A STERN Rebuke, HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

According to Bay Area Transit News, the Board of Supes voted a 7-to-4 thumbs down to Hunter Stern last Tuesday. (Oddly, the vote was observed in the Examiner and SJ Merc, but not on the Supes' website ... WTF?) Gavin Newsom nominated Hunter for a seat on the MTA board, which oversees MUNI, San Francisco's self-declared transit agency. Hunter's qualifications? Well, er, that's the sticky point. He's never worked in the transit field before -- not even an arabian horse show. And as an official at International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, he helped defeat a public power measure. Says Supe Tom Ammiano in the Examiner, "those campaigning against public power used Muni as the butt of many jokes -- 'You want public power? Look at what you got in Muni.'" The Supes also reportedly didn't think much of his "vision" for the MTA, whatever that means, or his failure to weigh in on raising funds via taxes or fare hikes.

So ... hmm. Could it be, political games still plague MUNI? No, surely not! That the MTA's board is appointed, rather than just voted on, was supposed to finally put an end to political cronyism for the rest of eternity. But Bay Area Transit News referred to Hunter as a "political time-server," and Gavin's nomination of a guy with no transit experience does seem sort of inappropriate to us. But then again, how much damage could an unqualified leader really do? It's not like MUNI can get much worse.