East Bay endorsements
Our recommendations for Berkeley, Oakland, and Alameda and Contra Costa County offices and ballot measures

CALIFORNIA
State assembly

District 14

Loni Hancock

Loni Hancock, the former Berkeley mayor, is an experienced political leader with strong progressive credentials, and she would make a solid advocate in Sacramento for this Berkeley-Oakland district. Hancock has been a bit cautious for our taste in this campaign, and she needs to position herself not just as a representative from one of the state's most liberal districts but also as a statewide leader in progressive reform. But we're happy to endorse her.

OAKLAND
City council

District Four

Jean Quan

David Stein and Jean Quan emerged as the front-runners in the Oakland primary in March and now face off in the race to lead Oakland's most conservative district. We endorsed Quan in the primary and are supporting her again. She was too soft on some fundamental issues, such as just-cause eviction and handling police oversight, and there's no evidence that she has improved her position on these issues since March. But she impressed us with her dedication to the post; she's known for her hardworking approach, and promised us that she'd be a full-time council member. Her opponent, Stein, is a development attorney who completely opposes the just-cause eviction measure. Vote for Quan.

Ballot measures

Measure CC

Strong-mayor law extension

NO When Jerry Brown first was elected mayor of Oakland, we supported a change in the City Charter to give him the "strong-mayor" authority he said he needed to carry out a sweeping agenda for revitalization and reform. But Brown has become an unaccountable, almost imperial mayor, ignoring citizens and refusing to attend city council meetings – all the while rapidly moving to gentrify the city. Measure CC extends the strong-mayor law, which is set to expire in 2004. Ultimately, Oakland may not be well served by returning to the old system, but the current plan hasn't worked. The city council needs to rethink its relationship with the mayor in the light of the problems with Brown, but in the meantime, vote no on Measure CC.

Measure DD

Park bond

YES This is a measure asking voters to approve the sale of $198 million in general obligation bonds to fund important improvements to Oakland's creeks and parks, including Lake Merritt and the Oakland Estuary. The measure would support the development of 19 miles of public trails through the city. A portion would fund facilities primarily used by youth. To pay for it all, property taxes would rise by an estimated $19.30 for every $100,000 worth of property owned. Vote yes.

Measure EE

Just-cause eviction

YES, YES, YES Finally! For years, as the Bay Area's housing crunch has dramatically worsened, Oakland housing activists have been working to curb the rash of evictions in their city. It has been a hard fight, because Oakland eviction laws allow landlords to boot tenants for any reason. Even worse: because Berkeley and San Francisco both have good just-cause laws on the books, Oakland tenants have been especially vulnerable as the market has grown harsher. Measure EE would remedy the situation and would offer Oakland renters the same eviction protections tenants in San Francisco and Berkeley have. Tenants would be protected from eviction unless there is "just" cause, as defined by the measure, including: failure to pay rent, major violation of lease, willful damage to the property, "disorderly conduct," and dealing drugs. Owner move-in evictions and a few other types of evictions permitted under state law still would be legal. This is possibly the most important measure on the Oakland ballot this fall. Vote yes.

Measure FF

Violence prevention revenues (more cops)

NO

Measure GG

Parking tax increase

NO

Measure HH

Utility tax surcharge

NO

Measure II

Hotel tax surcharge

NO With Oakland's murder rate surging once again, residents are frightened and looking for leadership in how to stop the violence. So it may be tempting to vote for Measure FF, which calls for increased funding for violence prevention programs, including domestic-violence and youth programs. But read the fine print: the measure allocates just under $7 million total for such programs over the next six years. Meanwhile, there's a full $68.2 million that would go to pay for 100 new police officers.

Paired with Measure FF are three measures, Measures GG, HH, and II, that would generate new revenues for the city for a fixed period, which, if Measure FF passes, would be used to pay for the new cops.

