The June 30, 2020, deadline for Pacific Gas & Electric to emerge from bankruptcy if the giant utility wants to be eligible for a $21 billion wildfire relief fund set up by Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature earlier this year may end up an unofficial deadline of another sort: for the parties interested in taking over all or part of PG&E to put forward their best plans to win over Newsom, the Legislature, Wall Street and the public.

That’s because Newsom’s announcement of his opposition to PG&E’s plan to come out of bankruptcy contains such fundamental objections that it is hard to see a possible compromise. While the governor cannot single-handedly prevent the plan from being approved by regulators and a U.S. bankruptcy judge, his opinion is sure to carry weight. Without his support, PG&E’s path out of bankruptcy is sharply complicated.

Newsom described PG&E’s proposal as being “woefully short” of the commitments needs to ensure the scandal-plagued utility is able “to provide safe, reliable and affordable service to its customers.” His critique included what seemed akin to one of the “poison pills” that the corporate world uses to make sure deals are rejected: a demand that the utility replace every member of its board of directors.

The governor’s position appears encouraging to the coalition of Northern California cities that announced in early November that they were working together to craft a plan take over PG&E operations. Those cities: San Jose, Oakland, Berkeley, Sacramento, Hayward, Sunnyvale, Richmond, Redwood City, Petaluma, Sonoma, Windsor, Cotati, Elk Grove, Clovis, Chico, Redding, Davis, Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley and San Luis Obispo. Supervisors from San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Marin, Yolo and San Benito counties also endorsed the effort. The coalition includes local governments with about one-third of PG&E’s 16 million customers in the utility’s 70,000-square-mile service area.

Cities push for power provider run like credit union

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo – de facto leader of the coalition – told the San Francisco Chronicle that he envisioned a electricity supplier run more like a nonprofit credit union than a government-run utility. Backers cited the Georgia Electric Membership Corp., a 501(c)(6) nonprofit that distributes energy from three power providers to 41 not-for-profit local utilities with a total of 4.4 million customers.

But another approach has the strong backing of one of the richest cities in America: San Francisco. Mayor London Breed has long been on record as saying local power infrastructure should be under local control and in September joined with City Attorney Dennis Herrera to offer PG&E $2.5 billion to buy local power lines. 

The measure was quickly rejected by PG&E and appears to have little support beyond city limits. In October, the editorial page of the San Francisco Chronicle called the plan unlikely to be approved by state regulators for a basic reason: Utilities use big-city profits to keep power affordable in rural communities, and any break-up of PG&E means “the state would almost certainly have to help provide power to rural areas — likely at taxpayer expense.”

Newsom has not explained his view of what a PG&E takeover might look like, but he appears to agree with the Chronicle about the need to keep intact the basic framework of a large utility. 

Gov. Newsom wants Warren Buffett to buy utility

In October, he made headlines when he said he hoped that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway holding group considered buying the utility.

“We would love to see that interest materialize, in a more proactive, public effort,” Newsom told Bloomberg News.

While Buffett has shown no public interest in the idea of acquiring a controlling interest in California’s largest power utility, several hedge funds have been plain with their interest in taking over PG&E for nearly a year. They have drawn little support from lawmakers because of the perception they would be as indifferent to safety as the owners they hope to replace.

PG&E entered into bankruptcy in January, citing potential liabilities of $30 billion because of massive recent wildfires in recent years that have often been blamed on the utility’s poorly maintained infrastructure. 

The utility believed it had crossed a huge hurdle to emerging from bankruptcy on Dec. 6 when it announced a $13.5 billion settlement of damage claims from four of the largest blazes, sending its stock price higher. Seven days later, Newsom announced his opposition to the utility’s overall plan to emerge from bankruptcy, sending the stock price down to near 52-week lows.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s race is shaping up as the highest-profile 2020 local election in the nation with a criminal justice reform crusader resigning as San Francisco’s DA so he can run against the Los Angeles DA who has been a much more conventional prosecutor in her seven years on the job.

