“My family members in Gaza just relocated to a makeshift tent because their home in northern Gaza was reduced to rubble,” Zaynah Hindi, co-founder of Reem’s, a popular San Francisco restaurant, told the committee. “My co-founder has lost at least 40 members of her family in Gaza.”

At the nearly five-hour public hearing, community members and supervisors sparred over whether to add the language proposed by Dorsey, which would have also included identifying Hamas as a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization.

“If we were to, in effect, reward terrorism by platforming grievances that underlie it, even if those grievances are just and right, we have to be explicit in our condemnation of acts of terror,” Dorsey said at the hearing. Omitting that language, he added, “would risk sending a dangerous and unthinkable message that terrorism works.”

Dorsey was supported by a handful of speakers, including some from local Jewish groups, who advocated for the failed amendment.

“I’m calling for some humility, to acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization,” one San Francisco resident said during public comment.

The majority of speakers on Monday, however, supported the resolution without any amendment.

More than 60% of U.S. voters said they support a cease-fire in Gaza, according to recent polling by Data for Progress.

“I am the son of U.S concentration camp survivors. I’m here to add my voice to that of thousands who, for the last three months, have demonstrated to demand a halt to the genocide,” said San Francisco resident Don Misumi. “We cannot afford to stand by and allow this to happen. The call for a cease-fire is the absolute minimum we can do. It is our moral obligation.”

San Francisco’s push for a cease-fire resolution comes after the approval of similar resolutions in a small but growing number of U.S. cities, including Richmond and Oakland. The debate over the issue in both East Bay cities attracted national attention and accusations of antisemitism after some public speakers defended Hamas’ actions, and lawmakers ultimately rejected amendments condemning the group.

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Five Jewish members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors received antisemitic postcards at their home addresses late last month.

Around the time a Sept. 27 meeting at San Francisco City Hall was disrupted by racist, antisemitic comments, Supervisors Aaron Peskin, Dean Preston, Myrna Melgar, Hillary Ronen and Rafael Mandelman received postcards with vulgar anti-Jewish messages. 

On the front, the postcard read, “Why are Jews allowed to suck baby penis” and featured black-and-white images appearing to depict brit milah, the ritual circumcision ceremony in Judaism. On the back, the postcard was stamped with “White Lives Matter” in bold black letters. 

The postcards included an internet address that led to a website full of antisemitic flyers attributing control of the media, the “Covid agenda,” gun control, and the LGBTQ+ movement to Jews.

The flyers appear to be affiliated with Goyim Defense League, a group that the Anti-Defamation League describes as “virulently antisemitic.” The group’s leader, Jon Minadeo II, was formerly based in Petaluma, a city in Sonoma County, before relocating to Florida last year. 

Supervisor Rafael Mandelman told The Standard that he was disturbed that the mail came to his home address—and, specifically, to Jewish members of the Board of Supervisors. 

“I mean, it’s not good … Somebody is paying attention,” Mandelman said. “There’s weird stuff that comes across email all the time. … It’s a little weird to have them knowing addresses.”

Ronen, the supervisor of District 9, said one of her young daughters picked up the postcard before she could get to it.

“That was the most antisemitic, sickening thing I’ve ever received in my life,” Ronen said. “This is what we’re subjected to.” 

Supervisor Hillary Ronen has served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors since 2017. | Source: Juliana Yamada/The Standard

Board President Aaron Peskin said he found the postcard in his mailbox the same day City Hall’s virtual public comment was bombarded by a string of anonymous callers spewing hate speech. The board subsequently moved to temporarily end remote public comment in the wake of the incident. Peskin said the postcards contributed to that decision. 

“I don’t think that was coincidental,” Peskin said. “I’m not going to be intimidated doing my job.” 

In January 2022, flyers with rhetoric and branding similar to images on the website linked in the postcards were found in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood.

“They didn’t go away when the founder moved from the North Bay,” said former Assemblymember Marc Levine, who represented Marin and southern Sonoma counties—where Minadeo previously lived—in Sacramento from 2012 to 2022.

Levine is now the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, based in San Francisco.

“I hate calling out [Goyim Defense League] because they do use it to increase their notoriety and I think they do fundraise off this,” he said. “They are trying to generate this kind of promotion when they do antisemitic and hateful flyering.”

While Levine has never personally received flyers from the group, he said his family members have. “That’s a very scary experience for someone, whether they’re Jewish or not,” he said.

According to Levine, antisemitic incidents in the Bay Area are as high as they have ever been since his organization began tracking them in 1979.

The problem has gotten worse in recent days. 