It's not at all clear that vastly expanding the Oakland police force will help curb the murder rate. We might be inclined to support a measure that increases the police budget if the mayor and police chief displayed any willingness to rein in the abusive and corrupt practices that are widespread in the police department ranks. But they have not.

Even if the measure fails, we suspect that the three tax surcharges will be used to pad the police budget anyway, since they are being promoted, primarily by Mayor Jerry Brown, as a package deal. So vote no on all four.

Measure JJ

Business tax

NO The language on this is complicated, but the bottom line is simple: under Measure JJ, Oakland would lose at least $947,000 a year by changing its business taxes to avoid legal problems. The measure is on the ballot as the result of a lawsuit by businesses that challenged the city's manufacturing tax. The lawsuit may have merit, and the city may ultimately have no choice but to change its tax laws, but there is nothing in Measure JJ – and nothing on the mayor's agenda – to recoup the money. Vote no.

BERKELEY
City auditor

Ann-Marie Hogan

Anne-Marie Hogan is running unopposed for this nonpartisan job. She's the author of the 1998 law strengthening the city's independent audits and has widespread support for another term.

Mayor

Tom Bates

For most of the 1980s and early 1990s, Tom Bates was about the most reliable progressive vote in the state assembly, a friend of tenants (and sponsor of most of the major tenant-rights bills of that era) and of the environment (he helped lead the fight for the Eastshore State Park and pushed for a special tax on oil drilling, among other things) and an early and unwavering foe of welfare reform. He was active on the home front, too, working with then-representative Ron Dellums and a range of citizen activists to build a progressive alliance that for quite a few years controlled much of Berkeley politics.

Bates has mellowed a bit – he no longer talks like a 1980s Berkeley radical, and some critics on the left say he wouldn't be an out-front activist mayor. But his basic political tendencies are still strong: He's pushing for affordable housing (and has a solid understanding of the nuts and bolts of the issue). He's talking of a citywide education summit (a good idea), he supports public power, and he's still entirely reliable on tenant issues. He may not push the envelope on every progressive measure, but he'll support the right causes most of the time.

That's a sharp contrast to Shirley Dean, who has been an active disaster, forcing the progressives on the Berkeley City Council to spend an inordinate amount of time simply blocking her terrible proposals. Dean has opposed many of the new affordable-housing initiatives. She supports giving city housing funds to for-profit developers and bringing big new chain stores (like McFrugal's, Hollywood Video, and more fast-food outlets) into a city that has always prided itself on its support for independent, locally owned businesses.

This one's an easy choice. Vote for Bates.

City Council

District One

Linda Maio

The Alameda Green Party is down on incumbent Linda Maio. The party blasted her in a recent campaign mailer, saying Maio's "support for progressive measures is often undermined by her need to compromise." We agree that Maio doesn't have a perfect voting record, but she's easily the better candidate in the district – her only opponent is the enigmatic Rhiannon, who isn't running a serious campaign – and she's great on a lot of issues.

While she doesn't always take the lead, Maio generally votes with the progressive bloc at city council meetings, cares deeply about building affordable homes, and has tons of practical experience with housing. (At this point she can practically draw up the blueprints for a 20-unit apartment complex herself.) In her long tenure at city hall, Maio has also fought to preserve Berkeley's industrial businesses, sought to lure green enterprises, including PowerLight (solar panels) and EcoTimber (building materials), to the northwest flatlands, and backed air-quality studies to measure pollutants in District One. Vote for Maio.

District Four

Dona Spring

Another city council fixture, veteran incumbent Dona Spring easily wins our endorsement in District Four. Spring has been an environmental stalwart for years, accruing a near infallible voting record. She's battled avaricious developers who wanted to erect hotels on the waterfront, stopped Mayor Shirley Dean's plan to stick a parking garage in Civic Center Park, scored money to improve Ohlone Park, and curbed the amount of heavy metals discharged into the bay. She and Kriss Worthington are the strongest, most visible progressive figures on the council; it was Spring who introduced the controversial don't-bomb-Afghanistan resolution, a fact that has earned her all kinds of flack. We applaud her for having the guts to take that one on.

