How Daniel Lurie changed the San Francisco  power-broker meal

On a partly cloudy day nearly two years ago, crowds gathered outside of John’s Grill on Ellis Street for the decades-long tradition of Election Day lunch, hosted by former Mayor Willie Brown and his compatriots. As in years past, hundreds of passersby, political aides, businesspeople, and all the City Hall bigwigs stood beneath the restaurant’s neon sign and red-white-and-blue drapes, boozing it up while munching on chicken, ravioli, and Caesar salad. Well, almost everyone. One person was conspicuously absent: the front-runner who was about to be elected mayor. “He won’t be attending,” Daniel Lurie’s campaign spokesperson at the time, Max Szabo, told The Standard outside the restaurant’s doors. “He’s not a City Hall insider.” The move was in line with how Lurie had campaigned . I’m not part of the so-called “ City Family ,” which one writer compared to the Cosa Nostra or the oil cartel OPEC. If you had to pick a restaurant to be the church of that family, it would be fair to say it was John’s. San Francisco has had an ever-changing slate of go-to dining spots for mayors, working staff, and donors — places where martinis flow, chits are cashed, and the latest political gossip is whispered in hushed tones. But Nov. 5, 2024, marked a turning point: No longer would John’s Grill, a longtime Willie’s World haunt where one can get a filet mignon for $55.95 , be at the center of the City Hall political culinary circuit. In the Lurie Age, the hot spots du jour would be of a fancier persuasion. Among the most important of Lurie and his donors’ rotation of restaurants are those owned by the chef couple Lindsay and Michael Tusk — Cotogna and Quince — and the well-known duo were endorsers of the mayor during his 2024 election. The restaurants were recently named by The New York Times as among the city’s 25 best eateries. The newspaper lauded the three-Michelin-star Quince — which charges $390 for dinner and $175 for a four-course lunch, according to The Times — for its “roasted spiny lobster with black trumpet mushrooms and fava greens” and “sunchoke velouté with a local oyster, chanterelles and sorrel” as carrying “a deft balance of cheffing and sourcing.” Visit Cotogna or Quince on a weekday, and you’re bound to find, amid a packed dining room, one of the city’s many tastemakers. The billionaire and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, iPhone designer Jony Ive, the mayor’s chief of protocol Penny Coulter, and designer to the stars Stanlee Gatti are all regulars at Cotogna who can be seen — but not likely heard — discussing deals and the future of the city. Jobs has been a key part of the Lurie agenda, and her Emerson Collective group recently gave big to the mayor’s charter reform ballot measure effort. Ive has worked with Lurie on the city’s branding , and both he and Jobs are part of Partnership for San Francisco, a Lurie-inspired group that gives him a business-world perspective on the city’s economic recovery. The mayor’s wife, Becca Prowda, a high-up official in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration, can be seen at Cotogna, along with the mayor’s brother, luxury realtor Alexander Lurie , who apparently tips well, according to a source directly familiar. Tucked into a corner of Jackson Square, Cotogna is the pared-down twin of the elegant Quince, serving Northern Italian fare amid exposed brick and black beams, a large pizza oven, and a light-filled dining room with abundant light-colored wood. Cotogna’s “power table” is located on the back right corner, furthest from the host stand. You get it because either you asked, or because they know you are a power player, where one can see and be seen. A spokesperson for Lurie declined to comment, as did the Tusks. Lurie has held multiple meetings at Quince for business leaders, according to his calendar records, but he also likes the French wine bar Verjus, the Tusks’ newer restaurant, and was spotted there around his February 2025 birthday. Lurie has also made a concerted effort to highlight restaurants of all types in San Francisco — probably more than any other mayor — and he’s visited the sandwich shop Dolores Deluxe , the new cafe Kopê House , and Hawaiian Drive Inn , which serves a well-priced chicken teriyaki plate, in addition to many other spots featured on his wildly popular Instagram page . Though Lurie may be a fan of the Tusk triad, the rank and file of City Hall is still hanging onto some of the older favorites. Sam’s Grill on Bush Street remains a nerve center for City Hall politicos. The difference? “Quince is for the oligarchs,” said political consultant Eric Jaye. “Sam’s is for the working hacks.” Sam’s, opened in 1867, is where Brown goes four times a week. On a recent Tuesday, Brown was spotted with District Attorney Brooke Jenkins sitting at his usual corner table. “It has the perfect mise-en-scène of San Francisco yesteryear,” said one former City Hall staffer. “It has a vibe that is unmatched.” The menu reflects the walls decorated with 1940s-era watercolors by artist Lynn Bogue Hunt: Crab Louie, New York steak, and creamed spinach. Brown still loves John’s Grill, the 118-year-old institution known for its wood-paneled walls and hefty ribeye steaks. He holds court on the first floor every Saturday at noon, where the 92-year-old drinks a screwdriver and eats a chicken sandwich. His protegees, including former Mayor London Breed, who has been close with the restaurant’s owners, the Konstins, used to dine there and even used it at least once to interview a job candidate for her administration. John’s is by no means empty of politicos, but it’s more of a venue for events, not really hobnobbing. John Konstin, whose family has owned the steakhouse since 1969, said the place still hosts big political gatherings on its third floor, including those for law enforcement and others, and that Lurie has shown up at the restaurant since his election. Konstin maintains there’s no shortage of political scuttlebutt. “If the walls could speak, you’d probably hear some crazy things.” But Brown says Sam’s — where he has also seen Lurie show up a few times — is really the go-to spot: “This is now the political headquarters,” he said at the restaurant on Aug. 4 — a day that marked exactly 75 years since he came to San Francisco in 1951. He wore a dark gray pinstripe suit and suspenders bedazzled with Art Nouveau-style topless women. Patrons exiting Sam’s said their quick hellos, some kissing him on the cheek. (It’s one stop on Brown’s Rolodex, with Friday lunch taken at Le Central on Bush Street.) Sam’s co-owner Mark Buell, a longtime city commissioner and major Democratic donor, said Sam’s remains a hangout for City Hall staff, lobbyists, real estate developers, and attorneys. The place has seen the likes of the Clintons and gets local politicos like Breed’s former chief of staff, Sean Elsbernd, and Public Utilities Commission General Manager Dennis Herrera, Buell said. “There’s old-timers, and there’s movers and shakers, and there’s politicos,” he said. It’s been an important spot for Newsom, too . In some ways, Lurie’s love of the Tusk restaurants is a callback to the 1980s and ’90s, when the hot spot restaurant of the time was Stars, owned by Jeremiah Tower. It was within spitting distance of City Hall, and nearly every insider spoke about it with dripping nostalgia. “That was the place to see and be seen,” said one former attendee, who described the patrons there as often being “cocaine fueled.” The Newsom era at City Hall saw Balboa Cafe, owned by the then-mayor, become a go-to, as well as MatrixFillmore, now the White Rabbit Bar. But the young, Hollywood-hot Newsom also had a smattering of other favorite spots. He and his staff would go to a now-closed sushi spot near Opera Plaza for strategy meetings. He’d take power brokers, including those like Walter Shorenstein and the late Clint Reilly , to Hotel Vitale (now 1 Hotel San Francisco). Some afternoon and evening business dinners were held at Kokkari. Ed Lee, mayor from 2011 to 2017, liked his greasy-spoon cafes, such as Sam’s diner on Market Street, where he ate the morning before he passed away, according to a former aide ( his taste for the “regular” person’s places even got a mention in the Chronicle). He was also known to hit Ted’s Market on Howard Street. Breed had a number of spots, but her mainstay for socializing and sometimes doing business was Sheba on Fillmore, where she could have a bit more privacy. In a text, she said she would also patronize the dim sum joint Yank Sing, the Hayes Valley Italian restaurant a Mano, and Epic Steak on the Embarcadero. Other former politicos, however, say places like John’s Grill and Sam’s Grill will forever have their place — even with the ups and downs of San Francisco’s ever-changing scene. “I have seen many bubbles where new trends have come and then gone as quickly,” said former Supervisor Aaron Peskin. “But the old ones still remain. They’ve survived earthquakes, pandemics, and tech. They will survive it all.”

