But Assemblyman Evan Low (pictured), D-San Jose, wants to go in a different direction on voting. He has introduced Assembly Constitutional Amendment 8, which would lower the voting age from 18 to 17. First it needs to get two-thirds support in both the Assembly and the Senate, then approval of a majority of state voters.

Twenty-three states allow 17-year-olds to vote in primary elections if they will be 18 on the day of the general election. Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, D-San Mateo, has introduced Assembly Constitutional Amendment 4 to allow such voting in California.

But according to a San Francisco Chronicle analysis, no state allows voting at age 17 in general elections.

“Lowering the voting age will give a voice to young people and provide a tool to hold politicians accountable to the issues they care about. Young people are our future, and when we ignore that we do so at our own peril,” Low said in a statement provided to the Sacramento Bee.

Last year, Low’s similar proposal got 46 votes in the Senate – eight shy of the two-thirds threshold. He believes with Democrats now holding 61 of the Assembly’s 80 seats and 29 of the Senate’s 40 seats, his chances of making the ballot are much improved.

Republicans have been generally opposed to Low’s measure at least partly for partisan reasons. Polls in recent years have shown younger voters lean strongly to the left – to the point where a Gallup survey from last August found more of those aged 18 to 29 had a favorable view of socialism (51 percent) than capitalism (45 percent).

San Francisco nixed 2016 measure lowering voter age

But it’s not clear if Democrats will see the change as a way to gain a political advantage or are even enthusiastic about the idea. In May 2016, in San Francisco – where Democrats outnumber Republicans by 8 to 1 – the Board of Supervisors put Measure F on the November ballot, which would have lowered the voting age to 16 for local elections. But voters rejected it 52.1 percent to 47.9 percent, a 15,000-vote spread.

The debate over the measure likely foreshadowed the debate to come in the Legislature over Low’s bill.

Supporters said 16- and 17-year-olds were as capable as adults of making smart, informed election choices. They also said the voting change would promote awareness of civics at a time when polls show many young people are unfamiliar with basics about democracy.

Critics questioned why the measure had such a different view of young people’s maturity when it came to voting than with other adult privileges.

The close election may have been swung by a critical Chronicle editorial in September 2016.

“Young people must wait until the age of 21 to drink alcohol and, in California, smoke tobacco. They must wait until the age of 18 to serve their country,” the newspaper’s editorial board wrote. “It makes no sense for San Francisco to send the message that voting is a responsibility any less serious than these are.”

In 2010, when Santa Clara voters approved creating a city-run stadium authority to build an NFL stadium to attract the San Francisco 49ers, politicians patted themselves on the back for getting things done and luring a storied franchise 45 miles south to Silicon Valley. The relocation took place

The contrast with Oakland and its inability to come up with a stadium proposal that would keep the Raiders from eyeing other metro areas was clear. Leaders in the cash-strapped city were unable to prevent the Raiders from committing in 2017 to moving to Las Vegas and working with the Nevada state government on a financing plan that should yield a 65,000-seat stadium for the team to begin using in the 2020 season.

But now the narrative has taken a dramatic shift, and it’s Santa Clara leaders who are facing grief in their community over the 49ers’ arrival in town and the impact of the $1.27 billion Levi’s Stadium (pictured), named after the San Francisco company which paid for marketing rights.

What was billed as a win-win situation by team and local officials now looks far more complex. The initial honeymoon has long since given away to a fractious relationship.

The biggest annual strain is over how much the team must pay per season. A complex agreement set the 49ers’ rent and operating fees at $24.5 million for the 2017 season. The 2018 assessment was fought over for months before an arbitrator recently said the amount should be set at $24.762 million for the coming season, an increase of just over 1 percent.

The ruling contradicted the team’s analysis of baseline rent, stadium operating expenses, debt service and capital reserves. The 49ers argued their total payment should be as little as $16.775 million – a 32 percent cut. The city asked for as much as $25.862 million – a 6 percent increase.