George Gascon, a former L.A. beat cop and assistant police chief, has relocated to Los Angeles in anticipation of the March primary. Gascon has supported reforms that have reduced penalties for many crimes and made it easier for prisoners to win parole and convicts to expunge their records. He is expected to get millions from George Soros, the billionaire progressive who has backed reformers in DA races in San Diego, Queens and Pittsburgh in recent years, winning in only the latter city.

Jackie Lacey, a former L.A. beat cop, has supported some reforms, such as the recent decision to throw out tickets given to poor homeless people that essentially make them go to jail when they seek government help. She has the backing of police unions and virtually the entire California Democratic establishment – including San Francisco Mayor London Breed.

But Lacey has repeatedly upset some minority leaders and civil rights activists by declining to ever seek criminal charges when law enforcement officers are credibly accused of abusive behavior.

A 2015 case in which an officer fatally shot an unarmed African-American homeless man in the back in Venice continues to anger activists and baffle even some in law enforcement. Surveillance video showed Officer Leonard Proctor, who is also black, had lied about victim Brendon Glenn reaching for his partner’s gun.

Lacey rejected police chief’s call to charge own officer

The details of the case were so egregious that then-Police Chief Charlie Beck urged that Proctor face manslaughter charges – the first time he had ever called for the DA to prosecute anyone at LAPD. But no charges of any kind were brought by Lacey, who in 2018 said she didn’t believe she had a provable case against Proctor.

But as Breed’s endorsement of Lacey suggests, Gascon remains a controversial figure in San Francisco. A front-page story in the Oct. 31 Chronicle looked at how a progressive prosecutor could make so many enemies in such a progressive city. The newspaper noted that he had faced criticism from both sides of the police conduct debate – bashed by police unions when he investigated police shootings, but also bashed by activists for failing to prosecute officers for some high-profile fatal shootings.

And Breed was only one of many San Franciscans who believed that Gascon’s tolerant policies toward street crime had both fueled homelessness and led to San Francisco becoming the large city with highest property-crime rate in the U.S. The Chronicle has reported that there are arrests in only 2 percent or less of car break-ins.

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera has also endorsed Lacey. In a statement, Herrera described Lacey as “the only candidate for L.A. County District Attorney who has the background, proven track record, and vision needed to continue creating positive change.”

Gascon is not the only DA candidate challenging Lacey from the left. Prosecutors Richard Ceballos and Joseph Iniguez are also running. Ceballos has hired the same political consultant who helped the poorly funded campaign of Sheriff’s Lt. Alex Villanueva stun incumbent Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell in November 2018.

The political pressure on Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Legislature and the California Public Utilities Commission to break up Pacific Gas & Electric has grown rapidly since PG&E ordered power outages from Oct. 9-12 that affected more than 2 million people in response to the fire threat posed by heavy winds.

The utility began another planned outage Wednesday that affected 178,000 homes and businesses — once again saying it had no choice because gusty winds could cause its infrastructure to spark fast-moving wildfires.

But the idea that one of the great wealth-producing regions in the world can’t keep the lights on infuriated many in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said his city was interested in buying all or part of PG&E and turning it into a municipal utility. “I’ve seen better-organized riots,” Liccardo said of PG&E’s preparations for the Oct. 9-12 outages.

San Francisco has sought parts of PG&E for months. On Oct. 9, Mayor London Breed offered PG&E $2.5 billion for its energy infrastructure serving her city. The utility rejected the offer.

Meanwhile, Newsom’s Oct. 14 call for PG&E to provide residential customers affected by the Oct. 9-12 outage a credit or rebate of $100 and small businesses $250 was rejected Tuesday by the utility. This was seen as an effort by the governor not just to get PG&E to pay for the mass inconvenience it had caused but to create an economic disincentive to the utility imposing outages even when fire risks were only moderate.

Will Newsom drop support for PG&E getting out of bankruptcy?

