisco politics. It is building and funding a major political operation centered on a state-level entity it calls the “Committee to Expand the Middle Class.” From January to June, the committee donated nearly half a million dollars to business-friendly candidates for the local Democratic Party. Out of 10 candidacies, only two won. In June it also backed three winning non-housingrelated ballot propositions favored by elected officials who had opposed the tighter rental regulations. Wendell Potter, a senior analyst at the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog organization, said Airbnb learned directly from a previous local corporate blitz. In 2014, the American Beverage Association spent $9.2 million to defeat a proposed tax in San Francisco on sugary beverages. “The tactics are tried and true, and often very effective,” Potter said. The beverage industry is gearing up for a ballot fight over another version of the sugar tax this November, a levy of a penny per fluid ounce. Opposing the industry are other well-heeled donors, including the Houstonbased nonprofit Action Now Initiative. The tax-exempt lobbying group was launched in 2011 by billionaire John Arnold, a former Enron executive, and his wife, Laura. This kind of “social welfare” advocacy group — registered as a 501(c)4 charity with the IRS — allows donors to pour unlimited amounts of cash into a campaign without ever being identified. The anonymity they offer contributors has earned them a reputation for secrecy and the name “dark money.”
REINING IN LOBBYISTS The Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Legislative Analyst has recommended explicitly prohibiting any political contributions from registered lobbyists. As a step toward that goal, the Ethics Commission sponsored last fall’s Proposition C, which the voters approved. It requires a broader group of people and organizations than in the past to register as “expenditure lobbyist” — those who employ someone else to lobby officials for them. For the November 2016 ballot, the Ethics Commission in early July was considering a measure to restrict lobbyist contributions, fundraising and gifts to officials. Voters could be asked to reduce total lobbyist contributions in an election cycle to between $50 and $250; the amount had not been decided. Similar restrictions would apply to amounts candidates and campaign committees could accept or solicit from lobbyists. Another proposed reform would make it illegal for lobbyists to bundle donations to candidates and their committees. In addition, another potential fall initiative — introduced to the Board of Supervisors by Peskin and endorsed by the Ethics Commission — would prohibit elected city officials from establishing candidate-controlled general-purpose campaign committees. LeeAnn Pelham, executive director of the Ethics Commission, said this spring that even with the proposed new legal powers, she would not have the capacity to effectively
enforce campaign finance rules, because four key positions, including an investigator, remained unfilled. At the time, she was pressing for a 27 percent budget increase to strengthen the commission’s investigative work. The mayor originally countered with a proposed 1.5 percent cut to the commission’s budget, which has flatlined in recent years. Ethics commissioner Peter Keane told the San Francisco Chronicle that the apparent purpose of the cutback was “to keep this committee as a completely castrated body without any kind of ability to do its job.” Ultimately, Lee relented. In his city spending plan released May 31, the mayor fully funded the commission’s $3.3 million request for the next fiscal year — allowing for more staff, beefed-up enforcement and new technology — and committed to $3.5 million for 2018. The Board of Supervisors approved the spending plan in late June. Lee did not respond to multiple interview requests over three months from the Public Press about his fundraising activities or his efforts to reduce the budget of the city’s ethics watchdogs. The focus on exposing the sources of campaign funds is not an academic exercise. San Francisco politicians recently have faced serious legal trouble for receiving improper donations, including contributions from business people seeking favors. The 2015 election occurred amid an ongoing localstate-federal investigation into political corruption that has targeted several of Lee’s associates. In January, two women were indicted on state charges of bribery and money laundering after undercover FBI agents said they recorded the women agreeing to illegally bundle $20,000 to pay off Lee’s 2011 campaign debt, in exchange for business with the city, and to disguise the payments in the form of individual $500 contributions to give the appearance of abiding by contribution limits. In the wake of these indictments, District Attorney George Gascón established something he called the San Francisco Public Corruption Task Force. The investigative group is not specifically focused on any one incident and could include any public official, spokesman Max Szabo said. In describing the task force, Gascón said in a prepared statement: “It’s time for terms like ‘good old boy’ and ‘payto-play’ to be artifacts of our history, and this task force will work to ensure they are absent from our future.” But even Gascón violated city election laws in seeking campaign cash. In May, the Ethics Commission fined him and two staff members for illegally soliciting donations through a 2014 fundraising event. The violation cost Gascón $4,000, and Assistant District Attorney Michael Swart and Chief of Staff Christine Soto DeBerry each paid $1,500. These challenges are national in scope. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders made reforming what he calls the “corrupt campaign finance system” the top plank in his primary bid. Activists are advocating new laws to respond to the 2010 Citizens United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that invalidated limits on corporate expenditures. For San Franciscans, the stakes are high. Voters in November may again be weighing in on at least one housing-related proposal. The San Francisco Association of Realtors has drafted a change to the definition of middle-income housing that would extend opportunities to win competitive below-market-rate housing slots to people making 110 percent of the area median income — twice the current earnings cutoff. While encompassing a wider demographic swath, the measure would
LEEANN PELHAM, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE SAN FRANCISCO ETHICS COMMISSION If someone works for many campaigns simultaneously, political independence can be tricky to maintain. “Identifying what makes something under the law to be independent or not is important.” shift the focus away from helping lower-paid workers. As of early July, campaign finance records showed that a total of $4.5 million had been spent during 2016 on primary races and ballot initiatives, and spending will likely escalate as November approaches.