L.A. Wood is running against Spring from the left. He's intelligent and energetic, but most of his proposals are fairly ethereal. On the right is Bob Migdal, a former rent board member and longtime friend of landlords. We prefer Spring.

District Seven

Kriss Worthington

In District Seven, which includes the Telegraph Avenue drag, Southside, and parts of the UC Berkeley campus, the obvious choice is incumbent Kriss Worthington. During six long, underpaid years on the city council (the job pays less than $23,000 a year), Worthington has logged endless hours working on behalf of his constituents. Show up at just about any civic function in Berkeley, whether it's a meeting of a neighborhood association or an overnight pajama protest for more student housing, and you'll find Worthington.

Worthington's track record as a champion of progressive causes is indisputable. He has led the drive to appoint more students, women, and people of color to city commissions, sponsored successful living-wage legislation, won free public transit "ecopasses" for city workers, diverted $3 million slated for a parking garage into pedestrian-safety improvements and parks, backed open-government and campaign-finance reform laws, supported instant-runoff voting legislation ... we could go on and on.

More than anything, Worthington has established himself as somebody who's willing to brave potentially damaging political fallout to do the right thing. That sort of courage is rare, and it's made him one of the Bay Area's leading progressive voices.

District Eight

Andy Katz

Yeah, Andy Katz is young and somewhat new to politics. But we're excited by this 22-year-old graduate student's energy and enthusiasm. In the past few years Katz has worked with 13 different committees, task forces, and councils (everything from the Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board to the UC Academic Planning Council) and helped to register thousands of new voters. At this point he's got a pretty good grounding in public policy – a better background, in fact, than some of his older competitors.

Katz, who is running for the seat vacated by retiring councillor Polly Armstrong, was politicized by the great college-apartment shortage of the late 1990s, and he'll be a real advocate for affordable housing. That's crucial, since housing is arguably Berkeley's most important issue. And he'll certainly be a voice for students, a group sometimes ignored at city hall. To get elected, however, Katz will have to win over hill-dwelling homeowners as well as dorm-dwellers and renters, and he needs to put energy into that part of his campaign.

Also running are Gordon Wozniak, Carlos Estrada, and Anne Wagley. Wozniak is a more conservative, pro-landlord candidate. Estrada has good politics but few specifics. Wagley, an environmentalist and human rights lawyer, is a decent candidate but lacks Katz's energy and sense of urgency. We're backing Katz.

School board

Terry S. Doran, Sean P. Dugar, Nancy Riddle

Berkeley residents have voted over and over again to tax themselves in order to fund a first-rate public school system. And compared with most urban school districts in California, Berkeley schools are miraculous: the buildings are clean and cheery, kids actually have textbooks, teachers are motivated and at least semi-decently compensated, many grade schools have special math tutors and extra arts programs, and Berkeley High School boasts an outstanding music curriculum and a groundbreaking ethnic studies department. Overall test scores and graduation rates at Berkeley schools far exceed the average stats for city schools.

Unfortunately, however, the district has been mired in fiscal chaos for the past couple of years. Managerial incompetence resulted in a budget deficit of at least $6 million last school year, triggering morale-crushing layoffs, bigger classes, and the closure of an elementary school – and prompting state officials to step in and take control of the district's bookkeeping. Another, equally important concern: the district has not served African American and Latino pupils well, and achievement for black and Latino kids lags behind that of whites and Asian Americans.

Sadly, this year's school board candidates aren't a stunning bunch. By most accounts, the city's progressive leadership failed to recruit strong contenders to clear up the schools' problems and take the district forward. Our three picks are the best of the lot.