Lurie welcomes federal regulation of Waymo and robotaxi industry

Mayor Daniel Lurie is calling for stricter federal regulations governing self-driving cars after a string of high-profile robotaxi breakdowns exposed what he says are gaps in California’s oversight of the fast-growing industry. Lurie plans to back legislation by Rep. Kevin Mullin, a Democrat who represents parts of the city and San Mateo County, to improve how Waymos and other robotaxis interact with first responders. Waymo meltdowns during the July 4 fireworks display and December blackout have been a black eye for the company and a source of frustration for San Franciscans. Lurie penned a letter to state officials this month urging them to pass stricter robotaxi regulations. The federal proposal would require autonomous vehicle companies to demonstrate core operational capabilities before expanding service, including the ability to clear disabled vehicles from traffic lanes and adjust routes in real time during emergencies. If passed, the Autonomous Vehicle Emergency Response Coordination Act would require creating a 24-hour hotline for officials to communicate with the AV companies while responding to incidents. The law would mandate that robotaxi companies create and share an emergency response plan and a process for geofencing, or preventing the cars from entering the area of an active emergency or hazard. “San Francisco is the global center of innovation, and we’ve been on the cutting edge of autonomous vehicles and street safety. Because we were one of the first cities to welcome autonomous vehicles at scale, we have learned more than almost any other city about how they operate in a dense, complex urban environment,” Lurie said in a statement. “This legislation will help keep San Franciscans safe while taking the lessons we’ve learned to the rest of the country.” “Being an innovation leader here in San Francisco and around this country also carries a responsibility,” Lurie said Tuesday. “San Francisco wants AVs on our streets, and we want them to be here safely.” San Francisco Fire Chief Dean Crispen and Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety President Cathy Chase are also backing the bill. Waymo said federal regulations could benefit its industry. “Waymo has long supported a federal AV framework to establish standards for autonomous vehicles, and we similarly support efforts to standardize how AV developers engage with first responders,” said Waymo Head of Federal Policy and Government Affairs Tiffany Moore in a statement. “Establishing minimum guidelines would provide the entire industry and public safety community with a consistent framework, ensuring emergency responders have the resources and certainty they need whenever they encounter an autonomous vehicle on the road.” Mullin said the law would build accountability in an industry that is spreading across the country. “We’re putting the onus on AV companies themselves to meet minimum standards on safety,” Mullin said at a Tuesday press conference. During the city’s Fourth of July fireworks celebration, which drew more than 100,000 spectators to the waterfront, dozens of Waymo vehicles became stranded in gridlock , with some running out of power and blocking key streets. A similar breakdown occurred during a citywide power outage in December. Transportation advocates in San Francisco said the July 4 disruption underscored long-standing concerns about accountability as autonomous vehicles multiply on city streets. San Francisco Fire Department records obtained by The Standard reveal repeated occurrences of Waymos blocking firetrucks and paramedics and delaying response time to emergencies. In July, Jonathan Morrison, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, wrote a letter to robotaxi companies saying the agency had “identified a clear pattern of driverless AVs interfering with law enforcement and other first responders.” California has implemented some rules that are similar to aspects of Mullin’s proposal. This year, the California DMV passed new regulations that require autonomous vehicle companies to create annual “first responder interaction plans,” allow emergency responders to manually override the cars, and require robotaxi companies to obey geofencing directives. These regulations also require robotaxi companies to answer queries from emergency responders within 30 seconds. Any company seeking to operate robotaxis in California must clear permitting processes overseen by both the state Department of Motor Vehicles and the Public Utilities Commission — a stricter framework than in Texas, Arizona, and other states. Six companies hold permits to test driverless vehicles without a human safety operator in California.

Dennis Herrera, fixture of SF politics, to retire

Dennis Herrera, who served six terms as city attorney, will step down as general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission in December, he said Tuesday. Herrera, who was first elected as the city’s lawyer in 2001, touted his role in defending former Mayor Gavin Newsom’s 2004 decision to issue same-sex marriage licenses before the Supreme Court and filing the first lawsuit against the Trump administration in 2017 for threatening to withhold funding from sanctuary cities. Herrera remained in office before joining the SFPUC in 2021, replacing former General Manager Harlan Kelly who stepped down amid accusations of accepting bribes. (Kelly was convicted in 2023.) “This decision comes with a mix of emotions,” Herrera said in a statement. “It has been the greatest honor of my professional life to serve the people of this city. San Franciscans are smart, compassionate, and resilient. It has been an incredible privilege to serve alongside so many dedicated people across San Francisco to help make our city even better. I will always cherish that, but now is the right time to start a new chapter in life.” Mayor Daniel Lurie will nominate Herrera’s successor at the SFPUC, which regulates the city’s electrical and water services. In this role, Herrera advocated for creating a public power utility to replace PG&E, a controversial proposal that could be stymied if Lurie selects someone opposed to it. Herrera was the first Latino elected as San Francisco city attorney. “It’s so hard to just put in a few sentences how amazing Dennis was,” said U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, who spent nearly a decade in the San Francisco city attorney’s office before his appointment to the federal bench in 2014, before pausing to collect himself. “I’m sorry, I’m actually getting kind of emotional right now.” Chhabria praised Herrera’s unwavering commitment to the office. “No matter the situation, he always cared first about being a lawyer for the city,” he said. Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who worked in the city attorney’s office for 14 years, described Herrera as a friend and mentor who modeled professionalism in public service for nearly three decades. “Dennis Herrera is the kind of city leader who really demanded excellence from the people who worked on his team and usually got it,” Dorsey said, citing public officials who came up through the office as evidence of that standard, including former Vice President Kamala Harris, state Attorney General Rob Bonta, and state Sen. Scott Wiener. State Sen. Scott Wiener, who was among the first attorneys Herrera hired upon becoming city attorney, worked for him for nearly a decade and said he has continued to seek his advice in the years since his own election to public office. “In his two capacities and across the six different mayors he worked with,” Wiener said, “he understood that his job was to deliver for the people, rather than get caught up in political feuds.” Former San Francisco Supervisor Carole Migden, who helped run Herrera’s first campaign for city attorney, praised the retiring official as an extraordinary public servant who “did a Herculean job” and aggressively pursued wrongdoers throughout his tenure. Pressed on how the city might cultivate more leaders like Herrera, Migden said it was possible, even without “extraordinary superpowers.” The key, she said, was demanding excellence and accountability, encouraging young people to get involved, and showing a willingness to help guide them toward their goals. “One should always be a Dennis Herrera in an elected position,” she said.