CONTROL OF CITY HALL Though the mayor’s side lost one battle last fall — his effort to retain the District 3 board seat — it was not for lack of trying. During the campaign season, he led a small group of donors and political insiders, including city staff, to engage in aggressive fundraising. Peskin’s victory over Christensen tipped the balance on the Board of Supervisors toward a progressive coalition and empowered a new majority to scrutinize big business’ access to City Hall. Although Peskin’s own campaign committee outspent Christensen’s, roughly $595,000 to $481,000, that does not tell the whole story. The addition of third-party money targeted specifically to support Christensen, notably the Committee for a Progressive and Affordable San Francisco Opposing Peskin for Supervisor 2015, outweighed the money backing Peskin. That brought the totals to $1,167,600 for Christensen and $945,239 for Peskin, adding up to a record amount for a supervisorial race. The mayor was so intent on defeating Peskin that he and tech investor Ron Conway appeared at a private meeting in April 2015 at the law firm of Hanson Bridgett, where Lee’s campaign treasurer, Kevin Heneghan, was a partner. In 2012, Lee had hired Heneghan, an attorney who specializes in election-law compliance, to clean up messy donation records from his first run for mayor in 2011. Besides working for the mayor, Heneghan became treasurer for five other key fall 2015 campaigns connected to Lee. The meeting, convened by the mayor, Board of Supervisors President London Breed and Supervisor Mark Farrell in an invitation marked “confidential,” was called to discuss “campaign priorities.” Four days later, a marquee collection of Lee supporters, including lobbyists, developers and union representatives, assembled around a rectangle of tables pushed together in a 26th-floor conference room at the firm’s Market Street offices.
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SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, SUMMER 2016 | SPECIAL REPORT ON CAMPAIGN FINANCE | SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | B7
2015: Most Expensive Election in Almost 20 Years Recorded year-to-year spending has fluctuated for many reasons. Occasionally a single campaign committee, like Airbnb’s “No on F” in 2015, tipped the scales with outsized spending. Some years featured one election; others, three. Regulatory changes have required more committees to report electronically in recent years, and the San Francisco Ethics Commission’s transition from a paper to electronic filing system has reduced instances of human error, capturing more data more consistently. For example, committees spending less than $5,000 have been required to file electronically only since 2013. And prior to 2008 even electronic filings had to be totalled up manually by the city staff. DATA SOURCE: San Francisco Ethics Commission online records, which contain data going back to 1998. Amounts have been adjusted for inflation.
ELECTION YEAR
$27.8M
$27.2M $25.0M
$24.9M
$22.1M $19.3M
$18.3M
$17.1M
$12.6M
$17.6M
$12.2M
$8.4M $6.4M $6.7M
$6.1M
$6.5M
$4.2M $2.1M
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2000: Presidential election year (highlighted in yellow, above): George W. Bush wins after U.S. Supreme Court rules in his favor in Bush v. Gore.
2002-2003: Gray Davis re-elected governor (but recalled and replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger a year later).
2004: George W. Bush re-elected president.