On Oct. 7, fighters from the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing 1,400 Israelis and taking at least 199 hostage in the Gaza Strip. 

More than 4,100 Palestinians have been killed in subsequent Israeli attacks on Gaza, according to the local health ministry, which is controlled by Hamas.

Since Oct. 7, antisemitism has increased by 400% nationally—and the Anti-Defamation League’s own local reporting is consistent with that measure, according to Levine.

“It has shot straight up,” he said.

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The Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors voted 4-0 Tuesday to continue a public hearing until December about abatement actions on an illegal cannabis grow where faulty equipment allegedly sparked a wildfire on Mount Knight in late July.

The board decided to continue the hearing after they heard from residents of Mount Knight who disputed county Code Compliance’s parcel numbers and identification of owners in the case. The board had to hold the hearing to determine if destruction of 667 cannabis plants on the property where the fire started was justified under county ordinance code. The owner was invoiced $5,594.96 for administrative and investigative costs.

“I live up in Mount Knight,” a man named William Dunlavy Jr. told the board and county staff in a scheduled public hearing Tuesday afternoon. “You’ve got the parties wrong, and you’ve got the parcel wrong. We reported the fire. We have 20 acres, and the fire was on the 20 acres below us. Right below us. The fire started out of a water pump that malfunctioned at 2:45 in the morning.”

Dunlavy said growers were present on a different parcel, not the one named in paperwork by the county. New property owners were being wrongly impugned by the county, he said, and the grow where county Code Compliance cut down 667 cannabis plants was on a different parcel.

“You have the wrong people,” Dunlavy continued. “I can attest to that. I just met the new owners here today. They haven’t even been on the property. I’m telling you, you’ve got the wrong party.”

Dunlavy’s wife said she knows who hired workers to work on the illegal grows in Mount Knight, and she knows they were seen on game cameras leaving the area when the Knight Fire broke out July 29.

Sharrol Dunlavy said she had photos from a game camera and a neighbor’s game camera showing employees of the owner of the property where the cannabis plants were located leaving in “great excitement” when the fire started.

“All of us up here from Mount Knight know it was his crew who started the fire,” Sharrol Dunlavy said. “These other people are innocent.”

A man named Kurt Wagoner told Code Compliance staff, “I live in Mount Knight. You’re wrong . . . . We’ve been complaining about it for years. It’s not the property you guys are saying it is.”

Another man offered a business card with a surveyor’s name. District 4 County Supervisor Kathleen Haff, the board chair, asked him to share the card with the board clerk. Two people offered to share parcel maps with the county.

District 2 County Supervisor Ryan Campbell said he’s been talking to people in Mount Knight for the past year and a half, he’s been up there at least once and the July 29 fire was a wakeup call.

“This has been a problem for our community for a long time and the only way to address it is code compliance,” Campbell said. “Which is too bad, because we’re not talking about this as the criminal actions they are. If it were not for the work of the people living in Mount Knight working to put that fire out, it could have made the national news. We need to make sure we are going after the correct people who are responsible. If we’re hurting someone who is not the perpetrator, that does not help our cause at all.”

Campbell moved to continue the hearing until 1:30 p.m. Dec. 19. It was seconded by District 1 County Supervisor David Goldemberg. 

Brandon joined Haff, Campbell, and Goldemberg in voting 4-0 to continue the hearing. District 3 County Supervisor Anaiah Kirk, who was present earlier for part of the hearing, had to leave before the board voted to continue.

County staff prepared a background report for the hearing, which included the following:

• On July 31, county Code Compliance investigators and the U.S. Forest Service went out to a parcel located in the Mount Knight area of the county. The parcel in question has no legal address. Its parcel number is APN: 023-490-029 in the Twain Harte zip code 95383.

• This parcel was identified to be the location of a wildland fire — the Knight Fire — that occurred on July 29 and was stopped at about 5.4 acres.

• During the July 31 inspection, multiple violations of county code were found on the premises, including unpermitted cultivation of 667 cannabis plants; structures and equipment used for cultivation, processing, or storing of cannabis for personal use that did not comply with building, electrical, mechanical, plumbing, and fire code regulations of the county or state; violations of county, state, and federal environmental and water regulations related to water usage, stormwater management, and fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, and rodenticide storage and use; and unlawful disposal of solid waste.

An earlier hearing focused on another case of illegal cultivation of cannabis which was appealed by Irene Jiayi Ouyang, owner of a property at 19279 Second Garrote Ridge Road, Groveland.

The property was among several where authorities seized a combined 2,277 pounds of cannabis worth an estimated $3.7 million, three assault rifles, 11 other firearms, and $6,000 in cash during raids in Groveland, Big Hill, and Columbia on Sept. 19-20.