Newsom is in a difficult situation that could lead him to abandon his support for PG&E emerging from its Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which was declared in January after the utility acknowledged it faced $30 billion or more in wildfire liabilities. The utility must do so by July 2020 to be eligible for a $26 billion wildfire relief fund the Legislature passed this summer to help utilities deal with the massive cost of fires. 

As recently as November 2018, support for PG&E among state lawmakers was significant enough that Assemblyman Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, told reporters he would carry a bill to protect the utility from wildfire liabilities. But such support is no longer evident in the Capitol. Newsom’s recent descriptions of PG&E as greedy, incompetent and untrustworthy resemble the longtime rhetoric of the utility’s harshest critics, such as state Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo.

Pundits from several state newspapers and news websites have speculated that Newsom’s political future depends on how he handles the PG&E crisis. They noted that Gov. Gray Davis was so hurt by rolling blackouts in the winter of 2000-2001 that a Republican-led effort to replace him in 2003 rapidly caught fire and culminated with Arnold Schwarzenegger replacing Davis.

“I’ve seen this movie before,’’ Garry South, a Democratic strategist and a top aide to Gov. Davis, told Politico California.

But even if Newsom deftly handles the PG&E matter, he could still face blowback over what some experts expect to be a series of big increases in power bills from utilities overwhelmed by the cost of wildfires and of preparing for them in an era of hot, dry conditions. California’s rates are already 50 percent higher than the national average, according to data from August.

As South told Politico, Californians may not have had cause to blame Gov. Davis for the 2000-2001 blackouts. But when bad things happened that affected the basics of modern life, they blamed the person in charge, he said. 

Reflecting frustration over the fact that years of adding resources to fighting homelessness had brought little progress, Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a bill making it significantly easier for authorities in three counties with 40 percent of California’s population to force the most severely troubled individuals into conservatorships. Those are arrangements in which after judges give their consent, individuals can be compelled to remain hospitalized and receive treatment for addiction, mental illness or both.

Senate Bill 40 was introduced by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco. It allows the counties of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego to set up pilot programs under which police, social services and public health advocates can seek to have judges approve conservatorships for individuals after their eighth “5150” or emergency crisis hold within a year. The law sunsets in 2024.

But the driving force behind the concept has been San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who for years has argued that her city needs a more effective way to deal with the relative handful of homeless people responsible for extreme incidents that harm quality of life for city residents and tourists alike.

“We can’t compel anyone to do something if they don’t want to do it,” the mayor told the San Francisco Chronicle last week. “And in most cases, for someone who is mentally ill, they are not accepting what we are offering — which means the conservatorship legislation is going to be very helpful for a small group of those people.”

The ACLU of Northern California — one of the best-funded, most high-profile local ACLU chapters in the nation — strongly opposed the measure, faulting its due-process provisions as inadequate.

Targeted individuals found in need of involuntary detention under the new law would first be given a 28-day housing conservatorship and then six-month arrangements. It provides individuals opportunities to challenge authorities’ decisions in the courts. But the hardline elements of the law were too much for civil liberties groups.

“Fundamentally, care should not begin with handcuffs,” a coalition of groups including the ACLU told Wiener in April.

Counties may not have adequate facilities to use with law

Another sharp criticism was that none of the three counties had adequate facilities allowing authorities to get many troubled individuals off the streets.

Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the San Francisco-based nonprofit Coalition on Homelessness, told Pew’s Stateline news service that “of course there aren’t [adequate resources]. … Look around the city. If there were beds, you wouldn’t see what you see.” Wiener’s law “doesn’t really do anything but sounds good to the public.”

Statistics cited in a recent Chronicle article back up this concern. It noted that two people who were already in an existing conservatorship program in San Francisco were being held inside of a locked hospital ward because of an estimated five-month wait time to get into a residential facility.

Former state lawmaker Kevin Murray, a supporter of more aggressive use of conservatorships with the troubled homeless, last month blasted the city and county of Los Angeles for inadequate facilities. A recent Los Angeles city audit offered similar concerns.

