Public Comment

What can you do when a state legislator declares war on her own city?

Vote. Very carefully. Specifically, in the June 5 primary to represent Assembly District 15, which includes Berkeley and several surrounding cities. Also in the governor's race, on the same ballot. So that we don't get fooled again.

The legislator in question is Nancy Skinner, elected in 2016 to the state Senate. Of the 12 candidates competing for the open Assembly seat that Skinner once held, only one – Andy Katz, no relation to this writer – has straightforwardly opposed Skinner's just-defeated SB 827, which would have crippled local governments' control over land use. 

Four rival candidates told me they supported that bill without conditions: Rochelle Pardue-Okimoto (Thurmond's endorsed successor), Owen Poindexter, Sergey Vikramsingh Piterman, and leading fundraiser Buffy Wicks – who also expresses weak support for rent control. Six other hopefuls conditionally supported SB 827's approach, two with some skepticism. (The remaining hopeful never responded to me.) Meanwhile, only one major candidate for governor – Delaine Eastin – supports restoring cities' full authority to stabilize rents. 

War on Local Officials

Nancy Skinner's declaration of war began with sponsoring last year's SB 167 (which is now law). Aimed rather specifically at Berkeley, it fines cities at least $10,000 for each housing unit they choose not to approve. Apparently, Sen. Skinner felt that cities already too cash-strapped to adequately provide basic services needed a major new drain on their budgets. 

This year, she took her declaration of war nuclear by coauthoring, with state Sen. Scott Wiener, the divisive SB 827. As Becky O'Malley, Zelda Bronstein, and others have detailed in past Planet contributions, that bill would have gutted local zoning authority. Based on an expansive definition of transit corridors, SB 827 would have forced the upzoning of already-dense coastal cities. According to expert analyses, the impacted area would have included much of Berkeley, and almost the whole city of San Francisco. 

Craziest Bill I've Ever Seen

SB 827 drew formidable opposition – which it amply earned. The bill invited the massive demolition of existing, affordable, and often rent-stabilized housing stock, to facilitate building new market-rate and luxury housing on a larger scale. 

The bill's wide spectrum of declared opponents included the Sierra Club, the state's influential union Building Trades Council, many affordable-housing and tenants' advocates, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the Los Angeles City Council, the League of California Cities, many small cities' governments, and Berkeley mayor Jesse Arreguin. 

L.A. City Councilman Paul Koretz called SB 827 the craziest bill I’ve ever seen. Beverly Hills Vice Mayor John Mirisch called the bill the wrong prescription...like trying to cure psoriasis with an appendectomy. 

In a critical hearing on April 17, SB 827 was killed (for now) after it mustered only four yes votes on a 13-person committee. Skinner and Wiener accounted for half those four votes, and the other two were Republicans – they couldn't get a single Democrat to join them. This invites a chuckle about how poorly they can count votes. 

But what's far less funny is that these two rogue senators are determined to reintroduce similar city-toppling language next year. (If they don't first sneak it into another 2018 bill, through gut-and-amend.) This means that whoever we elect to the Assembly District 15 seat (being vacated by incumbent Tony Thurmond) might well vote on similarly intrusive legislation in the lower house. 

Leaders Behind the Curve

Which brings us to the June 5 Assembly primary. Among the 12 hopefuls on the ballot, who supports Skinner's bid to cripple local zoning authority, and who defends home rule? 

Almost all of our would-be leaders have been surprisingly behind the surging tide of opposition to SB 827. This is notable because most of the race's Democratic hopefuls express closely-matched progressive stances on reforming Proposition 13, whose tax limitations have crippled local governments' budget capacity since 1978. 

They also broadly support repealing Costa-Hawkins, the 1995 state bill that pre-empted local rent stabilization – directly triggering today's crisis of housing affordability. (As we'll see below, an exception to that tenant-friendly stance is Buffy Wicks.) 

Yet SB 827, in proposing to slash local control over land use, was arguably the demon love child of Prop. 13 and Costa-Hawkins. It's another Sacramento assault on home rule, and on the capacity of local elected officials who – unlike remote Sacramento denizens – remain readily accessible to their constituents. 

Free-Market Fairy Tales

Let's acknowledge sponsors' claims that SB 827 would have somehow improved housing affordability by increasing supply. And let's promptly dispose of those claims, unless you also believe Milton Friedman or Paul Ryan's bedtime stories about the magic of free markets. 

Despite some nominal tenant protections that Wiener and Skinner added when SB 827 was foundering, the bill's basic engine was to permanently destroy lots of existing, rent-stabilized housing. (Costa-Hawkins exempts everything built after 1995 from rent control.) So anything supersized on those demolished structures' lots would have rented to all future tenants at uncontrolled market rates. 