“We want to work with 49ers, not against them,” Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor said in a statement released after the arbitration decision. “Hopefully the team understands that Santa Clara will always put community interests first.”

There have also been squabbles over the city’s 10 p.m. weeknight curfew for events at the stadium, which has the potential to cause headaches for the team, given the regular season games the NFL holds each week on Monday and Thursday nights, as well as the preseason games that are regularly scheduled on weeknights. Some residents respond by citing quality-of-life issues created by team-related traffic.

Personal-seat license fees needed for revenue model

Both the city and the team share concerns over attendance. While the 68,500-seat stadium regularly sells out on paper, Pro Football Talk and other popular NFL websites took to mocking the 49ers last fall after an October game in which the stadium seemed less than half full, pushing ancillary revenues down. An unexpected problem has been the intense heat seen at Levi’s Stadium for several preseason and regular season games.

A five-game winning streak to end the 2017 season raised hopes that attendance will improve going forward. But as Pro Football Talk pointed out, the team and city have reason to be deeply worried about renewals for personal seat licenses, the expensive way that fans can guarantee themselves top seats at games.

The license fees are crucial to the revenue model being used to pay off construction and related debt. Many once-successful teams have struggled to sell PSLs after their fortunes took a turn for the worse.

Meanwhile, the long-shot hope that the Raiders would continue to have a presence in Northern California after their 2020 move to Las Vegas has been dashed. Nevada media outlets recently reported that the team is likely to move its preseason training camp from its longtime base in Napa to Reno that summer.

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.”

It’s the last phase of Proposition 14, which voters passed in 2014 and raised the wage in increments of $1.00 through 2018.

“Those who say we have to choose between economic growth and fair pay are wrong,” City Administrator Naomi Kelly said in a statement. “We in San Francisco have proven that these elements aren’t exclusive of each other and, in fact, they compliment each other.”

And while “Fight for 15” advocates are cheering the move, the increase does little to address the cost of living concerns in the Bay Area, a region which continues to see a heavy exodus to neighboring states.

For example, a recent analysis by the National Low Income Housing Coalition found that someone would have to work around 160 hours per week at $15 per hour to be able to afford an average 2 bedroom apartment in San Francisco.

Furthermore, the income level for a family of four to qualify to low income assistance is now over $117,000 in the region, according to findings from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Across all of California, the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $1,750 and a two-bedroom averages $2,110. Average home prices in the state have surpassed $500,000 – and in places like Santa Clara County it’s well over $1 million.

Additionally, experts are noting that the wage hike may actually hurt low-wage workers, arguing that such an increase comes with trade-offs for poor residents. While the hourly wage may increase, it’s also likely to force businesses to cut prices – and possibly the hours of their workers.

 “San Francisco already has a major problem facing low wage workers,” George Mason economist Michael Farren explained on C-SPAN. “So the additional cost of $15 hour minimum wage and the effect it’s going to have on prices isn’t going to help low-wage workers very much.”

While California, with its vast housing market, suffered grievously during the Great Recession, its economy – and that of its Northern California tech heartland – has largely boomed in recent years. Compared to the overall sub-5 percent state unemployment rate, the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont area currently boasts a 2.4 percent unemployment rate.

When asked if they felt “things in the Bay Area are going the right direction,” only a quarter said yes. This figure represents a stark decline from previous years: 42 percent and 57 percent agreed with the statement in 2017 and 2014, respectively.

Skyrocketing housing costs were largely to blame for this dented confidence, with 42 percent citing it as the biggest regional challenge. In comparison, in 2015, only 18 percent held the view and 28 percent last year.

Eye-popping statistics bare these fears. In San Francisco, home values have risen 10 percent in the last year alone, with the median home price being nearly $1.2 million, according to Zillow. Renters aren’t any better off, as the median rent is currently $4,500.

Whether or not these problems are enough to cause demographic changes remains to be seen. A plurality, 46 percent, see themselves moving away in the next few years, a moderate increase from last year; 42 percent expect to stay, a moderate decrease.

