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December 1, 2003
SF Mayoral Candidate Matt Gonzalez
The Newsdesk.org interview
Interview conducted by Josh Wilson
Photography by Gabriella Marks
Listen to the interview audio archive. (MP3)
Introduction: Candidate background.
Public Health: Hospital services and fiscal crises
Urban Living: Transportation, public power, greenbelts, the arts
Youth & Public Schools: Charter schools, privatization, school board, gangs, drug trade
Homelessness: Origins and solutions
Parties & Politics: Ideology and party loyalty
Environment: Environmental justice in San Francisco
INTRODUCTION
What are your political origins and motives?
Well, I spent ten years as a public defender before I got into politics. I was elected to the board of supervisors, and now serve as the president of the board. I'm in the Green Party, and primarily would describe myself as a progressive, certainly on all social issues. On a lot of fiscal matters I tend to be, kind of more moderate in terms of, I mean, depending how you look at it, I certainly feel strongly about the need to caretake the public's money.
And not because I don't think government should spend money, but rather that I want to spend it on a lot of good progressive work, and address some of the fundamental disparities in our society related to wealth and poverty.
PUBLIC HEALTH
At a time of crisis for healthcare nationally, there's a funding crisis here in San Francisco: Two of the city's major public hospitals, San Francisco General and Laguna Honda, are faced with major expenses over seismic rebuilding, and providing general health services and facilities.
Do you see city health services growing or being reduced in the future?
I think that you're probably going to see things stay relatively the same at a time when the city's facing larger and larger budget cuts. The question you posed is actually a large question. Laguna Honda, of course, had the major bond that's allowing for its rebuild. I supported it, Newsom did not support it. San Francisco General is facing this kind of unfunded mandate from the state, to rebuild their facility, to seismically upgrade it, and that'll probably be a bond you'll see in the next year or so, because the deadline's 2008.
Supervisor Daly has proposed having a, basically, dedicated monies that go into public health, a baseline budget, if you will. I co-sponsored it, I think it's important that we simply say, "We cannot go beneath certain lines." And this is some of the most, if not the most important work we do in City Hall -- that we should try to respect that as much as possible.
I think the future's hard, I would love to be able to be dedicating more monies into public health, and certainly believe it's a priority of mine, but frankly, with all candor, given what's happening at the state with Schwarzenegger, the likelihood that even through this $350 million budget shortfall we just faced, it's likely to grow, we're likely to get word in the next couple weeks that we've got a bigger problem still pending. So, it's going to be the challenge of the next couple years.
I understand that you do not support bond financing in general, and if that's the case how do you propose to fully fund the city's health care needs?
I do support certain bonds, I have opposed a number of them, which I think separates me from some of my progressive colleagues, and my opponent. I tend not to support bonds that I think should be done with existing dollars that we have, or where there's issues of accountability and, you know, past history of promises to the voters that haven't been kept, and going back for more bond monies for projects that were already supposed to be built. I think the healthcare needs don't get addressed through a bond, that's where you're going to do a capital rebuild.
But in terms of services, you're fundamentally talking about General Fund dollars, you've got a total amount of the budget, probably about $2.2 billion of discretionary dollars to work with. The vast majority of that is taken up in salaries. So it becomes a real challenge as to what to do when you have to make cuts, because naturally most people want immediately to go to cutting workers, and when you're in the public health arena, it's just a very dangerous thing to do, because we're already understaffed. It is one of the reasons why in San Francisco we have to stop tolerating a patronage government.
I think when I talk about a left-right spectrum in San Francisco, it's not where you fall on some social issue, it's literally where you fall in the age-old theory of San Francisco government, where the mayor has a bunch of patronage positions in government, and primarily serves a wealthier constituency that gets expedited service and protections against taxation and things like that at the expense of the regular person, the poor person, the small business owner, things like that. So that's the challenge. I have voted to make tough decisions in budgetary times, I've served on two recessionary budgets, my opponent has never served on any a budget committee where there was less money to spend than the year before. That's why some of my remarks are not as enthusiastic about how we're going to do everything in the area of health care.
With regards to what they call "pay as you go" financing in the newspapers; how would that work? In brief.
Well, I don't subscribe to pay-as-you-go financing. In certain cases you can do that, but not in all cases. For instance, if you're talking about, "Should we have a bond for repaving streets," I think that's something our Department of Public Works should do. I'm not going to support a bond like that. If you bring me a bond that says, "Here's the bond money to build a new main library, and X number of branch libraries," and then a couple years later you want another bond, because you never reached any branch libraries with that money, I don't think that's responsible, I think there has to be an accounting when someone fails to make spend money the way the ought to get something done.
URBAN LIVING
What are the goals of public transportation in San Francisco? How can those goals be achieved?