At the property on Second Garrote Ridge Road in September, state Department of Cannabis Control Law Enforcement Division personnel seized 1,296 plants and a total weight including cannabis flowers of 661 pounds, estimated to be worth $1.01 million.

“One subject booked after evading capture,” a DCC detective wrote in an after-action report. “Located across ridge and picked up by CHP (PC148). Structure red tagged.”

Quincy Yaley, director of the county Community Development Department that handles county Code Compliance, said in September that other cannabis enforcement activities had previously taken place at the property when investigators with county Code Compliance went there in June.

Ouyang appealed the county’s actions in June, and its abatement order that she pay $120,246, but she did not appear at the Tuesday hearing, and neither did her interpreter, Vivien Choy.

“I purchased the property around May of 2019, it has been rented out since,” Ouyang wrote in her request for a hearing. “I live in San Francisco, I am neither involved nor aware of the marijuana cultivation inside the house. I already contacted a licensed contractor, he will help to bring the property into compliance as soon as possible.”

Haff said the property has been on her radar since she took office in January 2021. She said she was surprised the monetary penalty was only $100 per plant.

“That’s at least how long this has been going on,” Haff said. “So I’m glad we finally mustered the forces that we needed to scope the situation out. I have found these violations to be true and accurate. The owner is responsible. The penalties, I don’t think they’re enough but, there they are, I think they are just. I find all of the allegations are true.”

The board voted 5-0 finding violations at the property existed.

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The California Convention passed AB 316 by a vote of 54 to 3. The bill includes a provision mandating the presence of a human driver in autonomous trucks during testing, which the Teamsters union had campaigned for. This is just an Assembly bill: to become law, it would need a Senate equivalent and the governor’s signature.

Earlier, San Francisco regulators, also lobbied by the Teamsters, turned down a petition by Waymo to convert warehouse space into employee parking at a new facility in an industrial area in southwest San Francisco. The parking had already been overwhelmingly approved by lower bodies, but descriptions of the meeting suggest the conflict between the Robotaxi companies and the city has escalated, and the denial of that parking request makes it seem like that’s about it and not about it about whether these parking spaces exist spaces are appropriate.

Robocar developers always anticipated that there would be a backlash as the technology became more real. Some of the backlash will be emotional or come from those who feel commercially threatened by the technology. Some will be entitled to the public safety and traffic disruption issues to be expected when trying out new technologies like this. On the issue of job preservation – many drivers drive drivers for a living – there is sympathy on both sides for those who feel their careers are threatened, but concerns about efforts to protect a dangerous and uncomfortable job just to keep jobs alive can stay. Such efforts have typically not stood the test of history, nor have they been retrospectively counted as good when they did.

For trucking, having drivers in trucks controlled by computers is obviously ridiculous in the long run. All teams are currently doing this to ensure safety. Their systems are immature and they know it. But all plans depend on that driver eventually being removed, as has already happened for robotaxis around the city. If the law passes, the driver will have to be there at least until 2029, when the DMV can issue a report with recommendations to remove the driver recommendation.

Outside of the state, several trucking companies are already conducting driverless tests, and one company, Gatik, is making regular daily deliveries without a security driver in the vehicle. Waiting until 2029 in California essentially pushes the tech out of the state, even though many of the companies have a strong presence there. Once something is banned, it becomes very difficult to get the ban lifted, as the officials who lift the ban practically take responsibility if something goes wrong. So they are afraid of it. They don’t want to take any risks, even legitimate risks, and face the consequences.

In fact, all of the companies that develop trucks have protested this bill and hope the governor will refuse to sign the bill. California is the world leader in autonomous driving technology and needs serious thought about deliberately giving up that lead as a union tries to keep jobs for its members. You should look for other ways to lessen the burden on these union members. The hard truth is that 2,000 people die in truck accidents every year in the US – many of them truck drivers. Keeping jobs is one thing, but keeping a job that kills so many people is harder to justify. It’s different than getting jobs that don’t cause deaths.

SF vs Robotaxi

It is likely that the fight in San Francisco will continue to escalate. The state has the right to regulate the roads, not the city. This has frustrated the city, which wants more influence over how robotic taxis work there. The city is frustrated at their powerlessness and seems to feel that the Robotaxi companies took advantage of them and didn’t show the city enough respect. Whether that’s true or not, feelings and perceptions matter more in such a battle, and the city has no means of asserting itself against the companies that operate there.