‘No idea what she’s doing’: Staff of SF’s disaster department turns against boss

There’s a revolt inside San Francisco’s emergency department. Staffers are calling into question the competence of a leader who played a critical role during the city’s COVID-19 response and a mass blackout, and who would oversee the city’s response in the event of an earthquake. Employees of the Department of Emergency Management say Executive Director Mary Ellen Carroll displayed a lack of knowledge during the widespread Pacific Gas & Electric outage in December and is laying off a key financial leader while foisting that work onto unqualified subordinates. They further allege that Carroll is cutting back staff at an emergency watch center that serves as eyes and ears to head off the city’s worst disasters. A petition is circulating within the agency alleging a “vote of no confidence” in Carroll’s leadership. A growing number of the staff wants Mayor Daniel Lurie to toss out Carroll. “She doesn’t have any idea of what she’s actually doing,” one staffer alleged, in a message echoed by others who spoke to The Standard. “She’s not interested in knowing what the staff is supposed to do.” Another said Carroll “always has questions” about what various divisions within the DEM do and how they function, adding, “There’s always a hesitation, a delay, and long discussion. It doesn’t really feel good. It seems she isn’t fit for the job anymore, if she ever was.” Are you a City Hall worker? We want to hear from you. Email powerplay@sfstandard.com to get in touch. The complaints come as San Francisco’s emergency management apparatus faces mounting pressure from federal funding cuts and citywide layoffs. The department — unlike others in the city — has almost no vacant positions to eliminate. When tens of thousands of residents lost power on a Saturday in December, Carroll was at a hair salon, internal communications reveal — and her first message to the department’s response thread came roughly an hour and 20 minutes after coordination began. Current and former employees say leadership failures and staffing reductions are undermining the department’s ability to coordinate the city’s emergency response. More than half a dozen current and former staffers came forward to The Standard under the condition of anonymity. “We’re really genuinely worried about the state of the city if a big disaster happens,” one said, “whether it’s a cyber attack or a huge earthquake that could happen any day now. It’s pretty horrible.” While it’s unclear how many have signed the petition, news of the document has spread widely among emergency personnel, with staffers across multiple divisions saying their peers are all discussing it. Flyers were left on the floors of various rooms of the department with a QR code linking to the petition. “Over the course of her tenure, it has become increasingly clear that Ms. Carroll lacks the essential knowledge and operational understanding of critical public safety functions,” the petition states. Those functions include 911 dispatch, the disbursement of Bay Area homeland security grants, and emergency medical services. “These are not peripheral areas of our mission, they are core services, and the absence of informed leadership places the public at unnecessary risk.” Jackie Thornhill, a spokesperson for the Department of Emergency Management, denied the claims. “DEM leadership, including Director Carroll, are in constant communication with staff from all divisions and work 24/7/365 to lead the Department through San Francisco’s everyday and not so everyday emergencies,” Thornhill said. “We staffed up dispatch and are responding to 911 calls faster than we have in years, and DEM continues to coordinate all major emergency activations.” Carroll was appointed to the position by London Breed in 2018 after serving at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Her last reported salary, in 2024, was $327,000, according to Transparent California. Carroll is also a member of the board leading the Big City Emergency Management Association, which advocates for the interests of emergency departments across the nation. Concerns around Carroll’s competency bubbled to the surface among widespread dissatisfaction over this year’s impending City Hall layoffs. San Francisco’s $643 million budget deficit has led Lurie to send out 127 pink slips across city agencies, including DEM. The department was already in a troubled financial position after President Donald Trump cut federal counterterrorism dollars disbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency , which DEM sends across the Bay Area. While other city departments fended off Lurie’s layoffs by eliminating vacant positions, DEM has long maintained a 1% job vacancy rate, Thornhill said, leaving few alternatives when faced with budget reductions. Among those layoffs were personnel in the department’s emergency watch center, described by the city as a central information hub for emergency communications and notifications. The watch center is essentially the government’s disaster watchdog, monitoring emergency requests and escalating issues when they reach the level of a disaster. As The Standard’s politics newsletter, Power Play, reported , the staff of four full-time employees has been reduced to two. That it is too few when trying to provide the backbone of emergency response, staffers say. The watch center is supposed to be operational 24/7, and while it never reached the goal of full coverage, the staff shortage has reduced working hours to 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., then later to one eight-hour shift. On-call staff cover off hours, though they do not monitor emergencies at the same level. “We’re not as aware of what’s going on in the city because of these gaps,” one staffer said. “When the next big disaster emergency happens, everyone will wonder” why the city’s emergency response would face slowdowns, one staffer alleged. “The board of supervisors, even the mayor — are they OK with a fatality? Is that what it takes to recognize [this is] critical?” Thornhill countered that some cities have no watch center at all and that the center provides an additional layer of monitoring to emergency situations. One of the most concerning examples of Carroll’s incompetency, staffers say, arose during the PG&E blackout in December. Despite her years heading the department, Carroll didn’t know how to access a needed conference room and set up an emergency operations center to coordinate the city’s response. She did not know which staff from across the city should be included. On a vital multi-department call on the afternoon of the outage, roughly 30 people initially attended out of a total of 80 who were invited. Coordinating city departments is one of DEM’s key responsibilities. Lurie himself called out the lack of some key personnel. One staffer recalled him saying at the meeting, “This is important; every department should be here.’’ The Standard reviewed digital records of the call’s attendance to verify the claim and spoke with others who verified the mayor’s concern. The mayor’s spokesperson, Charles Lutvak, said Lurie’s comment at the meeting did not stand out as significant in the crisis response. City government ultimately stepped up to ensure San Franciscans got what they needed in a crisis, he said. Some people who were absent from the call were optional attendees. Department staffers view Carroll’s performance differently. “When the extended power outage happened, she was running around with her head cut off,” one said. WhatsApp messages obtained by The Standard through a public records request show that Carroll’s first response in a leadership chat coordinating response to the outage came roughly an hour and 20 minutes after the team began. The watch center flagged 15,000 San Francisco households losing power. “I am down the street on Haight getting my hair cut,” Carroll wrote to the leadership team. “As soon as I am done I will swing over to Turk to monitor and assess what we may need to do.” An hour later, the outage had spread to 129,000 PG&E customers. The texts show that Carroll delegated responsibilities for establishing emergency provisions for neighborhoods. She led efforts to speak directly with PG&E leadership and the mayor’s office and advised staff on how to convey the severity of the incident to the media. Thornhill said the message thread doesn’t represent all of Carroll’s actions during the blackout and that she led the initial incident management calls that coordinated between the mayor’s office and public safety departments. Thornhill added that PG&E outages affecting more than 1,000 customers are routine, occurring every few months, and that the severity of the incident did not become apparent until later. Separately, some are concerned about the department’s ability to process federal funding after Carroll laid off a division’s chief financial officer. The Trump administration has slow-rolled FEMA emergency grant funding, which was initially aimed at counterterrorism but later used more broadly to address disasters. Since the duties of the laid-off CFO who disburses those funds still need to be performed, Carroll asked two staffers in a lower job classification to take on those responsibilities. Some are concerned that those low-level analysts are not qualified to perform such a task, which requires additional training. “There’s a lot of mistrust in the organization on the whole because of Mary Ellen’s behavior,” one staffer said. Between the layoffs and allegations, “it creates a lot of mistrust, and instead of doing the work, people are trying to figure out what’s going on around here.”

