So everything is looking positive for the Warriors coming back to San Francisco? Not exactly. Critics have assembled a multimillion-dollar legal fund to fight the project at every turn, and a classic NIMBY battle between well-funded interests looms.

The main opponent “came out of nowhere” in April. The San Francisco Business Times had details:

A group of University of California, San Francisco, donors is threatening to sue or push a ballot measure against the Warriors’ potential Mission Bay arena over parking and traffic concerns. …

 

The group, a nonprofit called the Mission Bay Alliance, worries that arena traffic will bottle up to ensnarl ambulances headed to nearby UCSF Medical Center and threaten the neighborhood’s ability to grow as a biotechnology hub. Its proximity to AT&T Park and possible overlapping game days will exacerbate that, the group says.

 

Sam Singer, who is representing the alliance’s public relations efforts, [said], “The alliance wants to see the (arena) and office towers halted completely. If that doesn’t happen through the EIR and public participation process, the alliance will consider a lawsuit and going to the ballot to stop the stadium.”

Poll suggests public not sold on arena

On the eve of the supervisors’ vote, the Mission Bay Alliance released a poll of 540 voters that showed much less support than the Warriors have asserted. This is from a statement on the alliance’s website:

Based on what they know today about the proposed arena plan in Mission Bay, fewer than half of voters say they support it:

 

Support – 49 percent

 

Oppose – 42 percent

 

Don’t know – 10 percent  …

 

Once voters became aware of the facts surrounding the proposed arena and the expected regional impacts, including traffic gridlock, the lack of parking and clogged emergency access for adjacent UCSF hospitals, support for the arena plummeted even more:

 

Support – 38 percent

 

Oppose – 59 percent

 

Don’t know – 3 percent

 

Parking and traffic ranked as the two most problematic impacts, with 65 percent of voters concerned about traffic gridlock and 67 percent about a lack of parking in and around the arena. … [The project] does little to alleviate the burden the arena will put on regional transit like BART and CalTrain.

Being a popular champion helps sway debate

But the Warriors and the city leaders who back them up on the planned move could benefit tremendously from timing. San Diego voters agreed to help pay for PETCO Park for the Padres in the city’s downtown area in November 1998 — a month after the team won a rare National League title and advanced to the World Series.

The contrast is sharp with present-day San Diego and seemingly broad opposition to having local governments help the Chargers pay for a new NFL stadium. Other factors certainly come into play. San Diego’s reputation as “Enron by the Bay” has faded, but the city’s years of financial struggles have left scars. The city is debating a huge infrastructure program, prompting questions about why $200 million that might go to fix pocked roads and add fire stations would instead help a billionaire build a stadium. But it hasn’t helped the let’s-hold-our-noses-and-accept subsidies crowd that the Chargers have been hugely disappointing since their 14-2 season in 2007, rarely living up to expectations.

The Warriors, by contrast, sharply exceeded expectations in 2014-15, when they won their first NBA championship in 40 years. This season, meanwhile, they got off to the fastest start of any team in NBA history. That could be an ace in the hole for team owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber.

By Joseph Perkins

I’m not a pet guy. I have no personal stake in legislation, sponsored by state Sen. Juan Vargas, D-San Diego, which would create a “voluntary” certification program for California’s pet grooming industry.

Yet, I’m troubled that Vargas and his fellow lawmakers think that pet grooming rises to the level that its practitioners ought to be certified.

Not because voluntary certification almost certainly will lead to involuntary certification which, inevitably, will lead to state-mandated licensing — which much of the state’s pet-grooming community fears.

But because the state government’s propensity to license any and every occupation with more than a handful of practitioners is a de facto restraint of trade that has a damping effect on competition and that ultimately raises the costs to consumers of pet grooming and other services.

As it is, California licenses more than 175 different professions, more than any other state. And while it is understandable that the state licenses doctors, lawyers and other professions where an incompetent practitioner can do irreparable harm, that certainly doesn’t apply to decorators, locksmiths or pet groomers.

Yet, the Vargas bill, SB 969, would require pet groomers to complete 900 hours of training — why not an even 1,000? — and to pay a to-be-determined fee to the state — but of course — for the privilege of coiffing poodles and manicuring Abyssinians.

New council

And it would create a new California Pet Grooming Council to administer the certification process.

As with every other occupation regulated by the state, the rationale for licensing, or in the case of pet grooming, certification, is to protect consumers. But a Federal Trade Commission study on the costs and benefits of occupational regulation concluded that licensing “does not increase the quality of service.”

What it does do is impose a barrier to entry into regulated occupations, like pet grooming. That’s fine by big corporations, like Petco and PetSmart, that offer grooming services at higher prices than smaller, independent pet groomers. And it’s fine by the state’s veterinarians, who would like to make inroads in the pet grooming business.

But with almost 2 million Californians out of work three years into the state’s putative economic recovery, now is absolutely the wrong time for the Legislature to enact a measure, like SB 969, that will create even more joblessness.

And not only should lawmakers reject proposed certification of pet groomers, be it “voluntary” or not, they also should revisit state licensing mandates for the more than 175 or so occupations to which they currently apply.

A sensible reform would require licensing only for occupations that, if unregulated, could pose a threat to public health and safety, as well as those, again, where a deficient practitioner can cause irreparable harm.

Under such criteria, the state government’s regulatory power would be stayed against not only pet groomers, but also furniture upholsterers, pesticide applicators, court reporters and other service providers whose occupations are needlessly licensed.