Nancy Riddle gets our nod because of her number-crunching expertise. Riddle, a CPA and mother of two students, is the chief financial officer at Monster Cable, a 700-employee company in Brisbane. She's hardly a liberal crusader, but getting the district out of the red and keeping it solvent are her primary objectives, and we believe she has the necessary tools to do that.

We're a little disappointed in incumbent Terry S. Doran, a former Berkeley High teacher. He's got great politics and is hardworking, but he also sat on the board while the district was sliding into financial ruin. In his favor, he's a key proponent of breaking the high school (current population: roughly 3,000 students) into several small schools in the hope of fostering more one-on-one contact between teachers and pupils. It's a good idea that's strongly supported by many educational researchers, and it may just help Berkeley close the achievement gap.

Sean P. Dugar is the wild card in this contest. He graduated from Berkeley High just last spring, and it shows. Dugar is a little naive (he's big on creating more boards and commissions, something Berkeley probably has too many of already), and he's definitely not a polished public speaker. Still, we were impressed with his ground-level perspective and figure his teenage idealism – and direct, recent experience with the schools – will be an asset to the board.

Rent Stabilization Board

Howard G. Chong, Robert J. Evans, Chris Kavanagh, Pinkie Payne, Selma Spector

The only thing keeping Berkeley from becoming a bland suburb peopled exclusively by upper-caste folks is the nine-member Rent Stabilization Board. Each year the board tells landlords how much they can jack up – or not jack up – rents on the city's 19,000 rent-controlled units. This year, luckily, a slate of five pro-affordable housing candidates is running unopposed. Vote for them all, and realize the landlord lobby is probably plotting its next move as you read this.

Ballot measures

Measure I

Animal shelter bond

YES The Berkeley animal shelter is, by all accounts, in a sorry state. In the city's ballot handbook, both mayoral candidates signed a statement charging that the shelter, which was built in the 1940s, is filthy and unsafe: "raw sewage backs up in the kennels. The electrical system is a fire hazard.... Rodent infestation is chronic." Measure I would authorize $7.2 million in general obligation bonds to fix the place and bring it up to state code. Vote yes.

Measure J

Seismic retrofit of City Hall

NO In most cases, we support funding earthquake retrofits of public facilities that need it. It's a matter of public safety. In this case, however, the plan before Berkeley voters needs rethinking. The City Hall building that's slated to be fixed isn't a historic building, and it's not particularly well designed. For the $21.5 million in general obligation bonds this measure would authorize, the city could quite possibly build a new, far better building. Also, the plan that proponents are pushing would reduce the number of seats in the council's chambers, cutting down on citizen access to the public process.

Measure K

School Board directors salaries

YES For 14 years Berkeley School Board members have earned $875 a month for an estimated 100 hours of work each month. Break it down, and that's just under $9 an hour for one of the most important positions in the community: managing and improving Berkeley's public schools. Measure K would raise the salary to $1,500 a month ($18,000 a year) and allow members to use a portion of that pay to support part-time staff or office expenses. The pay would be adjusted annually for inflation. Vote yes.

Measure L

Pedestrian safety

YES This tax on real-estate transfers would help fund sidewalk and street improvements aimed at making it easier for pedestrians, including the disabled, to get around. The average property owner would shell out only $25 a year until 2013, when the measure expires, and by then the city will have more traffic circles to slow cars down, along with improved crosswalks and signals and (we hope) fewer pedestrian deaths.

Measure M

Affordable housing

YES Measure M is a sensible way to generate city revenue for affordable housing. If it passes, Berkeley will impose a 0.5 percent transfer tax on property sales of more than $350,000 (or sales that go for more than 105 percent of the prior sale price) to help fund affordable-housing projects. Half of the money will pad the city's housing trust fund, which subsidizes the development of homes for renters and for sale. Twenty percent will fund emergency help for people on the verge of homelessness, and the rest will be used to make existing residential buildings earthquake safe. It's only fair. Vote yes.