PG&E failed to act on substation damage before crippling December blackout

Utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric on Friday released a long-awaited investigation into the December blackout that left 120,000 San Francisco residents without power, revealing that the multibillion-dollar company was aware of damage at the Mission substation responsible for the incident but left faulty equipment in place. The 70-page inquiry , conducted by the engineering firm Exponent, found that inclement weather before the Dec. 20 blackout spurred high humidity levels inside PG&E’s Mission substation and caused condensation buildup, resulting in a fire and the subsequent outage. PG&E personnel in November found a piece of equipment known as an “incident insulating board” with “burned spots” and warping that was partially responsible for the blackout, but they failed to replace or inspect it thoroughly, according to the report. The November damage was logged by PG&E as water issues, but Exponent investigators said it had other causes. The report found that the substation, built in the 1940s, was susceptible to rainwater and lacked an interior drainage system. Investigators from Exponent found pools of water in the site’s basement days after the December storm had passed. Exponent also found that ventilation fans in the substation’s basement had been broken for years and were not repaired until after the blackout. The report notes that while the precise contribution of basement water to the fire is unclear, standing water in the substation’s basement would have increased humidity and the likelihood of condensation in the switchgear room, where the fire began. The incident left homes without electricity for days and cost businesses and restaurants lost revenue during a crucial holiday weekend. Residents couldn’t flush toilets , holiday events were canceled, and restaurants were forced to throw out spoiled food . Making the situation worse, Waymo vehicles stalled more than 1,500 times during the outage, forcing the company to dispatch tow trucks to retrieve 64 cars while overwhelmed city dispatchers — kept on hold for as long as 53 minutes — scrambled to clear blocked intersections. Meanwhile, residents complained that PG&E estimates for power restoration were wildly inaccurate. In an interview with The Standard, Sumeet Singh, CEO of PG&E Co., expressed regret for the incident and asserted that the company would improve its operations to prevent a similar incident. A statement issued Friday did not mention the company’s knowledge of damaged equipment, and Singh said in the interview that there was no sign that PG&E could have known the substation was vulnerable to a fire. “We did not have any indications,” he said. “There were no early warning indicators.” He said no employees had been disciplined or terminated as a result of the incident. The company does not have an estimate of the economic impact of the blackout. PG&E customers were left infuriated by the blackout as they face increasingly high electricity bills that have added to the city and state’s affordability crisis. The situation has renewed long-standing calls for the city to break up with the multibillion-dollar company. It was not the first time the Mission substation had failed: In 2003, a fire at the site led to a $6.5 million fine by state regulators and the discovery through a subsequent investigation that a similar blaze had occurred in 1996. PG&E said it has taken action since the December incident, including conducting thousands of inspections at all 31 city substations and replacing equipment. In the wake of the outage, the company apologized and issued a $200 credit for residential customers and $2,500 for businesses. Singh said the credits and damage claims amount to roughly $50 million. The incident left local lawmakers exasperated, and supervisors quickly called for a hearing, demanding that PG&E explain why the blackout had occurred and how the company had responded. A February hearing revealed an avalanche of blunders by PG&E , including delayed responses and flawed restoration estimates. Also at the hearing, Singh said Mayor Daniel Lurie had personally directed PG&E to respond to the Opera House during the emergency, where his daughter was performing in a ballet, though the CEO retracted the statement hours later. December’s blackout has had ripple effects at the state level and has renewed calls for San Francisco to break up with PG&E, an effort that has been decades in the making. The city has pressed state regulators to investigate the December incident, claiming in a March letter signed by Lurie and others that the California Public Utilities Commission was dragging its feet on a probe. Meanwhile, state Sen. Scott Wiener, who is running to succeed Rep. Nancy Pelosi, introduced a bill earlier this year in response to the blackout that would have made it easier for San Francisco to pull away from PG&E. The bill failed to pass out of committee. But others are putting pressure on PG&E, including gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer, who has blasted the utility for its high prices and the $17 million salary of Patti Poppe, CEO of PG&E Corp. Steyer has promised that if he’s elected, he will lower electricity costs by 25% and appoint voices critical of the utility to the CPUC, among other proposals. PG&E considers Steyer’s candidacy — which was buoyed by the exit of former Rep. Eric Swalwell — a major threat and has plowed millions of dollars into an anti-Steyer PAC . This week, Steyer’s campaign alleged that the utility breached campaign finance laws through its spending spree on statewide ads blasting the candidate.

