January 8, 2008
Gavin Drops The Axe
We woke up this morning to the news that The Gav went all Lizzie Borden on the Transportation Board, ousting Peter Mezey, Will Din, and Leah Shahum of the Bike Coalition. What happens next? Our bets:
1) Mezey and Din will be replaced with Gavin's friends.
2) Whoever takes Shahum's seat will drive a Hummer.
3) Rob Anderson will write a cackling post that uses the word "bike nut" at least four times.
4) None of the new appointees will ever be late to a Board meeting, because none of them will be regular Muni riders.
Photo of Newsom on a bike from flickr user SFist. Ha!
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It is incredibly pathetic that as the number of peds and bicyclists killed by cars skyrocketed last year, and as Muni keeps running over pedestrians, Newsom gets rid of the one safety advocate on the MTA board. And he also is replacing Peter Mezey, a has fought hard to improve transit?!!?!? It is no wonder that Muni is so reviled. It lacks good leadership. The only way it is going to improve is for us to have leaders who will effectively fight for improvements instead of politicizing the situation, but Newsom is making sure that isn't going to happen.
Supervisor Newsom voted against every measure Walk San Francisco (the pedestrian safety and advocacy organization I used to lead) pushed for and voted against virtually every bike lane. He was against Prop A (for funding and reforming Muni) until he realized that he had lost that battle. When will Newsom stop hiding behind press releases that tout his being "green" when he is the biggest obstacle to improving alternative forms of transportation???
What the fuck? I don't get it. Can someone with a better understanding of Gavin's Brain/SF politics explain why he's axing everybody right now?
What the fuck? I don't get it. Can someone with a better understanding of Gavin's Brain/SF politics explain why he's axing everybody right now?
Speaking of what the fuck - what the fuck is up with the comments problems on this site!?
The comment server is run by MUNI.
Gavin Newsom is about as green as my dog's ass. Anyone who thinks he is anything other than a DINO is smoking something highly illegal. He is a republican. And we have no one to blame for this mess but ourselves.
If there was ever a politician in need of a recall, he is it.
Yeah, WTF is about the only thing you can say about this.
Ever drive down HYDE ST , every crackhead walking in the middle of the street... and forget CHINATOWN , I am surprised more idiots don't get killed. Darwin lives.... And for Bikers go ride on MT TAM kooks, this is a city not a bike utopia. I especially like the nutjobs who ride in SF and have no headgear/ helmets.
What the fuck? I don't get it. Can someone with a better understanding of Gavin's Brain/SF politics explain why he's axing everybody right now?
Humm lets see, SF has a budget that equals the state of VIRGINIA and UTAH , 7x7 miles of complete waste.
i
i love anti-bike trolls.
how's traffic?
Two of the new commissioners were on the old Taxi Commission, which will be merged into the MTA. As for Leah Shahum, she was in a tough spot no matter what - as a member of the administration she had to represent the Mayor, but as head of the Bike Coalition, she had to be a forceful advocate for one particular group.
This came in conflict during the messes with the Critical Mass stuff last year. The city wanted her to get tough on CM, and the bike people did not. Either way it is really tough for appointees to be both a rep of the executive branch AND also be a rep for a particular group or faction.
Greg - as usual, you make good points. I often wonder at those who complain to the Bike Coalition to "get tough" on CM; (warning - anecdotal evidence ahead) most of the bicyclists I know who commute to work and actually use their bikes to get around the city for practical reasons (as opposed to the helmetless fixie fashionistas) avoid the Mass like the plague.
It's always funny on the last Friday of the month to ride West up Market Street after a workday, and see the legions of helmetless, lightless lemmings heading East, wobbling on their too-high seats. The Mass is not really activism; it's a parade that happens to include bicycles.
Just to be clear - while the Coalition may support the mess that is the Mass, they certainly don't control it.
Come on folks. Muni spends $700 million/year of your money, is absolutely necessary for downtown to exist, and is running over peds like it is some kind of frogger game. And people care most about what kind of bicycles people ride and whether they are using helmets???
And the MTA board controls our streets via DPT and will control the taxis in the future (and of course the have nothing to do with whether their should be crackdown on critical mass). And now the MTA board is being gutted so that Newsom can appoint people who support him politically. That is the real issue.
Check out what happened last time Newsom mucked around with the MTA board at http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/05/22/BAGG9IVV8L1.DTL and you will see exactly why the three good people are being booted from the board. They didn't vote Newsom's way and support his friends.
It ain't about fixing Muni. Its just politics and cronyism, plain and simple.
many comments make great points. obviously there is a dire need for more pedestrian and bicyclist safety, and Muni's accident record is horrifying.
still: "Gavin fired me! Call the waaa-mbulance!" these are appointees, after all. the mayor has the power to hire and fire in this case; the Board of Supervisors can nix his picks.
last question: if this transportation panel was doing such a great job, why is the city's situation that messed up? instead of complaining, those who've been asked to stepped down could make an effort to propose what's needed to fix things.
It's like that mess at 9th and Irving. They have all these countdown pedestrian signals, but there are still many corners with no pedestrian signals at all. yet, they have to 'study' the issue while more pedestrians get mowed down by cars and MUNI LRVs.
Frankly, I wish the money spent to upgrade the walk signals to include counters had been used to install walk signals on the many signals with no pedestrian controls at all. For example, several corners on Dolores have no controls. It takes a while to cross Dolores and you have very little indication of how long it will be until the light changes.
The bottom line is that she served at the Mayor's pleasure.
She didn't have the vibrator on the G spot.
Adios.
It is more than disconcerting that so far most of the people he's interested in "accepting resignations" from are those who aren't seen as completely towing the party line. It's well within his right to do it, but it's pretty stupid, especially if they are otherwise doing a good job and there doesn't appear to be any other reason for it.
lazthedog:
if this transportation panel was doing such a great job, why is the city's situation that messed up? instead of complaining, those who've been asked to stepped down could make an effort to propose what's needed to fix things.
Maybe they did but Gavin didn't want to use them, ever think of that?
Actually, MTA board members do NOT serve at the mayor's pleasure, thanks to Prop E (1999), the reform co-authored by Newsom. Hence the resignation letters.
manys:
Gavin didn't like them? talk about daddy issues. if those who got axed have something interesting to say, they're welcome to do it here in this forum or wherever. i'm looking forward to it.
The upside: we no longer have to hear Gavin boast about how he's been "good" to bicyclists just because he appointed a bike person to the MTA. In the East Bay, we have a BFBC person sitting on Berkeley's Transportation Commission. EBBC has representation on numerous boards and commissions, at city and county level. Only in SF would bicycle representation on the MTA be considered some kind of unusual, newsworthy perk.
This is similar to public housing. For a long time I couldn't figure out why anyone would build housing projects if no one in them votes. The reason is indirect; the press conferences about the housing projects get votes from people who get their progressivism over the TV. The real problems never make it into the news, at least not in connection with the mayor or congressional Democrats.
Similarly, bicyclists were expected to provide fawning photo-ops for the "green mayor" and then shut up. Now we go back to being "disenfranchised". I feel so, so, sorry about not being press fodder for Newsom.