San Francisco executives meeting in San Francisco (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu) The vote to block Waymo was unanimous among those present.Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

The jurisdictional boundary between state and city exists for a reason. If each city had too much power for different road rules, it could create chaos for motorists and businesses dealing with a difficult patchwork of regulators. Waymo and Cruise are based in the SF Bay Area, and that city is by far the best testing ground for both, but they may be starting to regret the issues that come with it. Despite being the big city in the high-tech capital of the world, San Francisco has a surprisingly insane history as a proving ground for the new technologies being manufactured there. That’s his choice, but it makes it harder for companies to work there.

In the past, that wasn’t a problem for SF. It had more than enough reputation to deter a few companies. Today, the shift to working from home has emptied downtown San Francisco more than any other city in the US, and one has to be wary of scaring companies even more to work there. SF has shown that even if it can’t regulate your technology, it will use its more mundane powers like planning permission to get what it wants. And they should win this fight if they want to and oust the companies – the real question is why would they want that. Yes, being the beta tester of such technology comes with problems. But a study by the SF Transportation Authority, which asked their drivers to log any problems with the robo-taxis, found surprisingly few incidents. Companies make mistakes and have many teething troubles, but it seems to be anecdotal, not a pattern, it is mistaken for a pattern.

The city must decide how many childhood illnesses it can tolerate, and then grit its teeth and tolerate them. As long as no one is harmed, technology promises to significantly reduce traffic risk in the future, and a few blunders may well be worth it, for society and even for the city.

A passive-aggressive struggle, with cities scrambling to find another way to get rid of these companies, isn’t good for either side. The sides should reconcile or separate, costly as that may be. Waymo may already be hoping for a better time in Los Angeles — that remains to be seen. Arizona and Texas have already shown they are ready to move forward. The problem is that San Francisco didn’t ask for tech to come to the city — it was born there, so it was never a welcome immigrant. A background fight does no harm to anyone.

Waymo will solve his parking problem. In fact, an obvious solution is to use a staging lot and have Waymo vehicles pick up employees from there. It’s a bit cumbersome, but a good test of a mode that will be necessary as robo-taxis prepare to handle things like stadiums and large buildings with high peak traffic. Doing it on a small scale is more expensive – you don’t want employees to have to wait more than a few minutes for a shuttle, but at this point that cost can be managed. But in the long run, finding a way to get SF on board is important.

follow me Twitter or LinkedIn. Cash my website.

I founded ClariNet, the world’s first Internet-based company, am Chair Emeritus of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a Fellow of the Foresight Institute. My current passion are self-driving vehicles and robots. I worked on Google’s auto team in the early years and am a consultant and/or investor for automakers and many of the top startups in robocars, sensors, delivery robots and even some flying cars. Plus AR/VR and software. I found the faculty and computer science chair at Singularity University and I write, consult and speak on robocar technology around the globe.

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Elected officials and public transportation advocates in San Francisco are lashing out at the convention’s budget chairman, Phil Ting, as the deadline for passing the state budget is fast approaching. Meanwhile, the Westside MP is fighting back.

Mayor London Breed, State Senator Scott Wiener and transport advocates are lobbying at Ting to increase funding for public transport in the upcoming state budget, warning of devastating cuts as Bay Area authorities hit “fiscal cliffs” imposed by a sharp drop in passenger numbers.

The newly released Senate and State Assembly budgets still lack billions in operating funds proponents say are needed to avoid drastic benefit cuts.

In a May 24 letter to Ting, Breed called on the assembly to “propose a revised budget that will keep the Bay Area’s transit system operating while ridership recovers from the pandemic and to avoid massive service cuts.”

“Support for public transit in this budget will determine whether our inner cities thrive or die, whether our economies are stifled or supported, whether our outer boroughs are isolated or integrated into the region’s job market and culture, and whether some of the San Franciscos who… who are struggling the most, who are affected.” are able to go about their daily lives,” Breed wrote.

The Senate and Assembly budgets restore $2 billion in capital expenditures that Gov. Newsom cut in his budget bill. But most of those recovered dollars come from a fund that allocates money to communities based on population.

California Senator Scott Wiener speaks during the official opening of the new Bus Rapid Transit corridor on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco Friday, April 1, 2022. | Nick Otto

That’s worrying for those pushing for transit financing for the Bay Area. While the Bay Area is entitled to about 20% of those funds, the region accounts for 50% of the statewide operating deficit, said Cyrus Hall, a data engineer who works with the San Francisco Transit Riders.

“We effectively restored that $2 billion in capital budget, and that’s great,” Hall told The Standard. “But that basically takes us back to where we started before the governor released his budget with a huge operating deficit.”

Wiener started the renewed lobbying efforts on Wednesday with a tweet thread.