Tom Steyer and PG&E are at war

Two groups with bottomless cash are clobbering each other in the governor’s race, and the latest punch involves allegations of campaign finance violations. The heavyweight bout between billionaire candidate Tom Steyer and Pacific Gas & Electric started in earnest in April after the company plowed millions into an anti-Steyer PAC. On Tuesday, Steyer’s campaign sent a complaint to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, claiming that PG&E has flouted campaign rules as it attacks him over his stance on private utilities, according to a copy of the letter obtained by Power Play. “I am writing to respectfully request that your office launch an investigation into a campaign finance scheme perpetrated by some of the most powerful special-interest groups in Sacramento,” the letter from Steyer’s attorney Ryan Hughes states. “PG&E appears to view Tom Steyer as an existential threat to its corporate profits and has spent heavily to prevent his election as governor.” The Steyer camp, whose campaign has been fueled by $120 million of the candidate’s own money, is alleging two sins: that PG&E and two affiliated committees did not disclose they were using one entity to pass $8 million to another that runs anti-Steyer ads, and that the ads did not show PG&E as its largest funder. The ads have painted Steyer as an out-of-touch rich guy whose reforms would make life more expensive for Californians. The Steyer vs. PG&E battle is no surprise: He has promised an adversarial relationship with the company and other investor-owned utilities, capitalizing on the frustration Californians feel over high electricity prices. Steyer has claimed he can bring down electricity costs by 25% and has vowed to appoint critics of the utilities to the California Public Utilities Commission, among other ideas that have pissed off PG&E. The company set its sights on Steyer in early April, soon after he saw an upswing in the polls following the collapse of former Rep. Eric Swalwell amid allegations of sexual assault. PG&E deferred comment to California Is Not for Sale, the group behind the anti-Steyer ads. Its spokesperson, Amelia Matier , wrote, “Steyer’s complaint is sensational nonsense to try to grab headlines.” The FPPC declined to comment on the allegations. The attorney general’s office, which the Steyer campaign also notified about the allegations, did not respond to a request for comment. — Gabe Greschler Got tips? Reach out at powerplay@sfstandard.com . TELL US HOW YOU REALLY FEEL: San Francisco Democrats may condemn congressional candidate Saikat Chakrabarti for his “Change the Party” rally Thursday with former New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman and controversial influencer Hasan Piker . Piker is a political commentator who can appeal to the manosphere audience and is sometimes considered the left’s answer to podcaster Joe Rogan . He has taken heat for remarks some have derided as hateful, such as, “Hamas is a thousand times better” than Israel and “I donʼt have an issue with Hezbollah,” as well as a diatribe against a Vietnamese woman. Supervisor Matt Dorsey seems furious that Chakrabarti would give Piker a local platform. In a resolution he authored for the San Francisco Democratic Party, Dorsey called on the congressional candidate to “publicly acknowledge Hamas to be a genocidal terrorist organization” and to explain to San Francisco voters why his views do not align with Piker’s. The resolution’s call-out of the “Change the Party” rally we’ll quote verbatim: “RESOLVED, the San Francisco Democratic Party rejects any effort to ‘change’ our Democratic Party into a movement that accommodates or in any way condones Hasan Pikerʼs divisive brand of anti-American, antisemitic, anti-AAPI, terrorist-coddling, hate-espousing, misogynist, xenophobic, obscene, and politically repellent viewpoints, urging Mr. Piker and his supporters to pursue the formation of their own party and to get out of ours.” Yowch. Given that the SF Dems have voted to endorse state Sen. Scott Wiener in the congressional race, they’ll no doubt vote to approve this too. For what it’s worth, even Gov. Gavin Newsom would apparently be game to appear on Piker’s stream. And New York Times columnist Ezra Klein argued that Piker isn’t a “Jew hater” but is anti-Zionist at a time when Americans’ views on Israel are evolving. Canceling Piker, and others like him, shows Democrats’ failure to meet manosphere-curious voters where they’re at, Klein wrote . “It’s not just that cancellation has failed to silence those it targeted; it also weakened those who used it,” he wrote. — Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez TRANSITION IN THE FILLMORE : A beloved Fillmore-based community center could soon have a new tenant after the organization that occupied the space got wrapped up in a City Hall scandal. Collective Impact, which was established in 2007 and provided neighborhood services in the historically Black Western Addition, is essentially defunct, Supervisor Bilal Mahmood told Power Play. The nonprofit’s former executive director, James Spingola , was charged in a corruption probe in March as part of the investigation into ex-Human Rights Commission chief Sheryl Davis . Collective Impact’s HQ was at the Ella Hill Hutch Community Center at Webster and McAllister streets, named for the trailblazing Black supervisor. The group’s exit left an opportunity for a new tenant at the community center, which has a playground, gym, classroom, garden, and tennis courts. This led Mahmood and Mayor Daniel Lurie to propose that Booker T. Washington Community Service Center receive a 13-month lease at Ella Hill Hutch, which is owned by the city. The deal, subject to the approval of the Board of Supervisors, would mean that Booker T. Washington would provide services starting in June, such as summer camp, after-school programming, and case management. “Assuming stewardship of the Ella Hill Hutch Community Center is not just an operational transition; it is a promise that the children, families, and seniors who depend on these critical services will not lose access to care,” said Shakirah Simley , executive director of Booker T. Washington. Collective Impact reps did not respond to a request for comment. The city plans to put out a bid for a longer-term occupant at Ella Hill Hutch. — G.G. SAY IT AGAIN: Chakrabarti popped by The Standard for a wide-ranging interview Tuesday. One observation from the conversation: His reverence for his time working for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has not been diminished by the fact that she has ghosted him . Her endorsement could give him an edge over his rival, Wiener. Seeing as how AOC has refused to even say Chakrabarti’s name — not even a simple “he was nice to work with!” — we decided to flip the script and count how many times he referred to her. In our hourlong interview, he either said her name or referred to her 14 times. We made an exception for the moments when we explicitly asked about his relationship with AOC, because that would just be cheating. However, in discussions about writing the Green New Deal, his campaigning philosophy, and how to exercise power in Congress, he made so many references to AOC you’d think he was getting paid for each mention. Not that he needs the money. And about the bombshell claims from a former staffer for Rep. Nancy Pelosi that AOC fired Chakrabarti? He had words about that too. “He’s speculating and lying,” Chakrabarti countered. “I had a baby on the way in July 2019, planned my transition out, trained up my successor at the time, and left on good terms.” For what it’s worth, Power Play spoke to former AOC staffers who verified this. Corbin Trent , AOC’s former comms director and a friend of Chakrabarti, was adamant. “That’s not what happened,” he said. “It’s not a secondhand account. It’s not supposition. It’s a thing I was party to and witnessed with my ears and eyes.” In fact, he added, “she offered and asked him to stay. In my presence.” And all that does is make AOC’s silence on Chakrabarti even more mystifying. — J. F. R.