Should people start leaving, however, it could be a loss for the state as a whole. A little less than a quarter would stay in the Golden State, while 64 percent would look elsewhere in the country.

Finally, those hoping these attitudes would translate into a paradigm shift at the ballot box may be disappointed. The majority polled look toward public entities and the government to solve problems such as housing costs and traffic – not the business community, tech industry or other private actors.

At City Hall Monday, referendum backers turned in an estimated 34,000 signatures calling for repeal, well above the 19,000 signatures the measure needed to qualify for the ballot. The city clerk has 30 days to verify signatures. If backers meet the threshold, supervisors will decide whether to repeal the law; schedule a special election; or hold an election in June 2018, the date of the next regularly scheduled vote. The latter course is most likely.

Although backed by the tobacco industry, the repeal effort focuses primarily on issues of tobacco “harm reduction.” That’s the idea that health officials ought to promote policies designed to reduce the harmful effects of tobacco and other addictions, rather than insist on a more idealistic, yet less potentially successful, abstinence-based approach. In other words, it might help people if they switch from dangerous behaviors to less-dangerous ones, even if the less-dangerous ones aren’t totally safe.

There’s no debate about the dangers of traditional cigarette smoking and, perhaps to a lesser extent, other combustible tobacco products such as cigarillos and cigars. But the wide-ranging city ban also defines electronic cigarettes as tobacco. Vaping liquids are not actually a tobacco product, but most contain nicotine. All of these liquids are flavored.

Under the new ordinance, retailers will no longer be allowed to sell vaping liquids, which will make it more difficult for cigarette smokers to switch to them. Public Health England, Great Britain’s main public-health agency, deems vaping to be 95 percent safer than smoking. For that reason, the vaping industry, well represented at a Monday news conference on the City Hall steps, depicted the city’s ban as a threat to the public’s health.

As they explain it, under the new law, cigarettes (although not menthol ones, or fruity cigars) can still be sold legally in the city. But less harmful tobacco-related products such as snus (spitless Swedish-style tobacco that is placed under one’s upper lip) and vaping will be outlawed. Those addicted to nicotine will find it easier to just grab a pack of traditional cigarettes, given that these safer alternatives will be off store shelves.

During the debate, city officials rebuffed such harm-reduction arguments. “We’re focusing on flavored products because they are widely considered to be a starter product for future smokers,” said Supervisor Malia Cohen, who introduced the unanimously passed ordinance. She argued that tobacco companies target poor, young and minority communities with flavored products to hook them on a lifetime of nicotine additions.

Ordinance backers depicted vaping as another tool in Big Tobacco’s arsenal. Yet a news story this week from San Francisco’s public-radio station KQED seemed to confirm at least some of the points the vaping supporters were making. “Electronic cigarettes may be a helpful tool for those who are looking to quit smoking, according to a recent study,” noted the report by Anna Kusmer. “This complicates the public health narrative around this new tobacco product, which have grown in popularity in the U.S. over the past decade.” Complicate, it does indeed.

And a new survey from Chris Russell and Neil McKeganey from the Centre for Substance Use Research in Glasgow, Scotland has rebutted the idea of vaping as a gateway to traditional cigarette smoking. The researchers found that: “More than 75 percent of American adult frequent (electronic vaping product, or EVP) users surveyed were cigarette smokers when they began using e-cigarettes and have now successfully quit smoking.” Yet less than “5 percent of current EVP users were non-smokers before beginning e-cigarette use.”

Referendum supporters also pointed to the economic impact of shutting down such a large portion of the city’s convenience-store industry. For instance, possession and use of menthol cigarettes and vaping products will still be legal in San Francisco, but consumers will have to travel to other localities or order the products online. The city’s Office of Small Business opposed the ban because, in part, of the ease of buying products other places.

CNN also reported on some recent data: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that tobacco use among high-school and middle-school students remained unchanged from 2011 to 2016, but that from 2015 to 2016, there were decreases in use of any tobacco product, e-cigarettes and hookahs among high school students. For middle-schoolers, rates of e-cigarette use dropped slightly as well. E-cigarette advocates say that’s evidence vaping is not becoming the teen epidemic that its proponents suggest.