STEVE KAWA, MAYOR LEE’S CHIEF OF STAFF Kawa’s reputedly brusque demeanor has earned him the nickname, “the enforcer.” The San Francisco Chronicle has said that he’s willing to “act as Lee’s heavy,” taking on the office’s unsavory duties. FINANCE from B6
The San Francisco Chronicle in August 2015 reported that the group included Police Officers Association president Martin Halloran; plumbers union leader Larry Mazzola Jr.; city retirement board commissioner Victor Makras; lobbyist Chris Gruwell; and Chris Wright, head of the Committee on Jobs, a business group. Breed and Farrell also were present. The Public Press has learned from sources that the group also included commercial real estate developer Dan Kingsley of the SKS firm; lobbyist Alex Tourk, a campaign manager and top aide when Newsom was mayor; Rich Peterson, a lobbyist for Goodyear Peterson Hayward & Associates; F.X. Crowley, head of the stagehands union and a registered lobbyist; and Maggie Rothschild, a fundraiser for SGR Consultants, the firm Lee hired to handle campaign outreach. At the meeting, Lee stood beside his chief of staff, Steve Kawa, senior adviser and former campaign spokesman Tony Winnicker, and deputy chief of staff Jason Elliott. The Chronicle in 2014 nicknamed Kawa “the enforcer,” because of his willingness to “act as Lee’s heavy” by forcing out department heads and performing other unpleasant tasks. The assembly was no random grouping of donors and volunteers. It included three of the city’s four top lobbyists who bundled the most donations from individual donors in 2015: Tourk of Ground Floor Public Affairs and tech-industry group sf.citi; Peterson; and Gruwell, of Platinum Advisors. Together they raised $140,224 of the $235,124 in bundled funds declared last year, ac-
2008: PG&E spends $11 million defeating ballot measure supporting a new public power option. Proponents spend just $62,000. Obama elected president.
2010: In landmark Citizens United case, divided Supreme Court rules corporations and unions can give unlimited sums to certain political action committees.
cording to data from the Ethics Commission. Tourk collected $88,024, Gruwell $28,200 and Peterson $24,000. Their cash went to six candidates, and all three men bundled for Lee. At the same time, they were actively asking for favors from City Hall. Tourk had met with Elliot, Lee’s deputy chief of staff, on April 1, 2015, just six days before the fundraiser, on behalf of ride-share startup Lyft, which wanted the mayor’s support on a California Assembly bill. Ethics Commission records show that Tourk had also been plying City Hall on behalf of Realtex, which was preparing to secure a permit for its fourth South of Market apartment building. Realtex needed the Planning Department and supervisors to sign off on a rezoning plan to increase height limits to 85 feet from 55 feet. The project is under review. Tourk visited officials, planning commissioners and supervisors a total of 26 times over 10 months, between Feb. 19 and Nov. 20, two weeks after the election. Tourk visited City Hall personnel six times. He called on city Planning Director John Rahaim, Supervisor Farrell and Mayor’s Office of Housing Director Olson Lee to “discuss plans for development and create a relationship with department” as well as “potential housing policy,” according to city records. He also met with Robert Beck, director of the Treasure Island Development Authority Board, to “find underutilized properties for potential development.” Of the contributions he bundled, Tourk had already delivered to Christensen’s campaign $21,500 worth of checks written by Conway, his wife and two other family members, and from sf.citi, a trade group that is headed by Conway but whose everyday affairs are, according to Tourk, handled by Ground Floor. His lobbying firm and Conway’s trade group have the same telephone number and address. Participants at the April meeting said the mayor warned the guests not to donate to Peskin’s campaign. Peskin had served twice on the board and was termed out of his seat in 2009. He had clashed with mayors Willie Brown and Gavin Newsom and exasperated their friends in the business community. Among other actions, he blocked hotels from converting to condominiums and made it harder for landlords to evict tenants for similar purposes. Lee said he hoped to avoid a repeat of that dynamic. “I’m paying attention,” Lee told the group, according to the August 2015 Chronicle article that relied on the recollection of one of the participants at the meeting. Interpretations of the mayor’s words varied, according to sources who were present but did not want to be
2011: Interim mayor Ed Lee spends nearly $2 million to stay in office, defeating more than 15 challengers.
2012: Barack Obama re-elected president.
2013: Deep pockets don’t always win: Real estatebacked committee gives $2.6 million — twice opponents’ spending — in failed bid to allow 8 Washington waterfront development.