Scott Wiener explains why he’s not supporting the billionaire tax

This article is from Power Play, a twice-weekly newsletter rounding up the latest City Hall and local politics gossip. To sign up, visit The Standard’s newsletter page . Well, the day has arrived — with the state billionaire tax becoming a reality for the ballot , California’s tallest fence-sitter has finally laid out his position. “I don’t support it.” That’s the official stance state Sen. Scott Wiener told Power Play in a wide-ranging interview Friday. While on the campaign trail, Wiener has voiced his concerns. CalMatters noted that Wiener “ sidestepped ” questions about supporting the billionaire tax, and Politico noted he would stake his claim once the measure qualified for the ballot. While it isn’t quite there yet, the 1.5 million signatures gathered guarantee a path. The lightning-rod measure would levy a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of California billionaires to shore up federal healthcare cuts. Those well-heeled Californians include Google cofounder Sergey Brin , who came out against it , and Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick , who left the state over it. SEIU-UHW, the healthcare union backing the measure, argue that taxing the state’s roughly 200 billionaires will stave off the closure of hospitals, nursing homes, and community health centers. Wiener said he has backed progressive tax measures before (among them U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren ’s ultramillionaire tax plan ) but doesn’t think a one-time tax with a quick sunset is the “best approach.” “California already has an unstable boom-bust tax system because of the devaluation of property taxes and reliance increasingly on income taxes on wealthy residents,” Wiener said. “I completely respect why they’re pursuing this. I don’t know that this is the best approach.” Wiener’s rivals, former AOC chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti and Supervisor Connie Chan, voiced support for the billionaire tax as far back as their first congressional forum, in January. “We cannot take back Congress by cozying up to billionaires,” Chan said at the time. Wiener said he is concerned that outsize spending by opponents to take down the billionaire tax will imperil bond measures to fund transit and other tax measures on the ballot. “I really worry that this billionaire tax has drawn so much national money to attack government that it could drag everything down,” he said. — Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez Got tips? Send to us at powerplay@sfstandard.com . TALK NEXT TIME : The relationship between Pacific Gas & Electric and Wiener has long been chilly, to say the least. The state senator recently authored a “breakup bill” that sought to hand over management of the investor-owned utility to cities. PG&E leadership, unsurprisingly, hated the idea. In a suddenly postponed Monday event , PG&E CEO Patti Poppe and Wiener were supposed to be seated together to talk about “affordability, outages and the ‘Breakup Bill.’” The organizers at the Commonwealth Club cited a last-minute scheduling conflict and are looking for a new date. The utility got heat for the city’s December blackouts, which left 130,000 residents without power during a holiday weekend. City officials have pressed the California Public Utilities Commission to investigate the outage, claiming the state regulator is dragging its feet on an inquiry. The December blackout led Wiener to introduce SB 875, which Power Play wrote about this month after it failed to pass the state Senate committee on energy, utilities, and communications. The legislation would have made it easier for cities to break away from PG&E but faced major opposition from the state’s utility companies. The utility union, IBEW Local 1245, also fought hard against the bill. The labor group’s chief advocate, Hunter Stern , has used fighting words against Wiener: “He has repeatedly attacked the utility. He doesn’t know anything about electricity.” Floating in the background are the gubernatorial race and affordability issues. Billionaire investor Tom Steyer , who has jumped in the polls since former Rep. Eric Swalwell ’s campaign implosion, has promised to treat the utility companies with a heavy hand , vowing to reduce electricity rates by 25% as Californians struggle to pay their increasingly expensive bills. PG&E has responded in kind with a $10 million anti-Steyer PAC . — Gabe Greschler MAKING FRIENDS: A right-leaning D.C. think tank is trying to build relationships in deep-blue San Francisco. The American Enterprise Institute — a mainstream conservative group, though not aligned with MAGA Trumpism — is partnering with Neighbors for a Better San Francisco ( currently in crisis mode ) to host a policy solutions summit Wednesday in downtown San Francisco. The event will feature prominent local officials — all Democrats, natch — including Mayor Daniel Lurie ’s policy chief, Ned Segal , supervisors Rafael Mandelman and Matt Dorsey , school district Superintendent Maria Su , and District Attorney Brooke Jenkins . “I’ve known and loved San Francisco all my life,” AEI president Robert Doar said. “San Francisco has had its ups and downs, but I think it’s on the rise now.” Doar emphasized the critical role of local governance, as he previously served as commissioner of the New York City Human Resources Administration under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg . A rightward drift among local Asian American voters has particularly caught AEI’s attention. In 2024, the city’s Asian voters showed increased support for the GOP and President Donald Trump . AEI has hired a Chinese-speaking outreach coordinator to promote the summit. “Think tanks like AEI may not have worked hard enough to reach communities like the Asian American community,” Doar said. “Let’s do a better job connecting our ideas and our scholars with that community.” But local Democrats may dismiss those efforts, given how unlikely a Republican wave is to emerge in this liberal city. The last time San Francisco elected a Republican mayor was in 1959 . — Han Li NOT IN-KLEINED TO AGREE: You may have felt a great disturbance in the YIMBY Force on Thursday, as if a million voices suddenly cried out “supply and demand!” in terror and were silenced . At least, that’s how this Power Play reporter imagines the cheerleaders of the “build, build, build” movement reacted when its star, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein , said on his podcast, “There has been a decade of housing bills being passed in California. Dozens and dozens of bills, including many that were framed to me as transformative, just weren’t.” Much of the podcast episode derided the outcomes of their own movement, titled after their book, “ Abundance ,” as having failed to materialize. And to top it off, the episode invokes Wiener by name, twice. So in our interview Friday with California’s YIMBY-in-chief, we asked his reaction to Klein’s gloomy assessment. Not unexpectedly, he pushed back. “He’s looking at broad numbers,” Wiener argued. Instead, he is proud that the housing laws he passed led to the creation of tens of thousands of affordable homes statewide. The state has failed to produce housing for years, he said. “It took us 50 years to dig into this. And it’s not the case that all of these laws were in the books ten years ago.” That got us thinking. It was actually more than 10 years ago when Wiener began arguing for more housing supply from his seat on the Board of Supervisors. That includes this full-throated Medium post against the Mission Moratorium , where he said “market-produced housing is essential to getting the job done” to stabilize rental prices. So, we asked: When will the myriad laws he’s passed in those intervening years push down the city’s housing prices? And when can voters begin holding you accountable for your promises that the blindingly obvious economic law of supply and demand will fix the crisis? “I am incredibly flattered and grateful that you attribute power to the one out of 120 legislators to just change the world overnight,” he said. “In terms of how I and my colleagues and the governor should be held [accountable], I don’t know what the exact timetable is, but I think we should be making steady progress.” Well, that clears that up. — J.F.R.

PG&E launches $10 million PAC to take out gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer

