Mayor Gavin Newsom with SFMTA Executive Director Nathaniel Ford. File photo by Luke Thomas.
By Luke Thomas
May 20, 2010
Mayor Gavin Newsom today lashed out at the Board of Supervisors and the Transportation Workers Union (TWU) urging the Board “to agree to the SFMTA’s $7 million request to keep 45 buses in service” and urging the TWU to “step up and join every other labor union in San Francisco by ratifying the $14 million in labor concessions their leadership agreed to several months ago.”
“There is no more time for political theatrics,” Newsom wrote in terse statement released to the press. “The moment to step up is now. The Board of Supervisors has repeatedly said no. TWU has repeatedly said no. But now it’s time for them to say yes. It’s time for the Board of Supervisors and TWU to say yes to restoring service, to say yes to keeping our buses running, and to say yes to reaffirming our commitment to a Transit First city.”
Newsom neglects to mention that the Board of Supervisors is requesting a 50 percent restoration in Muni service cuts that took effect May 8 in exchange for $7 million in Prop K dollars to help balance the SFMTA’s estimated $19 million budget shortfall, or that he endorsed Proposition A in 2007 which gifted Muni drivers a guarantee of the highest salaries in the nation, or that in 2008 he was caught with his hands in the cookie-jar siphoning Muni funds to pay for mayoral staffers.
Responding to Newsom’s press release, Budget and Finance Committee Chair John Avalos told Fog City Journal: “Our goal is to reduce the service cuts so that we can have a semblance that San Francisco is a Transit First City,” adding there is still time for the TWU to honor their commitment to concessions.
“The mayor is politicizing this issue to score political points, and it looks like he’s becoming unhinged,” Avalos said.
Budget and Finance Chair, Supervisor John Avalos
Newsom’s statement in full:
MAYOR GAVIN NEWSOM’S STATEMENT ON THE SFMTA BUDGET AND RESTORATION OF SERVICE CUTS
San Francisco, CA— Mayor Gavin Newsom today made the following statement as the Board of Supervisors Budget & Finance Committee considered the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency’s (SFMTA) FY10-11 budget:
“Today, the Budget & Finance committee of the Board of Supervisors will have a chance to participate in a solution to a balanced budget for the SFMTA. It’s critical that the members of the Board agree to the SFMTA’s $7 million request to keep 45 buses in service. And it’s critical that TWU step up and join every other labor union in San Francisco by ratifying the $14 million in labor concessions their leadership agreed to several months ago. These two acts alone would immediately reverse nearly 3/4 of the $28.8 million in service cuts.
There is no more time for political theatrics — the moment to step up is now. The Board of Supervisors has repeatedly said no. TWU has repeatedly said no. But now it’s time for them to say yes. It’s time for the Board of Supervisors and TWU to say yes to restoring service, to say yes to keeping our buses running, and to say yes to reaffirming our commitment to a Transit First city.
Members of the Board of Supervisors should end the political grandstanding and join in being part of the solution. Stop holding $7 million hostage to conditions you know cannot be met. Release the funds to the SFMTA and join us in helping to restore the service cuts.”
Luke Thomas
Luke Thomas is a former software developer and computer consultant who proudly hails from London, England. In 2001, Thomas took a yearlong sabbatical to travel and develop a photographic portfolio. Upon his return to the US, Thomas studied photojournalism to pursue a career in journalism. In 2004, Thomas worked for several neighborhood newspapers in San Francisco before accepting a partnership agreement with the SanFranciscoSentinel.com, a news website formerly covering local, state and national politics. In September 2006, Thomas launched FogCityJournal.com. The BBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, New York Times, Der Spiegel, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, 7x7, San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Bay Guardian and the San Francisco Weekly, among other publications and news outlets, have published his work. Thomas is a member of the Freelance Unit of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, TNG-CWA Local 39521 and is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Follow Me:
The Hunger Site
June 7, 2010 at 7:29 pm
I would dispute the notion that the SFPD & SFFD are run as badly as Muni. And so would, you know, the voters.
May 21, 2010 at 12:15 pm
“Newsom is seeming to say in this pic: “Fuck this bullshit. Am I Lt. Governor yet?””
And Nate Ford has that look where he’s about to say “NO CAMERAS!” and knock the camera out of the reporter’s hand!
May 21, 2010 at 8:46 am
Newsom is seeming to say in this pic: “Fuck this bullshit. Am I Lt. Governor yet?”
Newsom has left seats open on the MTA Board of Directors such that they are having problems raising a quorum to handle the budget which the Board of Supervisors is poised to reject. He will not use his own power, yet his spokesman goes beserk when others who give a damn would act in his stead.
Newsom is politicizing the MTA, using his appointment monopoly to ensure that the Muni prioritizes his political constituencies rather than make the trade offs to serve the broadest base of riders.
Operating a transit system under a climate of scarce resources is going to be political–that’s how things work in the public sector when there is more demand than supply. The only way that those trade offs can be made in any manner that reflects the riding public is for all voices to be at the table.
The recommendations of staff reflect their own institutional political preferences, but this does not work because there are no technically professional answers to how we should balance funding between, say, commuters from the avenues and seniors or San Franciscans who rely on Muni to run errands.
Political appointees with diverse perspectives should make the trade offs while professional staff must faithfully implement them.
-marc
May 20, 2010 at 4:36 pm
What a jerk!
May 20, 2010 at 3:59 pm
That was pretty random.
May 20, 2010 at 2:46 pm
MUNI’s easy target,
I think their contract should be re-opened too. But, along with the cops and firefighters. Newsom doesn’t call for that. The cops idea of cutting their budget is to cut out the vacant slots for civilian workers in the department that the Board approved but that the cops never hired.
Hey, face it, the cops are the worst. They keep 200-300 sworn officers (with guns and everything) sitting behind desks. That’s double the percentage of sworn officers flying desks in comparable cities like San Diego.
I don’t even want to get into the firefighter featherbedding (did you know they have ‘buggy drivers’ whose job used to be to feed the chiefs’ horses?). What do they do now? Well, one of em is the fire chief.
Sure, open TWU’s budget. And the POA’s too. And the firefighters.
h.