named for fear of retaliation from Lee’s office and of a possible investigation by the City Attorney’s office. Some viewed his approach as intimidation — a threat to use his office to affect the fortunes of people doing business with the city and corporate representatives seeking to influence legislation. One participant said Lee implied he would cut off access to city contracts, which would be illegal. The attendee said the point of the warning was to dampen money-raising for Peskin: “It was to make clear to people that if they supported Peskin, they’d pay.” Another participant also interpreted Lee’s words to mean that anyone supporting Peskin would not get much support from City Hall. But the attendee would not be affected, so “I didn’t take anything from it.” Conway addressed the group after the mayor, Kawa, Winnicker and Elliott left the room. According to the Chronicle and a September 2015 report in San Francisco Magazine, Conway drove home Lee’s message of loyalty — that donating to Peskin would result in a backlash from City Hall. Conway, whose records show he had already given the maximum $500 allowed to Christensen’s campaign, exhorted his audience to round up more money to keep Peskin from reclaiming his old seat, according to three people at the meeting who confirmed the San Francisco Magazine version of events. Conway declined to comment on the meeting or what was said. Sources who spoke with the Public Press said they were later contacted by the office of City Attorney Dennis Herrera with questions about whether any laws were broken. Herrera told the Public Press that he would “neither confirm nor deny” that there was an investigation. “We learn things all the time,” he said. “If we think it merits inquiry we will look at it.” The Ethics Commission’s Pelham said her agency also has a policy not to discuss investigations of complaints. A Lee ally defended the mayor for demanding loyalty. “As a leader, sometimes you need to make it clear that your allies can’t play both sides,” said Nathan Ballard, a veteran Democratic campaign strategist who has worked with national and local candidates and has done crisis communication for Lee. “Leaders expect monogamy.” But to Dan Newman, co-founder and president of MapLight, a Berkeley-based nonprofit that tracks political spending in California and nationally, the secret April 2015 meeting sounded like a prime example of ethically questionable fundraising practices. He said that a proposed November 2016 ballot measure to tighten rules on lobbyists and other donors, while per-
2014: American Beverage Association pours $9 million into defeating tax on sugary drinks in San Francisco. Industry wins after outspending tax’s backers 30-to-1.
2015: Most expensive local race on record. Three committees — Yes on A and D, and No on F — spent a combined $17.2 million.
haps not preventing back-room deals, could expose the appearance of quid-pro-quo influence peddling. Newman described the effect of such coordination between candidates and financial supporters as a form of “bribery, even if it’s legal.” He added: “It’s an indication of a broken campaign system that gives favors for money.”
CAMPAIGN COORDINATION An independent-expenditure committee may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, but is required to operate separately from candidates’ election teams. Holding the April 2015 meeting at Heneghan’s law firm risked creating the appearance of coordination between two committees that campaign finance laws require stay separate: a candidate committee and an independent-expenditure committee. Halloran’s police union was contributing to two independent-expenditure committees focused on Peskin’s defeat: Friends of Julie Christensen and the Committee for a Progressive and Affordable San Francisco. Halloran’s presence at the meeting put him in the same room as a person who worked for a representative of Christensen’s campaign committee: Three attendees said Heneghan’s paralegal was present while the mayor and Conway — a donor to the Christensen independentexpenditure committee — discussed fundraising for
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KEVIN HENEGHAN CAMPAIGN COMPLIANCE ATTORNEY
Represented six campaigns allied with Lee. This year Airbnb hired him as a corporate lawyer.
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B8 | SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | SPECIAL REPORT ON CAMPAIGN FINANCE | SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, SUMMER 2016
We Found a $20 Million Error in a City Database.
What Don’t We Know About Campaign Finance? By Sara Bloomberg // Public Press
T
wo official city websites offer troves of campaign finance data for San Francisco elections: SF OpenData (data.sfgov.org) and the Ethics Commission (sfethics.org). But all that information is useful only if you know how to sort through it. And if you know it was entered correctly. The Public Press spent six months digging and sorting, and many hours talking with staff at the Ethics Commission for clarification on the best ways to find and distill the information on the 2015 elections. Campaigns file reports electronically via the Ethics Commission’s NetFile system, which is used by several California cities and counties. OpenData, the central clearinghouse for data published by the city and county of San Francisco, scrapes it daily for updates. The information is constantly revised, making summaries of past reporting periods a moving target. Campaigns often revise their statements, so the data are accurate only on the day they are viewed. As an election approaches, figures reported change more frequently. We discovered also that looking through the data for big-picture trends was not easy. For example, the data are sortable by year (but not by election date) and then only after properly setting a half-dozen search filters. An even bigger challenge is that OpenData relies on data uploaded by campaign committees, so the information is only as accurate as the human beings entering it. The NetFile system does have some fail-safe measures that align with — and are automatically checked against — state-level standards. If the system catches an error, the filing is rejected. However, it doesn’t eliminate the potential for human error. Several months into our research, we found a huge discrepancy. Data downloaded from NetFile, which is privately held, showed $25.6 million in expenditures in 1998 — the first year the Ethics Commission collected records electronically. But when we checked for the same information at OpenData, the figure was $5.8 million. Informed of the $20 million error — $19,981,008 to be exact — Ethics Commission staff pointed to a single expenditure report that was recorded
ED LEE, SAN FRANCISCO MAYOR
At a secret April 2015 fundraising meeting he and Ron Conway convened, told donors, “I’m paying attention.”