In June, San Diego County supervisors responded to years of criticism over its mental health and homelessness programs by beefing up spending in the 2019-20 budget. While the city of San Diego has won praise for its efforts to provide shelter to the homeless, it’s also been faulted for its sparse options on care for the mentally ill homeless.

Eight months after the head of the California Public Utilities Commission suggested it was time for a radical shake-up of Pacific Gas & Electric, the state’s largest power utility appears to be at much less risk of a hostile takeover or being broken up into smaller utilities.

While Gov. Gavin Newsom has been sharply critical of PG&E for years for fires and disasters blamed on its lax practices, the former San Francisco mayor has offered no encouragement to London Breed, the city’s current mayor, who is interested in taking over some PG&E assets and using them in a municipal power utility.

The bill passed by the state Legislature this month at Newsom’s behest to create a $21 billion account jointly funded by utilities and ratepayers to help deal with the high cost of wildfires included provisions that gave the CPUC more power to control the fate of PG&E assets. It also specified that any new owner of a utility cannot reduce the number of employees for three years, which analysts saw as an attempt to discourage a takeover.

Mayors blast part of wildfire legislation

Breed, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf sharply criticized these provisions in a letter to Newsom and legislative leaders. They “set a dangerous precedent by limiting local government autonomy over its own employee relationships,” the mayors wrote.

Newsom also effectively sided with PG&E in opposing the attempt by utility bondholders to force the utility to change its present plan to emerge from the Chapter 11 bankruptcy it filed for in January because of $30 billion in expected claims over wildfires blamed on the utility’s equipment. PG&E wants to use a portion of its earnings and cost savings to issue tax-exempt bonds to pay for wildfire costs. Bondholders back a complex alternative plan that would sharply reduce the equity of shareholders.

PG&E, which has 16 million customers, must finalize and file its reorganization plan with federal bankruptcy court by Sept. 29. To qualify for assistance from the $21 billion state wildfire relief fund, it must be out of bankruptcy by June 30, 2020.

Meanwhile, the CPUC president who blasted PG&E in December is likely in his final weeks on the job. Michael Picker announced in May that he would retire this summer but would stay on until Newsom chose his replacement.

Picker has long faced criticism for the perception that the utilities commission was too protective of the state’s three giant investor-owned utilities – PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric.

New scandal was last straw for CPUC chief

But a turning point came in December when the CPUC staff presented evidence that PG&E knowingly followed unsafe practices in maintaining and inspecting natural gas lines for five years after a natural gas explosion killed eight people in San Bruno in 2010.

“This process will be like repairing a jetliner while it’s in flight,” he said. “The keystone question is would, compared to PG&E and PG&E Corp. as presently constituted, any of the proposals provide Northern Californians with safer natural gas and electric service at just and reasonable rates.”

Picker subsequently said the CPUC and state leaders should consider a state takeover or having the utility broken up into smaller components. 

The new scandal and Picker’s remarks helped drop PG&E’s stock price from over $23 a share in mid-December to under $7 a month later. The share price had rebounded to $18.70 as of the close of the market on Friday, reflecting analysts’ confidence that PG&E will survive Chapter 11. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom wants the Legislature to agree to sweeping reforms in wildfire liability rules by July 12, before lawmakers start a one-month recess.

After first calling on legislative leaders to shape new policies to help investor-owned utilities deal with a hotter, drier, more fire-prone era in April, Newsom put forward his own plan last week. It’s most significant change is an end to the state’s unusual “inverse condemnation” law that requires utilities be held liable for damages if their equipment sparks wildfires whatever the circumstances. Like predecessor Jerry Brown, Newsom thinks a more reasonable rule is to allow utilities to escape liability if there is evidence that their equipment was properly maintained – a standard used in most other states.

