1970's Era Morrie Turner Cartoon On Then-Governor Jerry Brown
NO LONGER OAKLAND'S PROBLEM
Some time ago, maybe more than once, I predicted
in this column that in his campaign for California Attorney General, Mayor Jerry
Brown was going to use his Oakland track record in a different way than most politicians
usually do. Politicians generally spotlight their positive achievements in office,
and in his race against State Senator Chuck Poochigian, Mr. Brown has certainly done
that. But in areas where Mr. Brown has failed in Oakland–and their were many such
failures–he has excused those failures by putting the blame on Oakland. In effect,
he’s been telling California voters that Oakland was so bad, nobody could fix it,
and wants voters to give him points for even giving it a good try.
And so, I was not surprised when a Sacramento television station (KCRA) posted a
story on Mr. Brown’s campaign on its website last week in which Mr. Brown seemed
to be exploiting Oakland’s crime rate to boost his own credentials. The story read,
in part, “Jerry Brown is fixture on the streets near his Oakland condo. During the
day it's a fairly safe place to walk his dog, Dharma, but at night it's a different
story. ‘Well, there was a killing right there at the KFC, another one right there,
and then a shooting over there at the karaoke club,’ Brown said. ‘If you want a crime
fighter,’ [the mayor continued], ‘you ought to have someone who knows what crime
is. I've picked gun shells off the street not 100 feet from where we're sitting.’"
What logic there is to this type of thinking escapes me, as
much has escaped me in the last eight years about how Mr. Brown thinks. If living
in a neighborhood where crime occurs qualifies one to be elected as a crime fighter,
then one might as well argue (as I once wrote in a short story) that it makes sense
to elect a dead man as coroner because, after all, who knows the needs of the dead
better than a dead person does? Logic or illogic aside, there is something ghastly
and unconscionable about the elected mayor of Oakland leading reporters around pointing
out killing spots–not as a way to prevent more Oakland killings–but to somehow show
off his credentials for a “higher” office.
Still Californians, who often have no trouble recognizing hypocrisy and demagoguery
when it comes to national Republicans, seem to miss it entirely when it comes to
the homegrown variety.
In endorsing Mr. Brown, for example, the Oakland Tribune describes him as
“long a champion of the environment,” the Los Angeles Times says “he has been
a consistent fighter for the environment,” and the Sierra Club of California said
“throughout his career, Jerry Brown has been a ground-breaking leader on the most
important environmental issues of our time. Jerry has been a champion of renewable
energy, clean water, and clean air for California. As Mayor of Oakland, Jerry has
overseen Oakland’s transformation into one of America’s top ten green cities. After
evaluating the records of all the candidates for Attorney General, it was clear to
us that Jerry Brown is exactly who California needs to defend and protect its environment.”
Maybe so. But it was also Jerry Brown, in a hurry to meet his goal of 10,000 new
inhabitants in downtown Oakland, who induced the legislature to pass AB436 in 2001,
a Wilma Chan-sponsored bill that suspended portions of the California Environmental
Quality Act in downtown Oakland, and downtown Oakland only.
In reporting how Mr. Brown explained that full-blown CEQA environmental protection
wasn’t needed for downtown Oakland, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Chip
Johnson reported Mr. Brown saying in 2001 “I haven't seen any spotted owls or snail
darters in downtown Oakland."
Perhaps that was supposed to be a joke–Mr. Brown often finds serious policy questions
funnier than the average observer does. But it later became a public policy argument
advanced by others. In a 2002 Oakland City Council meeting, then-Oakland City Councilmember
Danny Wan defended his support for that bill by arguing that CEQA was passed in 1970
more as protection for rural and suburban development, not urban development. Therefore,
Mr. Wan asserted to fellow Councilmembers and the public, easing certain CEQA protections
in downtown Oakland wasn’t really a weakening of CEQA’s environmental protections,
since those protections weren’t aimed at cities anyway. It was a dangerous (as well
as completely incorrect) notion, then and now, all set loose by Mr. Brown, who was
willing to sacrifice long-established environmental protection principle for short-term
gain.