I think we're increasingly confronting the fact that we're having more and more automobiles in San Francisco, in the last ten years population in the city has probably risen by, easily 50,000 people, notwithstanding the loss of folks during the dotcom bust. When you think of it in those terms, the number of automobiles we have is already past what we can handle, and so the congestion kind of creates the context for a change in how we do transportation, or how we commit monies to public transportation.
The reauthorization of the sales tax, which just passed, this is the half-cent sales tax, although a regressionary tax, actually is extremely well spent on some major projects that will make transportation a reality in San Francisco in terms of the Third Street Light Rail, the Chinatown subway, the Geary bus rapid transit. These are projects that need to be funded and on line so that we can address other issues, like greater density in housing along certain corridors, and things like that. But I think that's the biggest way to get to it is with that financing.
Should the city be in the public power business, and if so, how should it proceed?
Well, San Francisco is already in the public power business, we generate a certain amount of energy from Hetch-Hetchy, and some of the enterprise dept's and city departments already purchase that power. The larger issue of municipalized energy across the board is one that we're having right now at the LAFCO commission -- the local agency formation commission -- where specifically we've had a feasibility study prepared, and the initial indications are that in virtually every scenario, San Francisco comes out the winner fiscally in terms of trying to acquire public power in San Francisco, whether it be through eminent domain, whether it be through laying down a new grid.
There are a lot of different ways we can proceed, but, clearly financially speaking, there's a reason why PG&E is as wealthy and powerful as it is. It's because they're making quite a bit of money off of energy and certainly off of the wheeling agreements they have with san Francisco.
RW Beck, which is a well established group of consultants, prepared the study, they made a presentation to LAFCO last week, there's a future hearing scheduled for next month, and I think that's the real breakthrough on the public power battle.
What is your policy on community gardening, composting and urban greenbelts?
Well, I'm very supportive. I'm working right now to save a community garden on Page Street, in District 5, over in the lower Haight, Page around ... Buchanan area. It's one of these things that increasingly is a not only positive for the environment, it is simply another way of creating community in our neighborhoods. It's something the city should certainly encourage.
Name five things you will do that will increase neighborhood-by-neighborhood access to, and creation of, music, art and literature.
I think the big challenge on this issue relates to the cuts in the California arts council for a lot of the community arts groups. And so I think they're struggling, I think they provide more than anything a lot of the financing that allows these community groups to actually exist. It's sort of incumbent on San Francisco to take up the slack, and so I think it's the big challenge.
And while Supervisor Newsom and I both agree what the problem is, I think we depart, really, on the solution. He's not really willing to have a discussion about having to re-align the dollars we get from the hotel tax that we give to the opera and the symphony, etcetera, whereas I'm saying, they get a disproportionate share of those dollars, and I think we need to start dedicating more of those dollars into any kind of community that does this kind of work.
I myself served on a board, of Intersection for the Arts, and so I think it's enormously important to foster cultural spaces in neighborhoods, because that's how most people connect up with it. I think from a small-business point of view, from a tourism point of view, so much of our local economy's dependent on the fact that we have arts venues in San Francisco.
That's one of the primary attractions that the city has. So I think it's important for that community to understand that they need to step up to the plate and help foster this, not only through public giving, but also private giving, and there has to be an acknowledgement, particularly at a time when public resources are scarcer, that they need to make a commitment to that.
I think one of the things that we do in San Francisco that I think is great is that we do have poet laureate system, where we select someone to be a liaison from the city government, really out into the communities and schools, and into the public, to try to really promote in the case of the poet laureate, literature and cultural affairs.
I think it would be great to expand that into an art laureate, or some kind of really expand the concept into the visual arts. Again, this is just an ambassador for the city, who plays an important role in trying to coordinate efforts around how to make the city better for these entities.
We also have a film commission. There's a lot of criticism that the film commission doesn't cater a sufficient amount to small independent efforts, but kind of caters to the larger efforts, and is filled with friends of the mayor rather than people who actually know something about the industry.
As mayor I would certainly be more inclined to find people that knew something about the production and creation of films, than look to my donor list to decide who should serve on a commission like that. So again, here we are talking about an issue that ends up coming back to the question of ethical government, and one of the solutions is by making a commitment that government is going to different because you're going to change how people serve on commissions and participate in government.
YOUTH/PUBLIC SCHOOLS
I have some friends who, after nine years in the city, are moving to Boston because, among other reasons, they say the schools will be better for their kids. Are San Francisco public schools properly funded? If not, how do you propose to achieve full funding?