Newsom says this rule and the establishment of a $21 billion fund to help cover the cost of future blazes – paid for equally by shareholders and ratepayers of Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric – would go a long way toward stabilizing the state’s power grid and helping PG&E out of bankruptcy.

Thanks to a quirk, ratepayers might not even notice their share of the tab. That’s because a $2.50 monthly surcharge first imposed on utilities’ customers in 2002 to deal with heavy costs from the 2000-2001 energy crisis that is supposed to end next year would be renewed through 2035 to pay ratepayers’ share of the wildfire fund.

Brown’s call for weaker liability rules was rejected

But Brown got nowhere with his call last year to end “inverse condemnation.” And Newsom will face the same obstacles – and a new one. That’s the fact that many lawmakers may be ambivalent at best about helping PG&E come out of the bankruptcy process it initiated in January over at least $30 billion in claims from harsh wildfires in Northern California in recent years. 

The reputation of the state’s largest utility has been in a free-fall since a 2010 gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno that killed eight people and led to PG&E’s conviction of six federal felonies for shoddy maintenance and interfering with federal investigators. 

Yet after the utility promised it would do a far better job in inspecting and maintaining gas transmission lines, in December, the California Public Utilities Commission revealed that it had found that PG&E managers pressured workers to falsify “tens of thousands” gas safety inspections from 2012-2017.

The revelations stunned CPUC President Michael Picker – leading him to suggest for the first time that PG&E be taken over by the state, be broken up into smaller parts or otherwise go through a radical overhaul. 

The view that PG&E status quo must end has been highly popular among Bay Area politicians, who cite the fact that Sacramento started up its own municipal utility nearly a century ago in response to poor, costly service from PG&E.

In May, San Francisco Mayor London Breed said the city was preparing a formal, multibillion-dollar offer for some of PG&E’s key assets. Breed said her city had a “unique opportunity” to bolster its “long-term interest.”

Help PG&E with bankruptcy? Or break it up?

State lawmakers from the Bay Area include some of PG&E’s most forceful critics, starting with Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo. Even before the revelation in December about PG&E’s years of falsifying gas inspection records, Hill had already called for the utility to be taken over by a public agency or coalition of agencies.

Hill and other lawmakers are unlikely to accept changes in “inverse condemnation” until PG&E is overhauled. One of the main reasons previous calls to change the rule have been opposed was because of concerns that letting up pressure on PG&E to meet safety standards would lead the utility to be reactive instead of proactive in maintaining its equipment.

Against this backdrop, Newsom’s push to get his fire relief plan approved by July 12 doesn’t appear realistic.

A confusing 2017 California Supreme Court ruling about the threshold of approval for local ballot measures that are qualified for the ballot through citizen-led signature-gathering efforts – as opposed to being placed before voters by local officeholders – is causing major uncertainty in the Bay Area.

In the case of California Cannabis Coalition v. the City of Upland, the state high court appeared to suggest that citizen-qualified tax or fee measures needed only a simple majority for approval, while others required two-thirds support. But the court did not offer a definitive statement. Many legal experts questioned how justices came up with a new interpretation of 1978’s Proposition 13 and 1996’s Proposition 218, which generally imposed a two-thirds requirement for voter approval of local taxes.

This has created uncertainty around three measures in San Francisco and one in Oakland that were approved by strong majorities of voters – but not by two-thirds.

One city attorney says majority OK; other says two-thirds needed

Last week, the Harvard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the California Business Roundtable and the California Business Properties Association launched a legal challenge to San Francisco’s Proposition C. It is a complicated measure that imposes a new tax on businesses with more than $50 million in gross receipts. Some industries are charged 0.175 percent, while others pay 0.69 percent – nearly four times as much. This is on top of San Francisco’s existing gross receipts tax on companies with $1 million or more in gross receipts.

Relying on City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s interpretation of the 2017 California high court ruling, the city has treated the new tax as valid despite its November passage with less than a two-thirds majority. Proposition C is expected to generate at least $300 million a year for homeless programs.