However, California’s Tobacco Education and Research Oversight Committee, which oversees spending from the state’s recently enacted $2 a pack cigarette-tax increase, seems to view vaping as just another form of smoking. That’s a prevalent view among state and local health officials, who focus on vaping’s potential health concerns, rather than on the lower risks it creates in comparison to traditional cigarette smoking. They promote the use of medically approved tobacco-cessation devices instead, despite their low rates of success.

The new law’s backers also point to studies that suggest potentially bad health effects from the use of e-cigarettes. But referendum supporters note the irony that San Francisco, a city that has long pioneered harm-reduction policies when it comes to sexual behavior and drug use (safe sex programs and needle exchanges for heroin users), is instead taking a Prohibition-oriented approach when it comes to tobacco products, especially as the state legalizes the once-prohibited marijuana.

The scientific and public-policy debates aren’t going away. But this much is certain. The coming San Francisco referendum will show whether vaping’s supporters will be able to halt the wave of flavored-tobacco bans. If they don’t succeed, there will be little to stop Bay Area and other California localities from moving forward with similar bans.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

SACRAMENTO – The city of San Francisco filed suit last week against the ride-sharing service Uber after the company filed a motion in court to block the release of a drivers’ personal information. This sets up the latest battle between the city and one of the leading transportation network companies over an issue that has privacy implications beyond the ride-sharing industry.

San Francisco’s tax collector wants the home addresses and other information of drivers to post on a web site that includes a map that pinpoints the exact location of registered business owners in the city. Because these drivers are independent contractors, most of them use their home addresses as their official business address.

The web site is publicly searchable, which means that anyone can easily find where these drivers live. “We’ve asked the city to allow us to get the consent of drivers and to remove their personal information from the public web site, but they have refused,” said Uber Northern California’s general manager, in a statement last week.

The city’s treasurer, Jose Cisneros, portrayed Uber’s actions as an effort to “circumvent the tax laws that apply to all businesses in San Francisco.” He notes that 130,000 other businesses – ranging from big ones such as Pacific Gas & Electric to small hairdressers – must also provide the information.

“San Francisco needs this information to determine whether Uber’s drivers are complying with San Francisco’s Business Registration Certificate requirement and paying annual registration fees,” the city wrote in its legal brief filed in San Francisco Superior Court. In a statement, City Attorney Dennis Herrera referred to privacy concerns as a “red herring.”

But critics of the city’s legal approach see it as its latest effort to hobble these increasingly popular ride-sharing platforms. For instance, Cisneros seemed to suggest in a statement that the dispute goes beyond a simple business-registration request, as he ticked off a variety of unrelated complaints that he has with the company.

“Once again Uber believes they are above the law,” said Cisneros. “If Uber is so concerned about the financial well-being and privacy of their drivers, I recommend they raise wages, convert the contractors to employees, or push for their driver’s inclusion in statewide licensing like limousine drivers.”

If this is a question of registration, then why bring up pay rates or drivers’ independent-contractor status or unrelated licensing issues?

The city attorney’s office likewise brought up other issues. It alleges that Uber has engaged in a “pattern of obstruction” because it “has refused to share information with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency about its operations, tested self-driving cars on the streets of San Francisco without a state permit, and has fought calls by the SFMTA and the San Francisco International Airport for stricter criminal background checks on its drivers.”

The city attorney’s office also complained that, because ride-sharing companies such as Uber are regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission, it has “limited the ability of cities to provide oversight.” The statement criticizes Uber for its backing of Senate Bill 182, which “would prohibit local jurisdictions from requiring a transportation network company driver to obtain more than one business license, regardless of the number of jurisdictions in which they operate,” according to the Senate bill analysis.

