Adachi Allies Threaten Cuts to Public Defender Budget
over Pension Reform

Written by Luke Thomas. Posted in News, Politics

• http://www.fogcityjournal.com/wordpress/author/hbrown/ Harold Brown

  “Where’s my cliff?!?”

  Said Daly to Marc Salomon who relayed it on down the line to the other Progressive lemmings. As if getting on the wrong side (choosing neither is better) of the red herring Sit/Lie ballot measure (polling at 70% positive although it certainly sucks) … not content to allow themselves to be marginalized by Newsom’s office on that matter (which makes em ‘soft on crime’ in the Public eye), now here they go supporting runaway spending on bloated employee benefits. Do these guys have a single clue?

  h.

• http://www.digitaljournal.com/user/515407/news Ann Garrison

  The Board has collaborated in the financial sector’s takedown of the national and global economies by enabling and enriching the South Florida-based Lennar Corporation for ten years plus. Lennar’s UAMC Mortgage, a Lennar-Lehman Brothers collaboration created largely to push Lennar properties at inflated prices, with predatory subprime loans, was a major player.

  The Board also collaborates in perpetual war, the other major drain on the budget, by inviting Fleet Week and the Blue Angels Air Show military recruitment drive here every year.

  They should address their own complicity in hammering the city budget here and everywhere else in the State instead of engaging in this kind of pettiness. Unless we see some real political courage and creativity, there’ll be nothing on the horizon but shrinking budgets, budget quarrels, and ongoing “structural readjustment” like that the IMF and World Bank impose on the Global South. It could hardly be more obvious that the federal government is on board.

• http://www.digitaljournal.com/user/515407/news Ann Garrison

  Also, isn’t there something a little off about that headline? Isn’t that supposed to say “Sometime Adachi Allies” since they aren’t on this?

• marc

  Prefiero morir en las pies como vivir in las rodillas.

  -marc

• http://www.fogcityjournal.com/profiles/profile_chris_daly.shtml Chris Daly

  For 9 years running, I have proposed amendments to the budget to try to save vital health and community services. This year will be no exception.
  While my attention continues to be focused on Police and Fire to pay for these restorations, in this fiscal year, any department that has received an increase will be scrutinized.

  I am an advocate for indigent defense, as I am for mental health and homeless services. In balancing these priorities, I rely on the work of our independent Budget Analyst.

  It is inaccurate, or at the very least a drastic oversimplification, to say that a second look at a committee action equals retribution. Mr. Adachi has done very well during the Board’s budget deliberations over the years, and I have been one of his staunchest advocates. I have successfully argued behind the scenes (when my colleagues didn’t think his numbers added up) that we should give our guy the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, it is the tough budget times, that Mr. Adachi uses to justify his Charter Amendment, that also compel me to look deeper into the budget.

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• http://District5Diary Rob Anderson

  Doesn’t providing legal counsel for the poor qualify as a “vital” service? Adachi isn’t pocketing the money budgeted for his office; he uses it to pay the lawyers on his staff. I don’t believe a majority of supervisors—even on this awful board—will go along with this crude political retaliation.

• marc

  @Rob, I think that you’ve proven to us all “beyond a reasonable doubt” that there is no correlation between the amount of money spent on public sector legal services and the quality of legal services purchased by the public as measured by outcomes.

  That’s a fair argument.

  -marc

• greg kamin

  Chris,
  This ballot measure is wrongheaded. But indigent defendants are not the ones promoting it, and they are not the enemy.

  Call it what you like, but what you’re doing looks and smells like retaliation, and the people hit the hardest are the people who least deserve it.

• Ralph

  Jeff Adachi is learning quickly that no good deed goes unpunished.

• http://soulpowered.tumblr.com/ Robert B. Livingston

  Another tempest in a teapot. The Board is justifiably troubled breaking precedent, as they have– especially the more progressive ones– staunchly tried to recoup cuts to the poor and meek year in year out. A

• Martinzehr

  The right of people in San Francisco to legal representation should not be held hostage to an internal feud within Democratic party support groups. There is an embryonic movement against the monopoly of power by the Democrats and we do not seek to promote growth. This movement is independent but has within it the seeds of a real political opposition party in San Francisco. Greens would do well to grasp the growing opposition to the systemmatic attacks on living standards that have occurred through the fines and fees as mechanisms to maintain the bureaucracy.

  Who will suffer by cutbacks in the public defenders’ office? Everyone knows the answer to that.
  What are the driving forces promoting the gentrification of the city and responsible for the mass displacements of African-Americans and the deterioration of the city’s public schools? HINT: They lie within the existing governing coalition in the city.
  What are the priorities for making San Francisco a sustainable city- politically, financially and environmentally?
  1. Break the monopoly of the Democratic Party;
  2. Establish public education funding as the number one priority;
  3. Promote a state bank for public infrastructure (look at the proposal by Laura Wells ; http://www.laurawells.org/

  It is long past the time when the state and municipal budgets can simply be used to return political favors. How many more prisons need to be built in this state before we figure this out? The best offense for San Franciscans is a good defense (read: the Public Defenders’ Office).