Herrera holds the same position on two measures approved by San Francisco voters last June. One imposed an annual parcel tax of $298 to help increase teacher salaries. The other raised taxes on some commercial rents to fund child care and education programs.

In interviews, Herrera has offered explanations for his position that seem more populist than rooted in any broader legal theory about how California direct democracy should function. He’s said voters should be able to impose tax hikes with simple majorities.

In Oakland, a divided City Council last week decided not to levy an annual $198-per-house, $135-per-apartment annual parcel tax in 2019. The parcel tax was passed by voters as Measure AA in November. It was expected to generate as much as $900 million for education programs over 30 years. While two council members wanted to begin collecting and spending the funds immediately, a council majority ended up heeding City Attorney Barbara Parker, who wrote in the official voters guide that two-thirds support was necessary for passage.

S.F. unruffled by loss of city’s highest-grossing firm

By far the most controversial of the four measures in legal limbo is Proposition C. It was opposed by Mayor London Breed and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey not just because it could be seen as creating a hostile business climate but because the measure would fund homeless programs without setting up metrics to determine what worked and what didn’t.

One huge multinational corporation made plain its unhappiness with the new levy. On Nov. 30, 11 days after a CalWatchdog report anticipating the decision, pharmaceutical giant McKesson Corp. announced it was relocating its headquarters from San Francisco to a Dallas suburb. The loss of McKesson – by far the highest-grossing San Francisco company, the second-largest in California after Apple and the sixth-largest in the U.S. – appeared to vindicate Breed’s and Dorsey’s warnings.

But despite McKesson’s exit and huge problems with housing and homelessness, San Francisco officials are much more upbeat than those in elsewhere in Silicon Valley about the sustainability of the tech boom. From 2010 to 2017, while tech job growth began to slow in the region, the number of tech jobs in San Francisco went from about 21,000 to 84,000.

A San Francisco Chronicle analysis noted that no large tech firm had left the city in recent years. Such companies, development analyst Colin Yasukochi told the Chronicle, are “in the innovation business. Being able to attract the best and brightest minds is going to give them a competitive advantage when it comes to innovating new products and services.”

Last year saw about 54,000 property crimes in the city – about 150 car break-ins, burglaries and thefts a day. But the San Francisco Police Department depicted the city as having turned the corner on the problem, using better coordinated responses to cut car break-ins by 14 percent. They said the criminal gangs who were behind most of the break-ins were less active.

Yet a San Francisco Chronicle story printed earlier this month suggests that police have exaggerated their progress.

“Politicians and police have bragged repeatedly that property crimes and car break-ins are down from last year’s epic high. But what they don’t mention is that they’ve actually gone up in the area patrolled by the Central Station, which includes most of San Francisco’s major tourist destinations: Union Square, Fisherman’s Wharf, Lombard Street, North Beach, Nob Hill and much of the Embarcadero,” the Chronicle noted.

“Through October, Central Station had seen 9,106 property crimes, a 13 percent increase from the same time period last year. Car break-ins are up 4 percent, and burglaries, which include home break-ins and shoplifting, are up a whopping 48 percent.”

Overall, the city is averaging 144 property crimes a day – only a slight drop from 2017.

Yet residents’ anger over the property crime epidemic goes far beyond the numbers and the criminals responsible. Letters to the editor and online posts show disbelief at how few consequences there are for the break-ins. In 2017, only about 1 in 60 cases ended with an arrest. Even cases where stolen credit cards are used illegally – a crime that usually provides investigators with strong, clear evidence – rarely end in prosecution.

Failure to use signs to warn tourists blasted

And citizens who try to help police report deep frustration and a belief the “smash and grab” break-ins are not taken seriously. In February, the NBC Bay Area television station interviewed a car break-in victim who provided police with videos of at least 50 car breaks-in near his home, with none apparently leading to criminal prosecution. His frustration with the police was backed up by a spokesman for San Francisco District Attorney George Garcon (pictured) who said officers needed to make more arrests.