In 21 days from today is the deadline for finalizing the state budget so that it can be completed within our deadline of 06/15. can elapse.

As it stands, California transit systems will – without change – take action to drastically reduce service.

That should be extremely worrying for anyone who thinks transit is essential.

— Senator Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) May 22, 2023

Breed’s letter referred to alternative funding plans — proposed by Wiener and a statewide “Survive and Thrive Coalition” that includes the California Transit Association, the Bay Area Council and others — that would also use federal highway funds that have yet to be allocated as a cap -and-trade auction fund to fix the remaining deficit.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors will join Breed in its appeal for federal funds.

Regulators Matt Dorsey and Hillary Ronen introduced a resolution Tuesday urging Newsom and the Legislature to allocate the resources “in a manner that, on the one hand, does not penalize San Francisco transit authorities and, on the other hand, is based on a formula that reduces service cuts.” avoids that would affect transit the most dependent riders.”

“For a city like San Francisco, resident population is always an invalid denominator,” Dorsey told The Standard. “We have a population that commutes here; In 2019 we had 26.5 million visitors. That’s roughly the population of Texas visiting. All of this has to be covered by public transport and the police.”

Rep. Phil Ting, chairman of the convention’s budget committee, is under pressure to add Bay Area transit operating funds to the state budget. | Santiago Mejia/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

The Board of Directors is expected to adopt the resolution at its meeting on June 6th.

A number of lobby groups promoting public transit, including Kid Safe SF, are also organizing citizens to call Ting’s office through a website launched Wednesday.

“We need MP Ting to prioritize funding for public transport in the budget to ensure we can lead our city and region into a sustainable future,” Luke Bornheimer, a transport advocate, told The Standard. “It’s about time MP Ting joined Sen. Wiener in making public transport funding a priority.”

Sources say Ting has dodged calls on the matter. Late Wednesday, his office sent out a bulk email to voters who appeared to be opposing the issue.

“I support the support of Muni, BART, SamTrans and others, but I don’t want to hand out a blank check without major improvements, greater accountability and a budget stability plan,” Ting said in the email to voters. “Too many people have told me they don’t want to use public transport because they don’t feel safe or because the seats aren’t clean.”

Ting elaborated on this in an email to The Standard on Thursday, saying that even before the pandemic, public transit use in the Bay Area was declining due to “safety and cleanliness concerns” and a lack of reliability and convenience.

“To be clear, I will do whatever I can to keep our Bay Area transit services running, but we can walk and chew gum at the same time,” Ting wrote. “Rather than just funding the same thing and expecting different outcomes.” “It’s about time our 27 transportation systems in the Bay Area put riders first: We offer concrete plans to bring riders back by seamlessly… Create systems and make public transport travel safe, affordable and predictable.”

Ting’s statement also called on Bay Area governments to rely on a funding measure for regional transit that the Metropolitan Transportation Commission currently has planned for 2026. Wiener has lobbied to include them in an earlier vote, claiming that 2026 is too late for authorities to bail out.

Without bridge funding, proponents say, the fiscal cliff facing the region’s transit systems will spiral into a “death spiral,” in which cuts in service further squeeze ridership and revenue in a cycle of falling revenues.

Jeffrey Tumlin, director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, said that without adequate government funding, the Muni bus system may have to eliminate 20 lines as early as this summer.

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San Francisco’s ban on taxpayer-funded travel to states with anti-LGBTQ laws and doing business with companies based there is coming to an end. It will certainly add momentum to state lawmakers’ push to also end California’s travel ban policy for such states.

As expected, the city board of directors voted 7-4 at its Tuesday meeting to repeal the policy known as 12X. First enacted in 2016 to cover states that have enacted laws restricting LGBTQ rights, it has been expanded to include states with restrictions on abortion access and voting.

It led to the 12X policy, which covered 30 states, almost two-thirds of the country. It also sparked a growing backlash, as critics argued it was ineffective at promoting the city’s liberal values ​​in other states.

Instead, they argued that 12X merely made city contracts more expensive because fewer companies could bid on them. Mayor London Breed signed an amendment to the law in late March that would allow construction companies across the 30 states to re-bid for public contracts in the city.

Regulators had voted 7-4 for the change, signaling that there was also support for scrapping 12X entirely. Rafael Mandelman, Supervisor of Gay District 8, wrote the relevant ordinance, with Supervisors Ahsha Safaí of District 11, Hillary Ronen of District 9, Catherine Stefani of District 2, and Board Chairman Aaron Peskin of District 3 signing on as co-sponsors.

Safaí drafted the ordinance that ended the ban on construction contracts. Gay District 6 supervisor Matt Dorsey also signed on as a co-sponsor of Mandelman’s ordinance.