• http://www.fogcityjournal.com/wordpress/author/hbrown/ Harold Brown

  Hey Avalos!

  You’re reading this right? Show some sack and give your stand right here in front of God and everyone. You were the first to support cutting indigent defense not that many months ago. Do you support cutting the budget of the Office of Public Defender?

  Chris Daly? I just can’t stop shaking my head. Is there anything you will not do for a headline? I’m certain we’ll find out over the next couple of months. How about getting a pair of bolt biters and cutting the lock off Boeddeker Park? Let the poor in.

  Where’s Eric Mar? What’s your position here guy? You do have a position right?

  David Campos? You’re the new white knight? You want a piece of Adachi and Gonzalez too? Come out right now here in public and say so.

  Mirkarimi? Stand up like a man your staff and friends and family can be proud of and tell us what you want to do with the budget of the Public Defender’s office. It ain’t hard. Just open your mouth and say what you think.

  Let’s see all of you get on the record here. Unless you’re all afraid.

  h.

• DavidinSF

  According to Budget Committee Chair John Avalos, Supervisor Chris Daly is expected to make a motion at the Board’s July 20 meeting asking the Board to reverse a $1.2 million public defender budget restoration. That restoration, transferred from the trial court budget, was applied to help prevent outsourcing of more expensive indigent defense counsel.
  “I’d rather operate to keep the function of the public defender intact rather than apply retribution, although if my colleagues want to apply retribution, I’m not going to cry,” Avalos told Fog City Journal.
  I had assumed Avalos was intelligent with a future, what a foot bullet he just delivered too himself and any prog running for district supervisor.
  If the Sit/Lie ballot measure wedge was not enough, now we have this.

• http://soulpowered.tumblr.com/ Robert B. Livingston

  Ever want to scrap what you said and hit “send” by tapping the enter key by accident? I guess that is what I did above.

  For the curious. here is the rest of the unvarnished comment:

  ***

  Another tempest in a teapot (over who called who what when)?

  The Board is justifiably troubled breaking precedent, as they have, especially the more progressive ones, staunchly tried to restore budget cuts to the poor and meek year in year out.

  A friend calls it a yearly dance.

  I call it musical chairs.

  No matter how we applaud their efforts, someone will always lose, and hardly anyone ever gains.

  Nader often asked why our cities are so often in shambles… when most have been controlled by Democrats for years.

  Future city allowances are unsustainable unless Adachi’s pragmatic solution to pensions is not pursued. Pretending the problem will go away means future corrective fixes entailing huge job losses.

  If progressives really cared more about working folks they would be less craven to “Organized Labor” which today largely collects dues, works hand in glove with business, and negotiates whose chairs will be swiped.

  Think of the two-tier wage concessions that have become commonplace: veteran workers keep their benefits; newcomers get reduced benefits.

  Been to Safeway lately, and searched for the older workers whose job security was supposed to have been enhanced? (Harassed to extinction perhaps?)

  Seen the weary faces struggling to appeal to your every whim, a grotesque caricaturization of customer service? (The kids don’t know yet what it is all about.)

  Worse, I notice more machines than employees– and long lines of dum-dums, some normally progressive pro-labor San Franciscans, self-serving “for convenience”.

  ***

  At that point I hit the wrong key– BOING!

  ***

  (So you get the gist of my latest rant.)

  I like Chiu, Avalos, Campos, Daly, Mar, Mirkarimi. I think they are decent and trying. The others have their good days but are contemptible like the Mayor. All need to grow up beyond the cant of Organized Labor = Organized Workers. The Mayor knows the difference and uses it to his advantage.

  I love Adachi– now. I am not fooled by the silly name-calling and taking sides. He wants to help San Francisco and San Franciscans. There is nothing phony about that.

  His ballot measure is not perfect– but it won’t be what drives civil servants from this city. The criticisms of his plan are hyperbolic– inflated by the MSM that loves a divide-and-conquer scuffle.

• http://www.digitaljournal.com/user/515407/news Ann Garrison

  “I’d rather operate to keep the function of the public defender intact rather than apply retribution, although if my colleagues want to apply retribution, I’m not going to cry,” Avalos told Fog City Journal.

  Which colleagues is Avalos talking about?

• Javalos

  Hhhmm. Frankly I am a little surprised to see my conversation printed close to verbatim here. It appears that Luke has made a few liberties here with my comment. I am surprised to see the word “retribution” printed here. Doesn’t really sound like me.

  Yesterday, I spent a lot of time explaining to Luke why I supported shifting money from the trial courts/indigent defense to the public defender office. This past year, I worked with Eric Mar to see that the PD had adequate funding to not conflict out cases for unavailability of staff.