What is true about the environment is also true about education.
Mr. Brown promised to promote and support quality education in Oakland in his initial
campaign for mayor and based upon that promise, Oakland citizens later passed a ballot
measure giving the mayor the power to appoint three new members to join the seven
elected members of the Oakland Unified School District board of trustees. Armed with
that power, Mr. Brown immediately abandoned it, seeming to lose any interest in the
day to day workings of the district, and apparently leaving his appointees with no
clear instructions on what policies he wanted them to follow.
Instead, Mr. Brown put all of his energies into his two charter schools, the Oakland
School for the Arts and the Oakland Military Institute, to which he donated many
hours of city staff time and many thousands of dollars in city money. How successful
have those experiments been? The military institute recently failed not only to reach
its state-mandated Academic Performance Index goal of 6 points (to 677 on a scale
of 1000), it actually lost 13 points over the 2005-06 school year. Mr. Brown’s arts
school did even worse. The state gave it a goal of a 3 point API rise to 741; instead
of making that goal, OSA dropped 18 points over the past school year.
When things seemed to be going good at the two schools, Mr. Brown couldn’t stop talking
about them. Now that they are falling on tougher times, all mention of them appear
to have been dropped from his public pronouncements. Poor children.
Meanwhile, while Mr. Brown had three appointees to the Oakland school board (compared
to seven electees from all of the rest of Oakland citizens), the Oakland school district
came close to bankruptcy and was taken over by the state, and has been on a downward
spiral ever since. Under less dire circumstances, the city of Emeryville figured
out a way to legally transfer city funds to the school district to help win back
local control for that district, and Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa down in Los Angeles
got the state legislature to pass a law giving the LA mayor’s office authority over
the school district. Does Mr. Brown take any responsibility for the events that led
to the state takeover of the Oakland schools, or is he now offering some plan to
help the district get back on its feet?
Not to my knowledge.
Last week, former Oakland city employee Nereyda Lopez-Bowden surfaced in Sacramento
to remind us of that Mr. Brown’s former roommate and longtime confidante–Jacques
Barzaghi–was once sanctioned for sexual harassment of Ms. Lopez-Bowden after Mr.
Brown put him on the city payroll.
After Ms. Lopez-Bowden appeared at a press conference sponsored by Mr. Brown’s Attorney
General opponent, Chuck Poochigian, Mr. Brown’s campaign consultant, Ace Smith, remarked
“it's clear Chuck Poochigian has finally crossed the line from desperate to undignified.
Anyone who has looked into this matter knows it was handled by an independent professional
with lots of integrity."
But the question was not whether the investigation–coordinated through the office
of Oakland City Attorney John Russo and City Manager , and not through the office
of Mr. Brown–was not thorough and professional. And the punishment seemed fair–three
weeks suspension, counseling, and a restriction that he couldn’t be in the room with
a woman staff member by himself (all imposed by City Manager Robert Bobb, not Mr.
Brown). But the question was, why did Mr. Brown allow his friend, Mr. Barzaghi, to
remain on the city payroll after the sexual harassment charges were proven? In fact,
once returned to his job after his suspension, Mr. Barzaghi was treated to a raise
in salary.
Jacques Barzaghi
It would seem in this case, Mr. Brown’s loyalty to an old friend trumped whatever
commitment the mayor may have to women’s rights and cracking down on workplace sexual
harassment.
And that, in the end, has been the problem with Jerry Brown in Oakland. You cannot
rely on Mr. Brown’s principles, regardless of how cleverly he states them or how
many times, only that he will violate them, at will, when it is necessary for his
personal political future and agenda. That is no longer Oakland’s problem, however.
Not, at least, by ourselves. On the eve of next week’s general election, it would
appear that Mr. Brown will soon belong to all of California, again. Good luck, California.