Measure N

Berkeley waterfront plan

YES The decades-old fight over land use on the East Bay waterfront continues with Measure N, which would reopen the public discussion over development on a parcel of the shore near the end of Gilman Street. The measure won't define the development plan for the property, which is now privately owned, but will allow the city to have a renewed debate about policies originally approved for the spot by Berkeley voters in 1986. It's necessary because land ownership in the area has changed, leaving a potential loophole for developers to exploit.

Measure O

Fair-trade coffee

YES Corporate globalization has decimated opportunities for small coffee farmers to make reasonable profits. Berkeley has come up with an unusual way to influence the market that just might have a positive ripple effect. Measure O would mandate that Berkeley coffee purveyors – from cafés to gas stations – sell brewed coffee made only from beans certified as fair trade, organic, or shade-grown. Opponents have complained that the certification process is too expensive for most small farmers, and in fact, organic certification is relatively expensive, but fair-trade certification is free and provides an important support mechanism for farmers who pay their workers well and earn fair compensation for their goods.

The local impact won't be severe. The cost of a cup of coffee isn't likely to go up much more than a nickel, so the measure shouldn't negatively affect independent cafés operating on slim margins. One big problem with Measure O: violators can be charged with a misdemeanor and face up to six months in jail. That's too extreme, but we're not convinced Berkeley will actually send café owners to jail, and besides, it will be far too easy to comply with the law. Consider: Out of 140 coffee roasters/distributors in the country that sell fair-trade certified coffee, 29 are in the greater Bay Area. And that doesn't include organic or shade-grown coffee distributors. Vote yes.

Measure P

Building height limits

NO Supporters of Measure P say that they want to preserve neighborhood character in Berkeley and that the measure's passage will stop developers from moving ahead with big ugly projects. That's fine. But the measure would limit development heights along some of Berkeley's major transit corridors – exactly the locales targeted by affordable-housing advocates for new, denser housing projects to help ease Berkeley's (and the Bay Area's) housing crunch. The city council should craft a smarter plan that would keep developers in check, keep the character of the city, and limit heights in some areas but allow important affordable-housing projects to move ahead. Vote no.

EAST BAY
AC Transit board

At-large seat

Rebecca Kaplan

Rebecca Kaplan is a former public-interest lawyer who ran for Oakland City Council in 2000 on an antigentrification platform. She lost that race but remains a fixture in East Bay progressive politics. Kaplan was appointed to fill a vacancy on the AC Transit board in May 2002 and is running unopposed for a full term. While on the board she has worked to implement the free bus-pass program for low-income youth and is extremely excited about using her position to help the bus agency expand and improve its service while lessening its impact on the environment. Kaplan is also proposing that the agency institute an environmentally sound buying policy to screen purchases of everything from paper to cleaning supplies for environmental safety and sustainability.

East Bay Municipal Utility District

Ward Four

No endorsement

Incumbent David Richardson faces a challenger who appears to be barely involved in the race. So for Richardson, it's probably going to be a fairly easy walk to reelection to this post, which he has held for four years. Richardson is good on many issues: as one of the two-vote environmental minority on the board, he advocates environmental solutions such as purchasing electric hybrid cars for utility workers and keeping MBTE from the EBMUD reservoirs. But when the chance came up for Richardson to advocate for the EBMUD to go into the electric utility business (which it's empowered to do by state law) and explore taking over PG&E's East Bay property, Richardson backpedaled. Although he told us he's "an old socialist from the Midwest," who "philosophically" supports public ownership of all utilities, Richardson told us he's not planning to push the issue very far. "It's not the ditch I'm willing to die in," he said. Richardson cited an EBMUD survey showing lack of community support to back up his position, even though he concedes the survey was written with leading questions and was not widely distributed or responded to. We'd like to endorse Richardson (we've supported him in the past), but we wish he would be willing to play a leadership role on this key economic issue, and we'd like to see him push the EBMUD to conduct fair and honest community outreach about it so his constituents can make up their minds for themselves.