As a further strike on housing affordability, SB 827 would have destroyed one of the few remaining incentives that local governments have to require developers to include a significant share of affordable units in market-rate developments. That incentive is cities' discretionary zoning authority to modify or reject ill-considered projects. 

Add it all up, and SB 827 would have accelerated the unwelcome trend that a recent study documented for the Bay Area during 2010–16: shipping moderate-income people out, and replacing them with people earning significantly more. 

Perhaps the Sierra Club articulated the rotten implications best, in its press release criticizing SB 827's initial draft: 

We support the goal of increasing transit-oriented development to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – but...[a]t the heart of this bill is...state-level preemption. In essence, these bills strip local governments from the decision-making process. Last year we saw this used in Louisiana and Tennessee...to stop local affordable housing mandates for developers, using the very same blunt instrument – removal of local zoning authority. There have also been examples...blocking local fracking bans, deregulating factory farms, suppressing the minimum wage, and most recently,...in Utah...restricting local elected officials’ ability to advocate for public lands protections.

What the Candidates Say

Given SB 827's flaws, I took the opportunity to directly ask several Assembly candidates their positions on this bill just before the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club's primary endorsement panel on January 25. (The moderators asked no questions about SB 827 that night, Club officers allowed no questions from the audience, and the membership endorsed no one.) 

I later emailed candidates whom I'd missed, using contact info they'd registered with the Alameda County Registrar of Voters. I also read candidates' online responses to this January, 2018, questionnaire, from a YIMBY (pro-construction) group that asked directly about SB 827. 

Finally, I also reviewed this two-hour video of the Nov. 4, 2017, candidate panel hosted by the the California Democratic Party's African American Caucus. (The candidate panel starts at 24 minutes in, and ends at 2:37. It lets you check out the candidates' demeanor from your nearest YouTube-connected device.) 

Here's what the candidates told me and other questioners: 

• Andy Katz (East Bay Municipal Utility District Director): Told me immediately on Jan. 25 that he opposed SB 827. His questionnaire response is consistent with that, and outlines his support for alternative approaches to encouraging transit-oriented development.
• Rochelle Pardue-Okimoto (Richmond City Councilmember): Told me immediately on Jan. 25 that she supported SB 827. Her questionnaire response is equally terse: I would support this effort by Senator Wiener. (This issue doesn't seem to have consumed much of her thought.)
• Several candidates told me (I'm now paraphrasing several similar responses) that they supported SB 827's general approach, had some concerns about its specifics, and looked forward to seeing how it would be amended. These included Dan Kalb (Oakland City Councilmember, Jan. 25 conversation); Ben Bartlett (Berkeley City Councilmember, March 23 email); and Judy Appel (Berkeley School District Director, March 26 phone call).
• Jovanka Beckles (El Cerrito Vice Mayor): Hard to pin down. On Jan. 25, her aide intercepted me, checked with his office, then told me that it was too early for [Beckles] to have a position on SB 827. My February 18 email to her City Council office was never answered. Her questionnaire response indicated conditional support: she wrote that we cannot develop at the expense of tenant protections and local government control, but then called SB 827 a needed start to a conversation we must be having. Her current website expresses greater skepticism: SB 827 as currently [no date stated] drafted gives developers too many benefits while threatening the welfare and participation in decision-making of the communities and cities it purports to help.
• Cheryl Sudduth: Didn't list an email address, but in her questionnaire response (and other forums), has said she'd conditionally support SB 827 if it were amended to include a specific affordability formula.
• Owen Poindexter: Emailed me on April 2 that he supported SB 827 as it had been amended by that date.
• Raquella Thaman: Emailed me on April 15 that she was skeptical of the bill, but that if it included provisions for low and very low income home ownership, I would be more inclined to support it. (Thaman's platform emphasizes housing ownership as an economic equalizer.)
• Sergey Vikramsingh Piterman: Emailed me on April 25 that my one-line answer is that I support SB 827, though I know it recently did not pass. He then acknowledged that it doesn’t do enough in terms of protections for displacing minority and underserved communities and that the stakes for transit planning would be dramatically increased. ... Ultimately though, we’re going to have rezone [sic] a lot of areas for higher density development, and inevitably some people are going to be displaced.
• Pranav Jandhyala: Never responded to my email.

And then there's Buffy Wicks. 

Buffy Wicks: Rent Control without Rent Control

Wicks is a political-campaign professional who claims significant achievements in high places (read on). And she has led this Assembly race's fundraising. When I got a couple of minutes with her on Jan. 25, she promptly told me that that she supported SB 827. 

I then asked about her statement in the African American Caucus forum video that she supports reforming, but not repealing, Costa-Hawkins because 

we shouldn't let people that work in the tech industry, that have had their apartments for 15 years, they're now making six figures, live in rent-controlled apartments, that's not what it's [rent control] for, so we need to figure out how to adjust for that.