That measure has passed two committees with little opposition. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, drivers are concerned that myriad cities will require business licenses, which means they would have to register and pay fees in every city where they operate. There are dozens of cities in the Bay Area alone, and drivers frequently pick up passengers in, say, San Francisco and leave them off in Oakland or San Mateo. Only a handful of cities now require business licenses, but the requirement could easily spread across the region.

As the ride-sharing companies’ defenders point out, these statements suggest the city isn’t just looking for a little registration information, but instead are pursuing broader regulatory efforts against the companies, which have shaken up the established taxicab industry.

City officials also have complained about the number of ride-sharing drivers on the streets, yet if these services weren’t available people would be using other types of vehicles. San Francisco officials often boast about the city’s role in the New Economy, yet are taking an antagonistic approach to this emerging industry.

City officials rebut the privacy concerns by noting that drivers can provide post-office boxes or separate business addresses on the registration forms, but drivers complain that it adds costs and hassles – above and beyond the $91 annual fee the city collects from drivers. Uber officials say they’ve heard from thousands of drivers who have expressed concern about privacy issues.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

Legislators have largely avoided the pension issue since passage of a reform law that went into effect in 2013, and reformers have struggled to settle on an initiative strategy to take to voters. That’s unlikely to change. But last week the high court agreed to review a union appeal of a decision involving an obscure concept known as the California Rule. The decision could change everything.

The California Rule is not actually a rule, but a legal doctrine that emanated from a 1955 court case. Essentially, it states that no vested public-employee benefit such as a pension can be reduced unless public employees are granted another benefit of equal or greater value. Unions claim that a 2013 state law unfairly deprives them of vested benefits.

The rule remains the stumbling block for most efforts to reduce pension costs, given that it severely limits public agencies’ efforts to slice current pension costs. Hence, pension reformers and unions alike are eager to get a final verdict on the matter.

In the private sector, companies that offer defined-benefit pension plans – those plans that guarantee a pension payout based on a formula, as opposed to 401(k)s – are free to reduce the benefits going forward. In other words, employees must be made whole through today, but may start receiving lower benefits tomorrow. By contrast, in California and other states that follow this rule, government workers must be paid the full amount of the promised benefits until they (and their spouses) pass away.

The accepted interpretation has been that a benefit hike, once approved by a government agency, is permanent. It can never be rolled back. As a result, most pension reform proposals deal only with shaving benefits for new hires, who won’t start retiring for 25 or 30 years. That leaves service cuts and tax hikes as the only way to deal with increasing pension debt.

Some localities have tried to take on the rule. In 2012, for instance, San Jose officials put a pension-reform measure on the ballot that required current city employees to choose between new pension plans that offered fewer benefits than current plans. It passed with 70 percent of the vote, but the courts later gutted that measure. They relied on the California Rule.

But now the California Supreme Court is ready to address the issue, at least around the margins. Last week, the court, without comment, agreed to a union challenge of a San Francisco appeals court that put limits on the application of the rule. Last summer, unions appealed a similar Marin County case, in which an appeals court also put some limits on the rule’s application.

At issue is the California Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act, which went into effect in January 2013. Most analysts viewed the law as a modest attempt to get control of the state’s growing unfunded pension liabilities, or debt. Most of it applied only to newly hired state workers. But it did include a handful of provisions that affect current workers.

On Dec. 30, the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco rejected a challenge by a state firefighters’ union claiming that PEPRA’s elimination of a 2003 benefit that let firefighters purchase up to five years of additional credits (airtime) before retiring was in violation of the rule.

“The unions argued that their members had a legal right to the pension benefits that were in effect when they were hired and that the state broke its contractual promise to them by eliminating those benefits,” according to a San Francisco Chronicle analysis. The 3-0 written opinion found that public employees have a right to a “reasonable pension” but they aren’t guaranteed “fixed or definite benefits immune from modification or elimination.”

“(P)laintiffs assert a vested contractual right to purchase up to five years of airtime service credit that is not subject to elimination or destruction by legislative amendment or repeal ‘even before the benefit has been accessed or the time for retirement has arrived.’” The court said plaintiffs “disregard the fact that, when amending the statutory scheme governing pension rights, the Legislature in fact provided (eligible public employees) … a several-month window in which to purchase the airtime service credit before the option terminated.”