  I learned to support the PD the hard way: Last year, in my first meeting as budget chair, I did not support giving the PD the authority to hire more staff because I felt that city depts needed to be tightening their belts to meet the challenges of the deficit. While hundreds of jobs were eliminated, labor concessions, vital safety net services lost, Jeff fought to keep his budget whole. In this context I did not think it was fair relative to other departments’ cutbacks even though I believe in Jeff’s mission.

  When Jeff did not get the budget he wanted he claimed he had no ability to represent all the cases that came to his dept and conflicted out cases for unavailability of staff. These cases went to the private bar under the trial courts. I made the case that Jeff should make sacrifices like every other department but Jeff felt such sacrifices compromised indigent defense. I countered that all of our city services were being compromised and that Jeff ought to take his cut like everyone else. He refused and instead of working with a higher case load he passed cases on to the trial courts. As a result the trial courts did not have adequate funding to pay for the private attorneys to represent all the people needing indigent defense.

  Thus, last year, a vicious cycle ensued: As the police dept passed on cases from a drug crackdown in the TL, Jeff claimed he hadn’t the adequate level of staffing to represent everyone that came through his department. He passed more and more cases onto the trial courts which did not have adequate levels of funding to meet the challenge of more cases. As Jeff conflicted out more cases for lack of funding and staff, the pressure on the trial courts grew. Soon the trial courts and Jeff Adachi were asking for more money to meet the indigent defense needs. Subsequently, earlier this year, the Board of Supervisors approved a supplemental appropriation to bring some balance to these departments.

  The relationship between the public defender and the trial courts takes part in a closed system where cases could be picked up by either department based on 1)the size of case loads that the public defender is willing and able to carry and 2)what the trial courts has funding to support the private attorneys providing indigent defense.

  In this year”s budget process ( last month), when Jeff faced a $2.1M cut to his office, the budget committee approved at my recommendation moving $1.2M from the trial courts to the public defenders office to prevent his conflicting out for unavailability of staff. We had also moved a cut recommendation by the budget analyst from one part of the public defenders office to the salaried part of his budget to allow for adequate staffing levels, thus whittling down the Mayor’s $2.1M cut in the PD’s office to a $664 cut: $2.1 -[ $1.2 (trial crts) + $236 (public def)] = $664K cut to PD.

  In making this restoration to Jeff’s budget I asked if he would not have to conflict out for unavailability of staff. He said he would not do so with this level of funding. I also asked him if he would be asking us for more money and he said no. I have texts to prove it. Later on the mike in budget committee, Jeff was a little more cagey, not quite saying he wouldn’t ask for more money and not exactly saying he would. I pressed him and got something close to the response I wanted.

  After all of this work on Jeff’s budget over the past year and a half, culminating in these decisions on the current year budget, I feel that I cannot work to undercut Jeff’s budget and would vote against retributive cuts. If such cuts prevail I feel the funds should stay within the closed system of the indigent defense program and revert back to the trial courts’ budget which would be burdened with cases that Jeff may conflicted out for unavailability of staff.

  I do not agree with Jeff’s Smart Reform charter amendment. I do not agree with it mostly on the grounds that making city workers pay more for family health care runs counter to progressive values. Rather than make the public sector health benefits appear more like private sector benefits, I prefer bringing the private sector up to humane health care standards.

• marc

  The courts will not tolerate indigent defendants going without constitutionally mandated levels of counsel. Daly’s move does not take anything out on poor defendants. That is a red herring.

  The question here is how to pay for it and how to organize the office. Perhaps you think that Harvey Rose is some sort of evil plant of Chris Daly put into play before he was born, but the Budget Analysts’ recommendations are generally reasonable and result in greater efficiencies.

  Adachi insisted on maximizing his budget, the Board agreed with him, but during tough times, everyone has to take a haircut, austerity must be shared. Perhaps he thinks that every department should have to take a hair cut but his department all while maximizing the severity of the City’s fiscal hole during his campaign?

  All Daly’s move does is slightly lower the total resources the PD has at his disposal and according to the Budget Analyst does not take out anything on indigent defendants. The Board of Supervisors has bent over backwards to help the PD’s office, and if all that gets the progressive coalition is a kick in the gonads, then implementing Harvey Rose’s recommendations should not be too much to ask.

  -marc

• http://www.fogcityjournal.com/wordpress/author/luke/ Luke Thomas

  @John, as you recall I asked you if the motion to cut Adachi’s budget is “retribution” for SF Smart Reform. You responded exactly as quoted.

  I should also add, in Supervisor Avalos’ defense, that he did say he would not vote for a motion to cut.

  The bottom line is that whatever issue Avalos, Daly, or anyone else has with Jeff Adachi’s SF Smart Reform measure, they should not be threatening to attack the Office of Public Defender.

  They are two separate entities. One is an individual on a Lone Ranger crusade to save the city from insolvency. The other is an institution bestowed with the responsibility to provide constitutionally-mandated indigent defense.

• http://soulpowered.tumblr.com/ Robert B. Livingston

  Correction: my comment above.

  Future city allowances are unsustainable unless Adachi’s pragmatic solution to pensions /is/ pursued.

  Better? Thanks.