This article is from Power Play, a twice-weekly newsletter rounding up the latest City Hall and local politics gossip. To sign up, visit The Standard’s newsletter page . Billionaire investor Tom Steyer has vastly outspent every opponent in the 2026 race for California governor, pouring $120 million of his own cash into his campaign. Now one of the state’s most powerful and politically connected corporations is trying to give him a run for his money … just as Steyer is seeing a boost in the polls post- Eric Swalwell scandal. Pacific Gas & Electric has injected close to $10 million into an anti-Steyer PAC called “Californians for Resilient and Affordable Energy,” according to new campaign finance disclosures. The PAC is also supported by the California Electric Utility Industry Labor Management Cooperation Committee and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1245, which represents around 30,000 utility workers in California and Nevada. Though PG&E’s millions are helping the effort behind ads that rip Steyer for his Proposition 13 reforms and wealthy background, you’d have to have a quick eye to realize the utility company is somehow connected. That’s because Californians for Resilient and Affordable Energy is actually taking its money and putting it into another anti-Steyer PAC, California Is Not for Sale, the group running the ads. California Is Not for Sale is supported by the real estate and construction industry. The disclosure at the end of the ads is a block of text, with the utility nestled in as one of its top funders. So why is PG&E going after Steyer? If he becomes governor, Steyer plans to introduce electricity reforms that could end up being a threat to the company and other investor-owned utilities. Steyer has promised to appoint people to the California Public Utilities Commission who are critical of utility profits and to pull back on expensive infrastructure projects, among other changes. The anti-Steyer blitz does not rip the candidate for his proposals to “smash the utility monopolies. ” Instead, one ad skewers the candidate for his Prop. 13 reform proposal, which would increase commercial property taxes. “What’s billionaire Tom Steyer’s plan to make California more affordable? Higher property taxes,” a voice says before a record scratch. “Wait, what? That’s right … of course, billionaire Steyer doesn’t have to worry about the cost of things like groceries, electricity, or property taxes.” (Steyer’s team says his reforms would not touch residential properties.) For his part, Steyer has created cheeky videos about PG&E, including one on Valentine’s Day that poked fun at CEO Patti Poppe ’s message of “ leading with love .” “Let’s be clear, a monopoly can’t love you,” Steyer says in the video as he stands in front of the substation that caught fire in December, leading to 130,000 PG&E customers losing power . “A monopoly is an abusive relationship.” In another video, titled “ Busting Utility Monopolies ,” he ambitiously promises to cut energy costs by 25%. PG&E deferred comment to California Is Not for Sale, which said in a statement, “The only ‘big money interest’ in this race is Tom Steyer.” — Gabe Greschler Got tips? Send to us at powerplay@sfstandard.com . DEAD BILL : If PG&E is able to squelch Steyer’s momentum, it won’t be their only win this year. On Tuesday, state Sen. Scott Wiener ’s SB 875 — a bill that would give cities more power to separate from their utility company by winnowing the role of the California Public Utilities Commission — failed to pass out of the Senate committee on energy, utilities, and communications. The legislation faced stiff opposition from PG&E and other powerful private utilities, the Bay Area Council, and the California Chamber of Commerce. Opponents claimed that the bill would be disastrous for the region’s utility jobs. Scott Wetch of the California Coalition of Utility Employees said at the hearing that 1,500 jobs could be lost if San Francisco turns to public power, adding that members’ pensions would be wrecked. “At a time when California should be strengthening the grid and protecting affordability, SB 875 instead introduces cost-shifts, uncertainty, and weakened oversight,” said Joshua Levenberg , an attorney for PG&E. And in one last PG&E-related piece of news: The city’s Public Utilities Commission submitted a cost estimate Monday of how much San Francisco would need to take over the utility company’s equipment in a switch to public power. The total: $3.4 billion — about a billion more than what the city offered in 2019. PG&E told NBC Bay Area its assets are “not for sale.” Considering the budget situation, maybe the city can ask Steyer to pitch in? — G.G. DC DUO: In the race to replace Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi in Congress, one person has been conspicuously missing — Pelosi herself. Well, congressional candidate and Supervisor Connie Chan must be smiling widely, as Pelosi made an appearance at the candidate's Capitol Hill fundraiser Wednesday night, insiders told Power Play. While Politico did just spot Chan hopping out of Pelosi's office — Chan is in D.C. for a building trades conference — the San Francisco legend's hobnobbing amidst funders gnoshing on vegetable dumplings may give Chan's coffers a hopeful bump. Her fundraising lagged behind opponents Wiener and Saikat Chakrabarti , the latter of whom has self-funded to the tune of nearly $5 million . There were dozens of attendees at the fundraiser hosted by Sen. Adam Schiff , Reps. Grace Meng and Judy Chu, as well as a smattering of groups, including the Asian American Action Fund and a national Teamsters PAC. — Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez A LITTLE SUMTHIN SUMTHIN: For contractors doing business with the city, donating money to candidates whose office would deal with said contractor is an ethical nope. San Francisco bars the practice, as it reeks of seeking undue influence. But that doesn’t stop folks from trying: A San Francisco Ethics Commission audit presented this month found a preliminary count of roughly 200 restricted donors giving to 2024 campaigns. The presentation came with a caveat: The findings aren’t final. Ethics Commission staff still needs to comb through the data to verify that the process — which looked at lists of campaign donors and prohibited contractors — didn’t mistakenly match people with identical names. One takeaway from the early data: The mayor’s race was the main focus of prohibited contractor donations. Shocker. While most of the prohibited donations went to former Mayor London Breed (with a count of 58), Mark Farrell, Aaron Peskin, and Mayor Daniel Lurie all netted between 35 and 38. While the donors and politician recipients are culled from public data, naming individual donors would be problematic, considering the draft nature of the findings. Broadly, however, Lurie’s prohibited donations run the gamut from rag-tag nonprofit healthcare contractors to deep-pocketed developers. When the list is verified, don’t expect to see any big fines levied against candidates for accepting the money. All they’ve got to do is give it back. — J. F. R. MONEY HERE, MONEY THERE: For years, people running for the Board of Supervisors and the local Democratic Party board have enjoyed a Caldecott Tunnel-sized loophole in campaign finance law: While supervisor candidates are limited to $500 donations per person, Democratic Party candidates can rake in far larger amounts, often in the thousands. Much hay has been made about the alleged “ slush fund ,” which slowly faded from use until just this week. Insiders spotted the Police Officers Association donating an eyebrow-raising $2,500 to Supervisor Matt Dorsey ’s 2024 Democratic Party campaign committee . The race is long over — why do you need campaign donations? Dorsey said he used the campaign bank account for permitted “office-holder” purposes. Before the police union donations, Dorsey’s Democratic Party campaign funds paid for a poll to take the electorate’s temperature on his signature drug-free supportive housing measure . He plans to use the new donation to buy tickets for the Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club’s annual Pride breakfast in June. Coming up through the city attorney’s office “makes you very careful about dotting i's and crossing t's,” Dorsey said. — J.F.R. FULL OF ENERGY : Lurie’s first international trip to Asia is wrapping up after stops in Shanghai and Seoul to promote tourism, arts, and cultural exchange. Chinese-language media have largely portrayed him positively, highlighting his social-media savvy and his slogan “Let’s go, San Francisco.” Coverage also emphasized his packed schedule and high energy as he rushed between events across Shanghai. One video showed the mayor running up the stairs at the Shanghai Grand Opera House while his communications director Han Zou and a security detail struggled to keep up. “I’m a little out of breath,” the mayor said in an Instagram post afterward. Another article noted his surprise at Shanghai’s vibrant nightlife. Some Chinese media outlets apparently received a note from the mayor’s office describing Lurie as a “moderate Democrat” who supports “cracking down on crime and improving public safety,” with an approval rating of 70% . In Korea, Lurie also toured the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and the Global Business Complex site, where San Francisco’s Exploratorium is partnering with Hyundai Motor Group to open a new hands-on science museum. He will travel to Virginia for a conference after the Asia trip and is scheduled to return to San Francisco on Saturday. — Han Li

SF labor leaders on Chavez: ‘The movement is bigger than one man’

Labor leaders across San Francisco are standing with Dolores Huerta after the shattering revelation of her allegations of sexual abuse by Cesar Chavez. Olga Miranda, president of SEIU Local 87, which represents janitors, counts Huerta as an ally and a sister of the labor movement. Miranda said they’ve fought for workers alongside each other, broken bread, and danced together. “It’s heart-wrenching to know this happened to someone I admire,” Miranda said. “I was raised in my household to know her name and attach a tremendous amount of respect next to it. It pains me, just like it pains every woman I know in labor.” A years-long New York Times investigation published Wednesday revealed sexual abuse allegations against Chavez, the farmworkers’ movement leader who died in 1993. Two women told the newspaper that Chavez had molested or raped them as teenagers and groomed them from the age of 8 or 9. Huerta, a 95-year-old titan of the labor movement who founded the National Farm Workers Association with Chavez, alleged that he raped her in 1966, leading to a pregnancy she kept secret for decades. “Unfortunately, he used some of his great leadership to abuse women and children — it’s really awful,” Huerta told The New York Times. In a statement released Wednesday, Huerta said, “I have never identified myself as a victim, but I now understand that I am a survivor — of violence, of sexual abuse, of domineering men who saw me, and other women, as property, or things to control.” Huerta’s name is on a school and parade in San Francisco, and she remains a figurehead in the modern labor movement. In January, she stood with LiUNA! Local 261 street cleaning workers on the steps of City Hall to fight for fair wages. Last year, she advocated for Proposition 50, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s redistricting measure. Like Miranda, many local labor leaders grew up idolizing Huerta and know her personally. When asked about women’s safety in the labor movement, Miranda said, “It’s a good question: Do women feel safe at work? It’s not just the labor movement … there’s assholes everywhere. There’s also women who will stand up and speak out and say, ‘I’m not gonna take your shit.’ Watch out for that force.” Miranda reflected on her own career leading a labor group and defending her union members from threats and exploitation. “I have the privilege of having chosen the kind of job where the strength of my personality and the veracity of my voice carries to make company supervisors, business owners, regret the moment they fuck with any of our janitors in this industry,” she said. “Not a lot of people get to say they get to fight back.” Other labor leaders who know Huerta sounded off in support. “I stand with Dolores Huerta and every other survivor who endured years of pain in silence or who came forward and were dismissed, doubted, or not believed,” Joshua Arce, president of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and a leader with the Northern California District Council of Laborers, wrote Wednesday on Facebook. Labor leaders were adamant that the movement to bring fair wages and rights to farmworkers was — and is — championed chiefly by the workers themselves. Mike Casey, president of the San Francisco Labor Council, which represents most unions in the city, said the news is “profoundly sad and disappointing” but “also a stark reminder that we are a movement. We are not about one man, or person.” Casey has spent decades as a San Francisco labor leader. In 1983, he was a young organizer with the UFW’s sister organization, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, in the Midwest, working on a boycott of Campbell’s Soup hand-in-hand with farmworkers. “There was huge attention and focus brought that inspired a generation to fight against unjust working and social conditions,” he added. “That whole movement, you should gauge it in the fact that farmworkers have healthcare now, they have retirement benefits now, that farmworkers have the basic necessities of decency, protections against pesticides, because of the United Farm Workers.” Organizers behind the annual Cesar Chavez San Francisco breakfast and parade , scheduled for March 31 and April 11, respectively, have changed the name to honor Huerta instead. The Dolores Huerta Holiday Parade & Festival will be held on the same dates, organizers said, noting that Huerta’s birthday is on April 10. “I strongly encourage people to please attend the breakfast. Please attend the parade,” Miranda said. “It’s about the farmworkers. We cannot abandon this movement. There is so much to do.”