The seventh vote of goodbye at the April 25 board meeting came from District 4 gay supervisor Joel Engardio, who also came on board as a co-sponsor. The board must pass it a second time at its May 2 meeting before sending it to Breed, who will shortly thereafter sign the 12X repeal into law.

When it came up before the regulators’ rules committee last week, Mandelman noted, “Some say it’s a white flag — I don’t.”

This week, Mandelman again emphasized that 12X is “not achieving the goal” it was supposed to and instead is “making our government less efficient.”

But District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton reiterated his concerns about the policy’s scrapping without having more study and analysis on how it will impact the local LGBTQ community and small business owners in the city.

“This could really backfire on our small businesses,” Walton said.

Supervisors Myrna Melgar of District 7, Dean Preston of District 5, and Connie Chan of District 1 agreed with Walton and voted to keep the 12X policy. Chan said she is trying to see how she can achieve “intent” on the travel and contract bans once they are lifted.

It comes as lawmakers in other states continue to pass anti-LGBTQ legislation this year. A major LGBTQ rights group in Florida has even issued a travel warning for the Sunshine State because lawmakers there are repealing the rights of LGBTQ people.

Nonetheless, a bill to end California’s travel ban policy for such states is making its way through the legislature. Pro-Lesbian Senate President Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) introduced Senate Bill 447 to repeal it and replace it with a marketing effort to support LGBTQ rights in conservative states. How much money will be made available for this or where the funding will come from has yet to be determined.

Although it is expected to pass the state Senate, it could face opposition in the assembly as the bill’s author, gay Rep. Evan Low (D-Cupertino), raises concerns about its repeal. Also not yet committed to supporting SB 447 is Congregational Member Matt Haney (D-San Francisco).

“I haven’t checked the bill yet. This is the first time I’ve heard of it,” Haney told the Bay Area Reporter during an April 21 phone interview.

The former San Francisco supervisor joined the board after the city’s “no-fly list” for anti-LGBTQ states was already in place. But he voted to extend the scope to include states that blocked access to abortion in 2019 and restricted voting rights in 2021.

“I think it was well intentioned,” Haney said of the city’s 12X policy. “But I think it makes perfect sense for the board to evaluate the policy and make appropriate changes to ensure we can keep contract costs down and whether it’s also having a real impact on reactionary politics across the country.”

A spokesman for Rep. Phil Ting (D-San Francisco), who has served in Sacramento since 2012, did not respond to the BAR’s request if he supports Atkins legislation known as the BRIDGE Project, an acronym for Building and Reinforcing Inclusive, various , Gender Equality.

The city’s third representative in the Legislature, gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), wrote the city’s 12X policy while he was a member of the board of directors. He advocated full repeal in February and also supports SB 447.

“As attacks against LGBTQ people soar to the most extreme levels in generations, it is imperative that California strikes back. This bill provides a great opportunity to do that,” Wiener said earlier this month after exiting its first Senate committee.

Help keep the Bay Area Reporter going during these trying times. To support local, independent LGBTQ journalism, consider becoming a BAR member.

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San Francisco regulators have pushed back a vote to lift San Francisco’s ban on city officials doing business with companies headquartered in states that have enacted anti-LGBTQ laws, abortion bans or restricted voting access in recent years. They did so despite objections from local minorities and LGBTQ entrepreneurs who fear it will have a negative impact on them.

Meanwhile, District 8 gay warden Rafael Mandelman on Tuesday introduced an ordinance to completely abandon the city’s policy of banning travel to and doing business in conservative states. He was joined as co-sponsors by Supervisors Catherine Stefani of District 2 and Hilary Ronen of District 9, and Board Chairperson Aaron Peskin, representing District 3.

“Removing 12X will increase bidding competition and reduce contract costs, saving San Francisco tens of millions or more each year. And it will better advance our social policy goals by allowing us to engage with the actual communities impacted by restrictive LGBTQ, abortion, voting and human rights policies,” Mandelman said in announcing the regulation. “I got it As I said before, the best pressure we can put on red states is to show that progressive San Francisco can be governed effectively.”

District 11 Supervisor Ahsha Safaí had requested that the vote on his ordinance be postponed to the March 14 Board of Supervisors meeting to continue meeting with business leaders in the city. Last November, he introduced the ordinance to abolish the contracting ban.

But when the Regulators’ Rules Committee, of which Safaí is a part, finally raised the city policy overhaul known as 12X at its February 13 meeting, local business leaders complained that they had not been consulted on the matter. Safaí promised to meet with them to hear their concerns and asked for the continuation at Tuesday’s full board meeting to continue those discussions.