FINANCE from B7
their candidate. Law firms go out of their way to keep the two kinds of committees separate to shield their clients from even the appearance of wrongdoing, several attorneys who handle campaign finance said. Pelham, the city ethics director, said last year’s election highlighted the difficulty of overseeing such large, complex and interconnected campaigns. The commission does not call out any campaign committee for criticism absent a formal inquiry. But she said that having a single treasurer for six committees in one election, while not uncommon in California, created the possibility of coordination between candidate campaigns and third-party spending committees. Legally these must be funded and directed independently. “When individuals working with or around a candidate’s campaign wear multiple hats — and also play a role with a committee that is doing or planning noncandidate spending that could affect that candidate — identifying what makes something under the law to be independent or not is important,” Pelham said. By last fall, Heneghan became treasurer of six of the best-funded committees aligned with Lee. These included the mayor’s own re-election campaign; his separate ballot-measure committee, for which he
Thousands of campaign filings are available online, but city summaries of the data sometimes contain discrepancies. The Ethics Commission is working to improve its filing technology.
in NetFile. While it may be impossible to know exactly how the error occurred, it appeared that someone may have entered a date — Oct. 8, 1998, or “1998 10 08” — in the expenditure field. It was a glaring confirmation of the potential for errors. Notably, any previous research that examined trends over nearly two decades of data might be inaccurate. Some contextual information, often called metadata, also is missing. In addition to reporting total money spent, campaigns have to report what it was spent on. There are 27 three-letter codes for various campaign expenditures. But sometimes these codes are filed under different columns. This makes it difficult to calculate the total amounts spent, such as for TV ads. There are also instances where a single report is tagged with multiple codes, making it impossible to know exactly how many dollars went to each type of expenditure. While fact-checking late in the project, the Public Press also found filings with up to five codes listed on a single expenditure report. Checking all the expense declarations from tens of thousands of
was allowed to raise unlimited sums; a $310 million affordable-housing bond proposal (Proposition A); the clean-energy-source labeling proposal (Proposition H); opposition to a moratorium on luxury housing in the Mission District (Proposition I); and Christensen’s race. As such, Heneghan was the treasurer of committees whose coffers held one-quarter of all the money flowing in and out of the city’s most expensive races — $7.2 million of the total $27.8 million spent last year, according to campaign finance records. Heneghan’s political work on behalf of this loose pro-business coalition made him so sought after that in early 2016 he was hired away by Airbnb as a full-time corporate lawyer. He was also made treasurer of the Committee to Expand the Middle Class. A 2000 graduate of UC Hastings law school, Heneghan was deeply versed in the city’s campaign finance regulations. One of his duties starting out at Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Mueller & Naylor LLP, a political and government law and lobbying firm in San Rafael, involved creating systems to ensure Fortune 500 companies complied with campaign and lobbying regulations. He did similar ethics and compliance work when he joined the Sutton Law Firm in San Francisco in 2003. Heneghan had just been hired by Hanson Bridgett, a firm co-founded by former San Francisco District Attorney Raymond Hanson, when Lee tapped him to clean up a financial mess. Lee’s 2011 campaign committee had accepted checks that later had to be returned, including $3,500 from Property Services LLC and its director, Andrew Hawkins Cohen. The California Fair Political Practices Commission ruled in 2014 that the donors tried to evade the San Francisco Campaign and Governmental Conduct Code’s $500 limit on donations by making contributions in the name of other people. The agency said the arrangement violated the California Political Reform Act. The 2014 decision condemned what it called “campaign money laundering,” which it said was “one of the most serious violations of the act because such conduct circumvents campaign contribution limits, violates disclosure requirements, and deceives the voting public as to the true source of funds.” Property Services and Cohen were fined the maxi-
Our education coverage will continue this fall with a new project funded by a $10,000 grant from California Humanities and membership donations from individual readers like you. Help the us produce even more significant reporting by becoming a member today: sfpublicpress.org/membership. Thank you for your support!