I don't think the schools are getting as much money as they should. This year as the board president I got to assign who was on the various committees, and I made a commitment to public education, and I selected a committee chair, Chris Daly, who was committed to increasing the money for public education. He immediately came forward with a supplemental appropriation for $6 million for the schools. I voted with him. Supervisor Ammiano, Supervisor Newsom voted against it.
Through the budget prices we were, however, able to dedicated $8 million to public education, which we were very proud of, that was twice as much as had ever been given in any other year. The previous year had been $4 million.
Recently however, Supervisor Newsom joined Supervisor Ammiano. Tom had a measure to dedicates $60 million to the schools, which I think is great, except they didn't identify where any of the money was coming from. And I said "gee, you know, it's kind of interesting that you guys weren't even willing to vote for a $6 million supplemental appropriation, now you want to make it $60 million." It just seemed the timing of it was a little bit of pandering to the public at a time of an election.
Newsom did serve on one budget committee, it was a very prosperous time, they dedicated $2 million to public education, even though the hotel tax was generating $60 million more than it is today. And I bring that up to really say, casting a vote for [a] charter amendment that's going to dedicate $60 million without identifying revenue sources is, I think, irresponsible.
I suggested proceeding in an alternative way, that rather than committing 60, let's go from the $8 million that we gave this year, and lets try to make it 12, then 16, then 20, and then let's re-evaluate where we're at and see how we going to keep pushing it, to try and get closer to $100 million, or $60 million, or whatever is the appropriate number. And it's a tough issue, we are a county that gives more money to schools than any other county in the state of California, we give more money than any city, we clearly are making some commitment, but it's not enough. The per-pupil spending is not what it needs to be to compete with cities in other parts of the country.
The ultimate reason that this lack of funding has occurred, though, is because of Proposition 13, which I'm OK with on the individual property owner, who gets a protection of not having to suffer a re-assessment on their property simply in some whimsical fashion. But for corporate property, for commercial property, particularly all those buildings downtown, they have not been re-assessed in decades, they're getting a one or two percent reassessment each year, but it's not even keeping pace with inflation.
And the reality is, that's why our schools [are] in the situation that they're in, and we really need to do something about this, we need to create a split role where corporate properties are treated differently from individual residences in San Francisco.
What is your opinion on charter and privatized schools?
Well, I'm not a big fan of privatized schools, just because you have a profit motive at the end of the day, which I think is not a healthy way to run a school. I think that charter schools I like because they allow more experimentation in curriculum, which can then be adopted by the public schools, if they're a success. In my own district, District 5 in the Western Addition, we have a Western Addition technology center which makes available to some young kids some of the equipment they need to make films and the like.
And the kids have been having a great time doing that, they're quite already accomplished filmmakers, and yet they're not good students in schools, and so charter schools tend to be a place where you can experiment with curriculum and find other ways to get kids connected into schools, and promote them in a way that your typical education kind of -- you know, we all went to school, there are certain barriers to that kind of experimentation.
Is the school board well-managed, cost-efficient and responsive to the community?
Well, certainly it's improved in this regard. Bill Rojas, the former superintendent, was sort of notorious for mismanagement and mishandling public monies. Arlene Ackerman is well regarded in regards to how she handles fiscal matters. The school board is elected at large, there're for the first time two schoolteachers on the that school board, both of them in the Green Party, so I think for the first time there are people governing the school district that actually have taught in a classroom, and know something about what goes on there. Sometimes that creates tension. A superintendent doesn't like a couple of school teachers telling her what to do, but the truth is they're very well-informed, and have really improved the discourse in the school district.
How will you address gangs and youth violence, especially related to the violent underground drug economy?
This is a complicated question, and I'm not sure what you mean by "violent underground drug economy."
I think that when we're talking about youth violence, we're talking about kids who don't have opportunities, so they're engaged in a certain degree of lawlessness, because we as a society have failed them. I represented many of these kids as they become young adults in the criminal justice system when I was a public defender ... One way of reaching out is by the mind of experimentation I indicated earlier for schools.
Specifically on violence, I think you have to deal with it when it's happening, one was is to expand the case assessment referral center, the carc, where young people are taken when they first commit an offense, To see if that rather that take them to the youth guidance center, we can get them connected to community services, and keep them in the community and reach out to them.
Another thing, we have to come to terms with, is the fact that guns are so readily available in our society. We have to promote gun exchanges, we have to promote cease fires, we have to do all of that and really reach out and have a dialog with established, organized gangs, because they really are entities in a way that an neighborhood group is.
And we have to acknowledge that and start dialoging with them in that way. Certainly other things we can do, we gotta promote after-school employment, give kids an opportunity, raising the minimum wage was part of that, we can't expect that young people are going to feel they can make a living out there for such low wages. When in some communities selling drugs is so lucrative that that's a pretty big enticement that we have to break down. Part of that is by making opportunities and paying decent wages.
