Better Luck Next Time, Joe

Note to Selves: next time we try and get one of our buddies elected to run a commission, don't attack an entire sex. Two weeks after the infamous meeting of the Building Inspector Commission in which Gavin's candidate Amy Lee was attacked for being female and pregnant, the Commission voted 4-3 to install Lee as the Head of the Department of Building Inspectors. The 3 ½ hour hearing was as fun as the previous one as it included members of the commission attacking each other, women's rights groups testifying in defense of Lee, and a whole parade of women testifying that the RBA really does love their women. The whole thing moved Monique Moyer, the head of the Port Department, to say that the hearing "has made a farce of our great city and of our departments." Made a farce? This city has passed farce years ago. We’re post-farce. Anyhoo, at the end of the hearing, defeated head of the Residential Building Association, Joe O'Donoghue, told the Commission "you're all just a bunch of political hacks, but not very bright ones at that." O'Donoghue also vowed to continue the fight by filing lawsuits against the Commission.

Believe it or not, the comments made during the last hearing totally backfired on Joe as there was such an outcry made against them that it totally overwhelmed the debate over who was a better head of the Department. Afterwards, Aaron Peskin (whose wife, as a land-use attorney, has clashed repeatedly with O'Donoghue) introduced legislation in the Board of Supervisors condemning O'Donoghue for the comments against Lee and for a few innocent couplets he wrote in a poem posted on BeyondChron.org in which he made fun of Gavin for supposedly being gay. Mr. Honorable Mention himself issued a statement of protest against all the comments. Joe also lost support of his once BFF, Randy Shaw of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic and of BeyondChron.org, who back-pedaled recently and wrote that Lee would make a fine choice to head the department. That ticked off O'Donoghue who sent an e-mail out to supporters attacking Shaw. How significant is that? Well the whole Department of Building Inspectors was pretty much created by Shaw and O'Donoghue way back in '95 when they sponsored the proposition to create it. There goes Randy and Joe k-i-s-s-i-n-g.