But the visitors industry – which generates $9 billion a year – is also frustrated with Mayor London Breed and city supervisors. As Chronicle columnist Heather Knight wrote recently, the best insurance against a vehicle break-in is having literally nothing of value in sight within a car – the everyday practice of locals who drive. Yet instead of getting this message across by requiring that car rental agents directly verbally warn customers, the city merely requires that a warning be part of rental paperwork. Knight also called the city’s failure to put up warning signs at the most popular visitor sites “incredible.”

TV crew reporting on problem itself victimized

The national media has been reporting on the crime wave in San Francisco since 2017. In September, the “Inside Edition” show staged a sting in which valuables with GPS trackers were left inside a car at a tourist site. It was soon broken into, leading reporter Lisa Guerrero to later confront one of the two thieves.

But later that day, as Guerrero was interviewing a car break-in victim who complained about police indifference,  “a car belonging to the ‘Inside Edition’ crew was broken into, resulting in two broken windows and the theft of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment,” according to the show’s website.

Crime in San Francisco isn’t as severe in other categories, according to the FBI. The city had the 75th worst rate of violent crimes out of the 298 cities the agency tracked.

On June 30, 2004, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom won national headlines when he

Newsom said he wanted a “dramatic shift” from reactive policies used to deal with those without shelter who often suffer from addiction, mental illness or both. He promised that the aggressive transients seen in downtown areas harassing storekeepers, residents and tourists would get indoor housing; that the newly homeless would have access to immediate help to prevent them from going on downward spirals; and, perhaps most remarkably, that emergency homeless shelters eventually would have to close because they would have no transients left to serve.

Fourteen years later, Newsom’s promises seem like fantasies – or cruel jokes – in a city where the quality of life and the tourism industry feel under siege from 7,500 or more homeless people. Despite spending more than $2 billion on the problem since 2004 – vastly more than big cities with similar homeless issues – San Francisco officials sometimes convey the sense of feeling overwhelmed.

The notion that the problem is out of control is frequently illustrated by visiting journalists who make parts of the city seem like obstacle courses covered by feces, used needles and surly, erratic individuals ready to intimidate passers-by into giving them money.

Yet San Francisco’s problem is actually in some ways both better and worse than in similar cities. Despite a brutal housing crisis that makes paying rent difficult even for those making $100,000 or more, the total number of homeless has been flat in recent years, unlike other large California cities. San Francisco has also managed to avoid the emergence of mass encampments of transients seen in neighboring Oakland and elsewhere in urban areas.

Disturbed, disruptive homeless more common in city

So what is driving the perception that the homeless problem is worse than ever in the city? An article in the June 1 issue of The Economist made the case that San Francisco had an intense concentration of the most disturbed, disruptive homeless – individuals who generally make up a relative handful of the homeless in much of Southern California.

“[The] rates of mental illness and addiction among the homeless have increased. Use of more potent mind-bending drugs, like fentanyl and methamphetamine, has risen, too. Nearly 70 percent of psychiatric emergency-room visits by the homeless are the result of methamphetamine-induced psychosis,” The Economist wrote.

This psychosis may be driving a public health crisis spurred by open defecation in the streets. Complaints about human feces in the city nearly tripled from 2009 to 2017, reaching 21,000 last year.

Tourists are noticing. On July 2, the city’s convention and visitor bureau announced that it had lost one of its biggest accounts – an unnamed medical group which had a long tradition of regularly bringing 15,000 free-spending conventioneers to the Bay Area. Given tourism – not tech – remains San Francisco’s biggest industry, city officials were alarmed.

Long before that announcement, London Breed – the Willie Brown protege who took over as mayor on July 11 – said reducing homelessness’ impact on the city was her top priority. So far a key focus has been on giving the city new authority to use conservatorship laws to allow interventions into the lives of the most troubled individuals.