The fact that drugs are illegal results in a sort of Al Capone situation, where you do have an underground economy with a lot of violence built into it. I wonder if that's a problem that can be addressed in San Francisco by the mayor?
I don't think that youth gangs are by and large about large money organizations. It's true that there's a certain degree of that in the selling of drugs. But, a lot of it is about respect and how young people decide to live outside of a particular culture, and embrace a culture of violence, as you say. I don't think that it's easy to break into that. In some cases you're simply going to go your traditional jail route.
But in a lot of places, with the early signs of this conduct, you can really do intervention, you can intervene when a kid gets caught selling drugs or when a kid gets caught taking a gun to school, or things like that. That's the time to make sure it doesn't happen again. That's why you gotta have moneys available to do that kind of outreach. As a society we're always so quick and able to spend money on lawyers for someone for incarceration, but we don't make the corresponding commitment to the preventative components of it.
Do you have any opinions on the war on drugs?
Personally I think it's largely failed, I think there should be a large degree of decriminalization of certain types of drugs, certainly marijuana, things like that.. Whether or not it really ties into a question about youth, I don't think I would be prepared to have youth going to public schools, legally smoking marijuana and other things.
I think that's not very likely to meet with success ... In a free society, with responsible adults who are otherwise law abiding, we gotta come to terms with, what's worse, smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol or smoking pot or whatever, these are issues that we gotta have -- and other communities have dealt with -- there are certainly communities in Europe that are decriminalizing.
HOMELESSNESS
What is the origin and nature of homelessness?
I think it's a combination of things, it's poverty, mental illness, drug abuse, sometimes strictly homelessness. Not having a home. It's a combination of things.
How can we effectively address related issues? poverty? addiction? mental illness?
Well, there are different approaches. It's all about getting services and outreaching to people that are suffering these ailments. We need a shelter system that can outreach to people on the streets, people in the park, things like that, and we need to build low-income housing, and that only happens if you can overcome the land-acquisition challenge. How do you get money to acquire land. So it's been a big challenge.
PARTIES & POLITICS
To what degree is this election about party loyalty and political ideology?
I think my opponent certainly wants to make my membership in the Green Party a big deal, he's touted his Democratic credentials. Recently we just learned that he gave a $500 check to the Republican Party, a month before George bush was elected president, so, so much for his Democratic Party values. I have had members of the Democratic Party Central Committee endorse, me, former members endorse me, obviously I would not be in a runoff if Democrats hadn't elected me.
In large part my Green values are Democratic values. In San Francisco there's nothing shocking about believing in support of certain fundamental things. Like supporting gay marriage or opposition to the death penalty. I think on fiscal matters, as I mentioned earlier, the political ideology, the party ideology thing breaks down. I want to make government smaller, I want to cut out patronage, I want to improve city services with those dollars.
My opponent talks a good game, but he's never voted to make government smaller, he doesn't vote to get rid of political patronage, he is part of that political machine, he was appointed by Willie Brown, he voted for every Willie Brown budget, it's that sort of thing ... he wants to say he's an agent of change, when you look at his record, he's four more years of the eight we just went through.
For me, joining a party outside the Democratic Party was in part trying to get away from the local Democratic machine, which is not a very positive, favorable machine, it's done a lot to kind of choke what's going on in this city.
ENVIRONMENT
How would your administration address issues of public health and pollution?
I think we need to do everything we can to shut down the Hunters Point shipyard and the Potrero power plant and the Hunters Point power plant of course ... I misspoke there. The challenge with the shipyard is about whether or not we're getting the property from the Navy in a state that we can start developing. The consensus seems to be that there's still problems with many of the parcels that we have. So then the question is, what do we do? Do we start developing part of the parcels? Do we wait till they're all clean? Who gets to decide if they're clean?
I've heard many experts say the land out there should just be capped unless it's really going to be cleaned properly. The power plants have to be shut down and that's really a decision of the Independent System Operator, who right now is indicating that if we can cite a couple of generators, turbines, that we got through a settlement in the Williams case, and if we can build the Jefferson Martin transmission line into the city, that kind of comes down the peninsula, that we can probably shut down these plants. The problem is we gotta do a couple things. And these are not guarantees.
Dealing with the ISO in the past, they tend to like to move the goal post a lot on us, and so there's a lot of skepticism in the community, that if the community accepts these greater burdens on their public health, that they're really going to get closure. So there's a lot of concern there.
I've been promoting tidal energy that could generate 2,000 megawatts of power just under the Golden Gate Bridge. If we can build a system, we could do it in the next eight to ten years, it would generate three time the city's energy needs, and we've already approved, I sponsored a pilot program to get this off the ground. We hope to see something soon.