City presses for investigation into PG&E December blackout

Nearly three months after a Pacific Gas & Electric blackout wreaked havoc during a holiday weekend in San Francisco, city officials are calling for an investigation into the incident, which left 137,000 residents without power. In a letter sent to PG&E CEO Patricia Poppe dated March 12, the city said it has “deep concern” about the reliability and safety of the utility company’s services in light of the blackout, which was caused by a Dec. 20 fire at a Mission substation, and says it will ask the California Public Utilities Commission to probe the power outage. Shortly after the blackout, the CPUC said it had initiated an investigation. But there has been no indication that the probe is underway, according to the city attorney’s office. In a statement, the state regulator said otherwise: “ The CPUC’s staff investigation into the PG&E December 2025 outages remains in progress.” The March 12 letter reads in part, “The fire and outages threatened public health and safety and caused significant personal and economic hardship for San Francisco’s residents, businesses, and public services. … We understand that PG&E is still gathering information about exactly what happened and why, and we look forward to reviewing that important information. But given the history of outages and substation fires in San Francisco, we believe that more must be done.” The letter was signed by Mayor Daniel Lurie, City Attorney David Chiu, Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman, and San Francisco Public Utilities Commission General Manager Dennis Herrera. “We appreciate the letter that city leaders provided this week regarding the outage that took place last December in San Francisco,” a PG&E spokesperson said. “We remain committed to working in partnership with the City, and will support any actions directed by the CPUC for the benefit of the customers we are privileged to serve.” The letter states that the Dec. 20 blackout had a negative economic impact on the city, occurring during the holiday season, “when stores and restaurants would have been filled with shoppers and diners.” It also states that PG&E has a history of blackouts in the city, including fires in 1996, 2003, and 2005 at the same Mission substation that caused the Dec. 20 outage. Blackouts in December 1998 and December 2003 caused public health and safety threats and economic harm, the city contends. There have also been more recent blackouts: Outages in April 2023 in Chinatown and other neighborhoods were caused by an explosion at a PG&E site near Clay and Montgomery Streets. And outages in 2021 and 2022 affected San Francisco’s 911 call center, forcing the city to pay for a backup power system. The city states that PG&E has failed to communicate “accurate and timely” information about these blackout incidents and described the utility’s claims process as “confusing and burdensome.” The letter follows a scathing hearing in February, during which supervisors excoriated PG&E’s other CEO, Sumeet Singh , about the response to the December blackout. During the Feb. 12 hearing, Singh stated that Lurie had directed the utility to prioritize resources for the opera house , though he quickly recanted that statement. The squabble over the December blackout comes as efforts are underway to have the city split from PG&E and create its own public power infrastructure, a move that has been in the works for decades by the utility’s critics. In February, state Sen. Scott Wiener introduced a bill that would give cities more power to separate from PG&E. Meanwhile, a petition by the city to the CPUC is calculating the value of the utility company’s assets in San Francisco. The Planning Department is working on an analysis about public power, and a report is expected next month.

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Susan Leal

Airport Director

Animal Care and Control Department manages animal sheltering, adoption, and emergency response services. It enforces animal-related laws and regulations, ensuring the humane treatment and safety of animals. The department also provides public education on responsible pet ownership and animal welfare.

Animal Care and Control Department

Virginia Donohue

Animal Care and Control Department, Director

The San Francisco Arts Commission oversees the integration of arts into city life and ensures public access to cultural experiences. It makes decisions on public art programs and allocates grants to support local artists and performances. The commission actively shapes policies affecting the arts ecosystem in San Francisco.

Arts Commission Commissioner 1

Arts Commission Commissioner 2

Arts Commission Commissioner 3

Arts Commission Commissioner 4

Debra Walker

Suzanne Ferras

Jessica Rothschild

Seth Brenzel

JD Beltran

Marcus Shelby

J Riccardo Benavides

Nabiel Musleh

Charles (Chuck) Collins

Lydia So

Arts Commission Commissioner 15

San Francisco Arts Commission invests in a vibrant arts community and shapes cultural policy. It enlivens the urban environment through public art programs and supports diverse artistic expressions. The commission facilitates meetings and discussions to engage the community in cultural development.

Ralph Remington

Arts Commission, Director of Cultural Affairs

The Asian Art Commission determines policy and administers the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. It oversees museum operations and collaborates with the Asian Art Museum Foundation on fundraising efforts. Commissioners ensure the museum's strategic direction and financial sustainability.

Asian Art Commission

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 1

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 2

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 3

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 4

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 5

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 6

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 7

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 8

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 9

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 10

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 11

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 12

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 13

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 14

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 15

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 16

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 17

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 18

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 19

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 20

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 21

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 22

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 23

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 24

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 25

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 26

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 27

Asian Art Museum showcases Asian art and culture through exhibitions and educational programs. It offers diverse collections and hosts special events to engage the community. The museum fosters cultural appreciation and understanding by providing access to its extensive art collections.

Dr. Soyoung Lee

Asian Art Museum, Director

The Assessment Appeals Board #1 hears property tax assessment appeals in San Francisco. It evaluates evidence presented by taxpayers and the Assessor to determine property values. The Board has the authority to make final decisions on assessments regardless of property type or value.

Assessment Appeals Board #1

Assessment Appeals Board #1 Commissioner 1

Assessment Appeals Board #1 Commissioner 2

Richard Lee

Stephen Wasserman

Adena Gilbert

Paul Bellar

Quirina Mitchell

Hilary Winslow

The Assessment Appeals Board #2 adjudicates property tax assessment appeals for San Francisco taxpayers. It evaluates evidence presented by taxpayers and the Assessor to determine accurate property values. The Board exercises authority to render final decisions on residential properties and specific real estate assessments.

Assessment Appeals Board #2

Assessment Appeals Board #2 Commissioner 1

Assessment Appeals Board #2 Commissioner 2

Assessment Appeals Board #2 Commissioner 3

Claire Ervin Lee

Louisa Mendoza

Joyce Lewis

Nicholas Goldman

Michelle Domingo

The Assessment Appeals Board #3 provides a platform for San Francisco taxpayers to contest property tax assessments. It conducts hearings where evidence from both taxpayers and the Assessor is evaluated. The Board makes binding decisions on property assessments based on presented evidence.

Assessment Appeals Board #3

Assessment Appeals Board #3 Commissioner 1

Assessment Appeals Board #3 Commissioner 2

Assessment Appeals Board #3 Commissioner 3