Newsom plans ‘granular’ approach to issue if elected

As for Newsom, the lieutenant governor is now the heavy favorite to succeed Gov. Jerry Brown. Undaunted by what’s happened in San Francisco since his 2004 pledge, he’s touting the most aggressive efforts yet by the state government to reduce homelessness.

If he defeats Republican John Cox in November, Newsom told the Sacramento Bee that he’d “get deeply involved at a granular level where most governors haven’t in the past.”

“I want to be held accountable on this issue, and I want to be disruptive of the status quo,” Newsom said. “I’m willing to take risks. I’m not here to be loved. What’s going on is unacceptable, and it is inhumane.”

While it hasn’t got nearly the attention, the same tensions between wealthy tech employers and local interest groups – which see the employers as hurting quality of life by increasing congestion and by making housing costlier – are playing out in the June 5 San Francisco mayor’s race. It’s being held to fill the vacancy created by Mayor Ed Lee’s death from a heart attack on Dec. 12. Lee’s death was lamented by tech executives who called him a key to San Francisco’s emergence as a world tech capital.

That sentiment is far from universal. A May 15 Business Insider analysis by Melia Robinson that was featured on the San Francisco Chronicle website was headlined “San Francisco is fed up with Big Tech, and residents are begging the next mayor to do something about it.”

Leading mayoral candidates critical of tech’s effects

It’s difficult to be confident who’s leading the mayor’s race since San Francisco is one of a handful of cities to use a top-three ranked voting system in which a candidate who doesn’t get a majority in the initial tally can still win based on her or his second- and third-place votes. But the consensus top three are all liberal to very liberal Democrats by national, if not San Francisco, standards. They are Board of Supervisors Chairwoman London Breed, who would be the city’s first African-American woman mayor and has the support of former Mayor Willie Brown’s business-friendly coalition; Supervisor Jane Kim, who would be the city’s first Korean-American mayor and is a mostly beloved figure among local progressives; and former state Sen. Mark Leno, who would be the city’s first openly gay mayor and who also runs well to Breed’s left.

Breed, who was deposed as acting mayor by progressive supervisors earlier this year, seems to want the most limited policy changes aimed at tech workers. She has backed limits on short-term rentals by companies like Airbnb and wants to cap the number of ride-hailing vehicles at any given time, and perhaps put restrictions on food deliveries as well.

Kim wants tech companies to improve pay and benefits for lower-rung workers so they can live in the city. She says companies subcontract services for janitorial and cafeteria work so they can avoid responsibility for the poor quality of life for those hired. She has expressed interest in requiring Uber and Lyft to pay a per-rider fee.

Leno wants to impose hiring rules on city tech companies to force them to hire city residents. He says this hiring shouldn’t just be for blue-collar positions but for administrative and sales jobs. He has also called for tech firms and their employers to “invest” in the city by committing to improving its lifestyle for those beyond the wealthy.

Some warn tech firms shouldn’t be taken for granted

The only Republican in the race – business consultant Richie Greenberg – and business groups say that mayoral candidates shouldn’t take tech companies for granted. They note that the city’s tech boom may have peaked in 2016, with exploding housing costs hurting San Francisco more than the broader Bay Area-Silicon Valley tech region in general.

But this point of view is a tough sell going into June 5’s voting. Perhaps the best example of this is a deal orchestrated in 2011 by then-Mayor Lee with the support of Supervisor Kim to revitalize the rough Tenderloin and Mid-Market districts west of downtown by giving a six-year break on city payroll taxes to companies located there. This was meant to keep Twitter’s headquarters from moving out of the city and to attract new tech firms to the area.

The proposal was widely seen as a smart way to maintain San Francisco’s tech momentum in 2011. In 2014, business groups hailed the agreement for keeping Twitter and for creating 13,000 jobs and generating much more revenue for the city than the sums lost because of the tax break.

But that same year, a San Francisco Chronicle analysis noted that the deal was seen by many residents as a sign of the city caving to business pressure – and it has emerged as a reason for progressives to question Kim’s bona fides.