She explained on Jan. 25 that this alluded specifically to a friend of hers who's been living in a rent-controlled San Francisco apartment and now has a $700,000-a-year job at Salesforce. 

So here we have a well-connected candidate who apparently doesn't understand the stabilization part of rent stabilization. Which is not about means-testing individual tenants; it's literally about stabilizing rents, so that no one's changing fortunes can allow them to rapidly bid housing out of the reach of people of modest incomes. 

And this is exactly where Costa-Hawkins has done so much damage, and displaced so many Californians. It's done so by forcing vacancy decontrol on local governments, and by exempting everything built since 1995. 

Wicks (Buffy is my real name) worked on Barack Obama's presidential campaign, and spent 15 months in the Obama White House. From there, her campaign website makes some remarkable claims: 

Buffy is proud to have been an architect of President Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns. She is credited with innovating Obama’s grassroots organizing model. In...the White House...Buffy brought stakeholders and advocates from across the country together to support and eventually pass the Affordable Care Act... .

Wicks next went to work for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. In 2016, Wicks takes credit (elsewhere) for having served as Hillary Clinton for America's: 

chief strategist and manager of contested California primary against Bernie Sanders. Resulting in record turnout and 8-point victory.

What's a Voter to Do?

Apologies right here if I've mischaracterized any candidate's ultimate position on SB 827. (I made contact with different candidates at different times over several weeks, during which the bill was indeed amended, as some candidates had anticipated.) Still, I think we can draw some conclusions: 

Buffy Wicks is probably your candidate if you'd like a centrist, market-friendly, Clintonite Democrat who was proud to help mow down Bernie Sanders. One who distinctly does not support repealing Costa-Hawkins, and who's more broadly lukewarm about rent control. 

Andy Katz (no relation, one last time) appears to be your only choice if you think home rule appropriately preserves accountability, and believe that local governments should retain control over basic matters like land use. 

And if you expect good constituent relations from hopefuls who didn't bother to answer voters' questions even while competing for office – note above the two candidates who never responded to my emails. 

Seeking a Tenant-Friendly Governor?

Also on the June 5 ballot is the primary to nominate our next governor. There, the sole major candidate who straightforwardly advocates repealing Costa-Hawkins is Delaine Eastin, who twice held the state schools chief's office that Tony Thurmond now seeks. During her prior eight years in the state Legislature, Eastin served with great distinction – nearly single-handedly dragging real results out of that institution's murk. 

Unlike that race's two erratic leading Democrats (Gavin Newsom and Antonio Villaraigosa), Eastin has no bizarre behavior, flip-flopping on major issues, pandering speeches at the feet of Central Asian tyrants, or kneecapping of fellow Democrats to answer for. If you're seeking a no-regrets primary first choice for governor, she's worth a serious look. 

Civics According to The Who

As for our Assembly candidates, at least give them credit for telling us where they stand. To my knowledge, during Sen. Skinner's 2016 primary and general-election campaigns, the then-termed-out former Assemblymember said nothing about crippling local governments for the benefit of big market-rate housing developers. For example, in her 2016 League of California Cities questionnaire, Skinner feigned restrained deference to home rule: 

In general I oppose the pre-emption of local control and support the right of cities to determine the appropriate course of action for their jurisdiction and their constituents. There are limited and specific times or issues however when [various groups' needs] may require an action that goes beyond local control. ... Land use incentives to increase infill housing or housing affordability can be an example where state action can assist localities.

Note those sugar-coated words incentives and assist.In the same questionnaire, she also responded: 

I support very targeted adjustments to CEQA and other regulations designed to reduce time delays for housing projects that meet otherwise existing requirements.

Perhaps Skinner had a change of heart under the influence of her new intellectual mentor, Scott Wiener, who has led the assault on home rule. Long divisive in San Francisco politics, Wiener was narrowly elected to the state Senate in 2016 over progressive rival Jane Kim, with generous support from developers and the building trades. 

But don't give Wiener or Skinner credit for any new thinking. Both are doing the bidding of the developer-friendly lobby YIMBY Action (funded by tech executives, other big employers, developers, and real-estate investors); and of aggressive litigants suethesuburbs.org, whose name tells their story – except for their targeting of dense cities like Berkeley. 

Realistically, as the protégée of Berkeley's former pro-development mayor Tom Bates, Skinner should surprise no one in leaving no earth unturned for large developers of market-rate and luxury housing. 

In Berkeley's 2016 mayoral race, after ranked-choice votes were allocated, Tom Bates' chosen successor had been repudiated by a stunning margin that appeared to approach 2:1. This is evidence that, when presented with developers' minions in fake progressive clothing, Berkeley voters have the capacity to not get fooled again. 

In the June 5 primary, we get another chance to prove exactly that. 

 

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