CROSSWORD PUZZLE SOLUTION FROM A2
A graph of the 2015 election data is on page B1. A timeline of election spending since 1998 is on page B7. Find the visualized data online at sfpublicpress.org/costofvotes/data
mum allowed, $40,000, for making the donation to Lee and a separate $500 contribution to the committee of one of his many competitors, Assessor Phil Ting. Lee’s campaign manager for 2011 and 2015, Bill Barnes, said Lee never knowingly accepted an illicit donation in any election. Barnes said donors expect the campaign to spend money on compliance efforts so they do not run into such problems. “If you don’t pay for compliance you can get into trouble,” he said.
PERENNIAL REFORM EFFORTS Recent events, including the ongoing probe that has involved more than a dozen politically connected public officials, political staffers and organized crime suspects, often get grouped in news reports under the general category of a “culture of corruption.” The mayor has issued statements denouncing corruption, and said he had nothing to do with the events that led to the joint investigation by the San Francisco District Attorney’s office and FBI. But the city’s Civil Grand Jury, a committee of volunteer watchdogs with subpoena powers, sharply criticized city leaders, saying in a 2014 report that “San Francisco officials at all levels have impeded actions intended to establish a culture of ethical behavior.” The panel said the focus on accountability needs greater leadership from the mayor, supervisors, city attorney, district attorney, department heads and commissioners. Lee shot back at the criticism, saying he disagreed with the panel’s conclusions. “No actual misdeeds or examples are provided as evidence in the report,” he wrote in August of that year. The Civil Grand Jury member who wrote the report, Robert van Ravenswaay, said the criticism illustrated the unwillingness of department heads and city leaders such as the mayor to crack down on appointees and staffers despite wrongdoing, and he responded by saying that Lee should not have attempted to cut the Ethics Commission budget. The commission, the first line of defense for campaign finance complaints, is emerging from a long period of disorganization. In August 2015, just as the electoral season kicked into high gear, John St. Croix, the com-
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individual PDF documents to capture all of this information for more than 15 years’ worth of data would be a massive, labor-intensive project. Another problem: Not all campaigns fill in the “election date” box in electronically filed reports. As a result, sorting by election date would potentially cause data to be excluded, skewing the results. One work-around is to sort by “reporting period,” which is always filled in. But there is often more than just one election per year. (The task was simplified, though not foolproof, for 2015 because there was only one election.) Ultimately, we cannot be sure what else might have been missed because of inadvertent input error or even possible deliberate miscoding to obscure contributions. The Ethics Commission has corrected many of these problems for specific races going back to 2011. The results can be viewed through graphical dashboards on its website. But searching for information the commission did not visualize, or simply fact-checking the information presented online, is still a messy affair. Before 2008, committees that e-filed used a web form provided by the city, but the system was very limited; it accepted only filings for the Form 460, which is used to track expenditures and contributions. Basically, it was a data dump — the web system did not calculate or summarize figures automatically, such as cumulative totals, which NetFile does. Implemented in 2008, NetFile has gone through many updates. The commission envisions making it even more robust over the coming two fiscal years, including improving the metadata that are recorded so that searching the filings can be done more efficiently. For fiscal 2017, which began July 1, the Ethics Commission was slated to receive additional money to pay for investigators and compliance staff in its $3.3 million budget, plus funding for an E-Filing Conversion Project. That may mean the agency will be able to perform deeper audits, a major step toward more transparency and usability for ambitious, DIY voters.
mission’s executive director, resigned. Pelham was appointed in January. She now oversees planned audits of many, but not all, of the campaigns. The Peskin-Christensen race must be audited because both candidates took public funding. Lee did not, so his committee will not face an audit. The commission also randomly chose issue committees with expenses over $10,000 for audits. As the election’s largest spenders, Proposition F and all of the other races championed by Lee landed on the list. So did the lobbying firms that sent representatives to the April 2015 meeting. The audits are one way the commission can check the work of campaign compliance staff and potentially find patterns that might reveal improper donations or spending. But tracking improper influence by monied interests is difficult even with the extensive documentation lobbyists must provide to the city. As an administrative enforcement agency, Pelham said, the Ethics Commission has an important role in checking those who might cut corners. “Having an effective traffic cop is critical,” she said, “if you’re going to enforce the laws long before a busy intersection becomes so dangerous that the public has no choice but to completely avoid it.” Sara Bloomberg, Noah Arroyo, Meka Boyle and Cody Wright contributed to this report.
RON CONWAY, TECH INVESTOR
“Proud to support Mayor Lee’s re-election,” as well as Julie Christensen and affordable housing bond.