The high court could uphold the rule or overturn it, or put certain limits on its application and deal narrowly with the “airtime” issue. In that separate Marin County case, five unions challenged PEPRA’s limitation of various ways that public employees enhance, or spike, their end-of-career salaries (bonuses, unused leave, etc.) to boost their lifetime retirement pay.

Unions argue that the reform reduced their vested pension benefits and was therefore in violation of their constitutional rights, as upheld by – you guessed it – the California Rule. “(W)hile a public employee does have a ‘vested right’ to a pension, that right is only to a ‘reasonable’ pension – not an immutable entitlement to the most optimal formula of calculating that pension,” ruled Justice James Richman, in language similar to the San Francisco ruling. He wrote that the Legislature may “prior to the employee’s retirement, alter the formula, thereby reducing the anticipated pension.”

As reporter Ed Mendel has explained in Calpensions, “The high court will wait until an appeals court rules on three similar spiking ban suits consolidated from Alameda, Contra Costa and Merced counties.” That might take some time, but this issue is definitely coming to the state’s high court in one form or another, sooner or later.

Battle lines are drawn. The unions claim that state and local agencies may not reduce any pension benefits. Pension reformers – and the courts, in recent decisions – say that while a reasonable pension remains a right, that doesn’t stop localities from reducing some things. These cases deal with pension-spiking enhancements and the purchase of airtime – controversial and somewhat limited practices. But the future of pension reform is on the line.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

Lawmaker targets Uber’s self-driving vehicles in new legislation 

Good morning! TGIF. One lesson for the day: If you want to do something in the state, don’t try to get around the permitting process. 

It’s not enough that Uber killed its unpermitted, self-driving-vehicle pilot program in San Francisco just a week after it started; an assemblyman wants to squash any further attempts to test vehicles without a permit as well. 

Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, introduced legislation requiring the DMV to revoke registrations for self-driving vehicles in violation of the state’s Autonomous Vehicle Tester Program. The bill is a response to Uber, which last year began testing its vehicles without a permit, even picking up passengers, violating state regulations. And one of the vehicles ran a red light. 

Under Ting’s bill, law enforcement would have the authority to impound violating vehicles and the DMV could fine as much as $25,000 per vehicle per day. 

“I applaud our innovation economy and all the companies developing autonomous vehicle technology, but no community should face what we did in San Francisco,” Ting said in a statement. “The pursuit of innovation does not include a license to put innocent lives at risk.”

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• “The Coastal Commission’s stated concern that a proposed Huntington Beach desalination plant’s intake pipes pose a threat to small and microscopic plankton has been rebutted in a letter from three prominent California marine biologists.” CalWatchdog has more. 

• “Consumer Watchdog collects millions, but does it lower your insurance rates?” The Sacramento Bee has the story. 

• “Jerry Brown doesn’t want to give doctors a cut of the new tobacco tax money,” writes The Sacramento Bee. 

• “Days after Governor Jerry Brown called for an extension of California’s signature greenhouse gas reduction program and threatened to withhold money it generates until that happens, Assembly Democrats introduced legislation.” Capital Public Radio has more. 

Legislature:

• Assembly is in at 9 a.m. to vote on the appointment of Xavier Becerra as state attorney general.

Gov. Brown: 

• No public events announced. 

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @ChrisLevinson

Some advocates for police reform worry about what a new Trump administration will mean for these discussions given the president-elect’s expectedly different approach toward the matter than President Obama’s Department of Justice. But others argue the election will send reform back to where it really belongs: at the local level.

Two northern California cities, Sacramento and San Francisco, are good examples of the latter. They are currently plowing ahead with major oversight and accountability proposals for their police departments – the result of local policing scandals that have little to do with national political changes. Sacramento takes up the matter at a City Council meeting on Tuesday.