“We’ve had some of those talks, but I want to give space to continue those talks,” said Safaí, who voted to introduce the 12X policy when it was first proposed.

The 11 supervisors voted unanimously to allow progress, although District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar suggested that more time was needed to gather community input on the 12X policy change. It also includes a ban on most taxpayer-funded city breaks in the 30 states now covered by the directive, although the travel ban would not be affected by Safaí’s regulation.

“If we’re going to reform it, we have to do it wisely,” Melgar said, adding that she feared two weeks wasn’t “enough time to get the community involved.”

District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton reiterated his opposition to the proposal, which he originally made during the hearing before the Rules Committee, of which he is vice chair. A major objection made by Walton is that changing the 12X policy would result in rewards for large multinational corporations headquartered in states that have legislated against the values ​​that support San Francisco and its residents.

“In my opinion, this will only support the people who support these discriminatory laws,” Walton said.

The 12X Directive was first enacted in 2016 and initially included only those states that had previously passed laws that discriminated against their LGBTQ residents. In 2019, the policy was extended to states that restricted abortion and again in 2021 to states with election-busting laws. California also has a law that bans most taxpayer-funded travel to states that have passed anti-LGBTQ laws in the past eight years, but does not prohibit contracts with companies in those states.

With more than half the country now on San Francisco’s blacklist, critics argue it’s hampering city governments’ ability to find qualified contractors. They also insist it increases the cost of projects because companies that could make the work less expensive won’t bid for them at all if they’re in a banned state.

Critics of 12X, like District 6 gay supervisor Matt Dorsey, also claim that it has failed in its goal of convincing lawmakers in affected states to repeal the laws that put them on San Francisco’s ban list . According to a 16-page memo the city government’s office sent to regulators earlier this month, the implications of the 12X policy in other states are “not clear.”

It concluded that the 12X policy created “additional administrative burdens for city staff and vendors and unintended consequences for San Francisco citizens, such as: B. the restriction of enrichment and development opportunities”.

The memo came at the request of five supervisors who asked the city bureau to review the 12X policy last October. Among them was Mandelman, who supports updating the ban but had been working on his own ordinance for it.

“I don’t think the right way to make a change is to flip the bird and walk away,” he told the Bay Area Reporter, writing last week that supervisors are slowing down their decision-making process on the 12X should policy.

In a letter sent to the Rules Committee and shared with all supervisors, the San Francisco Latino Black Builders Association questioned whether there was any data showing that a change to the 12X policy was warranted. It asked supervisors to require city authorities to prove that work efficiency was reduced or costs increased as a result of the contract ban.

“We support the intent of the original regulation and the support it offers to LGBTQ communities across the country. We also approve of the idea of ​​supporting local and Californian businesses,” wrote Anne Cervantes, a founder and co-chair of the association.

But former District 8 gay supervisor Scott Wiener, now a senator, is urging current supervisors to repeal the entire 12X policy he originally wrote. It is no longer a sound public policy, he claims.

“When I penned 12X, we believed that a coalition of cities and states would form to create real consequences for states that enact these despicable, hateful laws,” Wiener said. “However, as it turns out, that coalition never formed and the full potential impact of those policies never materialized. Instead, San Francisco is now penalizing businesses in other states — including LGBTQ owners, women owners, and people of color. owned corporations — for the sins of their far-right governments. Additionally, the City of San Francisco employees are unable to fly to a large number of states for critical needs, whether collaborating on HIV prevention and treatment strategies or helping working together on critical transportation strategies, it is time to acknowledge that this policy has not worked and we must back down.”

UPDATED 2/28/23 to include the new regulation put in place to repeal the entire 12X policy.

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Amazon said Tuesday it will pause work on a proposed last-mile warehouse in San Francisco’s Showplace Square after the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed legislation that placed an 18-month moratorium on all new parcel delivery services in the city.

In a statement a company spokesman said, “We will continue to evaluate our long-term use of the site, and in the short-term we will work with our neighbors to look at ways to use the location to serve the community.”

The company’s announcement came after the board voted 10-0 to back the moratorium, which was crafted in part as a response to Amazon’s plan to build a 725,000 square foot warehouse at 900 7th St.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin recused himself from the vote because he owns stock in Amazon.

While the board didn’t discuss the legislation at Tuesday’s meeting, the vote was preceded by a fiery rally in front of City Hall at which organized labor, environmental watchdogs, and residents of San Francisco’s southeast neighborhoods denounced Amazon’s expansion plans.