Peralta Community College board

Area Three

Linda Handy

The Peralta Community College district is deeply divided. There are those who are comfortable with the status quo, in which delegations are sent on expensive trips abroad, ostensibly to attract foreign students who pay more than local students do. Meanwhile, classrooms lack basics like chalk and printer toner and support staff. The incumbent, board president Brenda Knight, has done little to remedy the financial disparity. Challenger Linda Handy has put funding local programs squarely in the center of her campaign. She's earned the endorsement of nearly every progressive elected official and group in her district because of it. Vote for Handy.

Area Seven

No endorsement

Although she has questioned the chancellor's financial policies, incumbent Alona Clifton hasn't done much to show she's willing to really fight to change the state of affairs at Peralta. Her opponent Jason Hickman, on the other hand, doesn't appear to be a strong contender this year. Voters should demand Clifton insist on more appropriate spending of Peralta's $103 million budget. We can't endorse her this time.

Ballot measure

Measure AA

AC Transit parcel tax

YES AC Transit serves 68 million bus passengers a year in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. But budget restrictions at the state and federal levels have squeezed the agency. Passage of this measure would approve a tax of $24 a parcel for property owners for five years. AC Transit goes all kinds of places BART doesn't, and it serves lower-income residents in the East Bay, who depend on buses to get to work, access health care, and buy groceries. Vote yes.

ALAMEDA COUNTY
Ballot measures

Measure A

Hotel and lodging tax

YES At a time when state and local budgets are strained to the extreme, expanding the Alameda County hotel tax is a good idea. Measure A would extend the current tax to unincorporated territories of the county. It's a 10 percent tax that primarily affects tourists and business travelers (which means it affects businesses). It's a standard tax in many Bay Area cities (including all of the incorporated cities in Alameda County), so it wouldn't effect tourism in Alameda and is estimated to bring in up to $770,000 each year (depending on whether voters approve the proposed incorporation of Castro Valley).

Measure B

Business tax

YES This is a straightforward measure that continues the current Alameda County business tax for unincorporated areas. A 2001 California Supreme Court decision requires that the tax be put before a vote of the people. Currently, this tax generates $2.7 million annually for the county, supporting important services. It's an easy yes.

Measure C

Probation officer appointment

YES Measure C would give the county board of supervisors authority to appoint the chief probation officer, a key criminal justice official who oversees more than 20,000 juvenile and adult offenders, 747 employees, and a $66 million budget. Currently, the officer is chosen by a vote of Superior Court judges. Frankly, the judges haven't done a very good job – the probation system has been a mess for years (just read the grand jury reports or the Oakland Tribune). The supervisors ought to be able to do better. At the very least, they'll probably be less secretive and more accessible to the public. Vote yes on C.

Contra Costa County
District Attorney

Mike Menesini

We don't normally weigh in on Contra Costa County elections. This race, however, is somewhat extraordinary: the District Attorney's Office needs a serious shake-up, and Mike Menesini is the person to do it. For decades Contra Costa prosecutors have done little to keep heavy industry, most notably the numerous gargantuan oil refineries in the west of the, from poisoning the environment and imperiling public health. While small-time crooks get hit with massive sentences, corporate scofflaws get away with absolutely scandalous behavior. Menesini, a longtime San Francisco prosecutor and the current mayor of Martinez, is vowing to rein in polluting businesses, and we think he'll make good on his promise. We also expect Menesini to take a more thoughtful approach to the drug war, stressing rehab and diversion instead of penitentiary time when it comes to addicts and petty-narcotics peddlers.

Menesini's opponent, Bob Kochly, the heir apparent to retiring D.A. Gary Yancey, doesn't get it. He doesn't seem particularly concerned with environmental or white-collar law enforcement, and he probably won't revamp the office's drug war stance. Vote for Menesini.