The Sacramento reforms were prompted by a video of two police officers in pursuit of a mentally ill homeless man, Joseph Mann, who was armed with a knife and acting erratically. As the Sacramento Bee reported, the video sequence shows “the officers gunned their vehicle toward Mann, backed up, turned and then drove toward him again, based on dash-cam video released by police. They stopped the car, ran toward Mann on foot and shot him 14 times.” One officer is recorded saying “f— this guy” shortly before they shot him.

The killing raised questions not only about the appropriate use of force in such situations, but about the city’s willingness to provide the public information about what transpired. Top city officials – the police chief, city attorney and city manager – didn’t release the video of the event until after the Bee acquired the footage from a private citizen. The shooting led to community protests and has been a source of strife – and council debate – ever since.

In September, the newspaper’s Editorial Board published this pointed editorial: “The city could have been upfront with Mann’s family about how many times he was shot and how long the investigation into the shooting would take. Instead, his brother, backed by enough activists to fill City Hall, had go before the City Council to beg for information. The city could have been clear about what training officers receive to handle people who are mentally ill. Instead, police still haven’t responded to a Public Records Act request for a copy of the department’s policy.”

Reformers argue that the proposed policy doesn’t go far enough, although backers argue that it is about as far as it can go given state law. Specifically, the measure would transfer power of the civilian oversight committee from the city manager’s office to the mayor and City Council – thus providing a more independent level of oversight given that the city manager also oversees the police department. Council members are at least beholden to voters.

The city’s proposal also does the following: “This resolution requires the city manager to ensure that all police officers of the Sacramento Police Department abide by council specified guidelines with regards to use of force. Key components of the resolution include the timely release of video after an officer involved incident occurs and the immediate notification of family members after an officer involved shooting.” That attempts to deal with the public-records issue.

Civilian-oversight commissions are still limited by the state Supreme Court’s Copley decision. In that 2006 case, the San Diego Union-Tribune tried to gain access to a disciplinary hearing regarding a deputy sheriff who was appealing his termination. As the newspaper reported, “The court ruled that police disciplinary hearings are closed — and the public has no right to learn about allegations of police misconduct, even when they are aired in a civil service commission.” Legislative efforts to roll back parts of the decision have repeatedly been stymied by police union lobbying.

In San Francisco, officials have been reacting to controversy following three officer-involved shootings and a scandal involving racist text messages that were allegedly sent by police officers. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported in April, “The messages are loaded with slurs and ugly stereotypes, and include one from an officer responding to a photo of a blackened Thanksgiving turkey. ‘Is that a Ferguson turkey?’ the officer asks, referring to the city in Missouri that saw widespread protests after police fatally shot an unarmed African American man in 2014.”

National politics plays a bigger role in the San Francisco case. That’s because the federal Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services department published a study last month looking at San Francisco’s police department. The mayor and former police chief had asked the department to review police practices following these scandals.

As the report’s summary explained, “Although the COPS Office found a department that is committed to making changes and working with the community, it also found a department with outdated use of force policies that fail the officers and the community and inadequate data collection that prevents leadership from understanding officer activities and ensure organizational accountability. The department lacked accountability measures to ensure that the department is being open and transparent while holding officers accountable.”

San Francisco officials have vowed to implement the 479 recommendations made in the Justice Department report. “We will continue to implement the recommendations for reform which will be built on the most current policing policies and practices, fostering an environment of trust and strong relationships with our communities,” said acting Police Chief Toney Chaplin.

In Sacramento, Mayor-elect Darrell Steinberg, who is inaugurated on Dec. 13, told the Bee “the public certainly has a right to know whether a particular officer who has been accused of misconduct continues to serve in the role of police officer. … There ought to be a clear presumption of openness and the burden ought to be on the city attorney and police to demonstrate in a compelling way why anything is not public.” There’s concern that a federal lawsuit by Mann’s relatives will allow the city to shut down public access to information about the shooting.

This much is clear: Whatever changes a new administration makes at the Department of Justice, local officials throughout California are on the front lines of the police-reform movement. 

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.