With an 18-wheeler emblazoned with a “Teamster” banner as a backdrop, Jason Rabinowitz, president of Teamsters Joint Council 7, said “the type of jobs we don’t need to have are the Amazon style poverty jobs that are underpaid, unsafe , include no rights at work.”

“Good jobs uplift our community,” he said. “Amazon style poverty jobs drag us all down.”

Folks attend a press conference at Civic Center Plaza that urged passage of temporary moratorium legislation on Amazon and other parcel delivery service facilities in San Francisco.

Yalonda M. James/San Francisco Chronicle

Board of Supervisors President Shamann Walton, who represents the neighborhood where the logistics center would be located, said that if Amazon wants to build in the district it will have to negotiate a community benefits package similar to deals struck with major waterfront developers.

“You can go and ask Pier 70. You can ask the (Potrero) Power Station. If you are going to come into our neighborhoods you are going to talk to the people in the neighborhood. You are going to provide them with community benefits,” he said.

The legislation passage is a big win for a broad coalition of organized labor, including the Teamsters, the United Commercial Food Workers, Service Employees International Union and the Building Trades Council.

Jim Araby, strategic campaign director with the United Food & Commercial Workers, said the legislation would “Create the process necessary to hold large corporations like Amazon accountable to the community, the workers and the elected officials.”

“This legislation is the first step to make sure there is an actual process, that you can’t just plop down a 700,000 square foot in the middle of a community and say we are going to buy you off with five dollars and an ice tea ,” he said.

JK Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen

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San Francisco could see the return of a gay sex venue as soon as June now that the Board of Supervisors has thrown its support behind removing prohibitions that have kept such establishments from opening their doors in the city’s historic LGBTQ neighborhoods. The decision also paves the way for a traditional gay bathhouse to once again operate in the City-by-the-Bay.

At its April 26 meeting the board voted 11-0 in support of a zoning change that allows gay bathhouses and other adult sex venues to operate in the Castro, Tenderloin, and most of South of Market. It needs to vote a second time at its May 3 meeting before the city code update is sent to the desk of Mayor London Breed, who is not expected to veto it.

The changes should become effective in Pride Month. Once they do Eros, the sex club for queer and trans men, will reopen its doors at 132 Turk Street. After vacating its upper Market Street location in December, Eros began remodeling and moving into its new space, where the gay Bulldog Baths had operated in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman has led the legislative push to allow for the return of gay bathhouses in the city. His efforts saw the lifting in early 2021 of a rule that prevented adult sex venues from having rooms with locked doors, a feature common in gay bathhouses around the globe. The only such venue left in the Bay Area is Steamworks Baths in Berkeley.

Put in place during the AIDS epidemic, the restriction no longer was needed due to HIV becoming a manageable disease and new infections in San Francisco precipitously dropping in recent years, argued Mandelman and LGBTQ health officials. But a decision by Zoning Administrator Corey Teague in December 2020 to define adult sex venues in the city’s health code as being a type of adult business meant they were still broadly banned in the city, including in the three LGBTQ cultural districts.

Thus, Mandelman came back to his colleagues with a second code amendment to define adult sex venues as businesses that include retail sales and service uses. It also specifies that they “may include bathhouse facilities such as pools, tubs, or steam rooms, and are eligible for a Limited Live Performance permit.”

The new zoning outright allows adult sex venues to operate 24/7 in the Castro and on upper Market Street between Octavia Boulevard and Castro Street. The change also makes way for such businesses to operate in much of SOMA and the Tenderloin.

The businesses can seek approval from the planning commission to operate in the eastern SOMA, the Mission, Dogpatch, and Bayview, and if they want to operate between 2 and 6 am in those locations. Adult businesses remain banned in the Chinatown Community Business District.

After the supervisors’ Land Use and Transportation Committee voted April 25 a second time in support of the zoning change, Chair District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar expedited having the full board vote on it Tuesday. The decision sets up the supervisors to cast a final vote next week.

“I hope this is it,” Mandelman told the Bay Area Reporter of having to update the city’s rules for gay bathhouses and adult sex venues. “I hope this opens the door for some entrepreneurs and some really great establishments to open up. In short time it will allow for Eros to open.”

Eros co-owner Ken Rowe noted during the April 11 land use committee hearing that the gay- and trans-owned business operates similar to a “day spa” with daytime and evening hours and not as a 24-hour venue. Since it opened in 1992, the business has worked “to exceed,” Rowe noted, the requirements the city has placed on commercial sex venues.

“We have been able to weather the crises of AIDS and STIs, the drug crisis, and we find ourselves the only gay commercial sex venue to remain in business post the COVID closures imposed,” said Rowe, referring to the closure in 2020 of SOMA sex club Blow Buddies.

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