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Saturday, February 01, 2014

Mayor Ed 'Backroom' Lee to Time: 'Collaborative Politics' in SF

The man began his mayoral tenure predicated on a huge lie, that he would be only a caretaker mayor. You may recall that during the debate to replace Mayor Gavin Newsom after he resigned to move up a rung on the political ladder in Sacramento, City Administrator Ed Lee, who was out of town at the time, promised to not seek a full term.

Thanks to a backroom deal engineered by Newsom and executed when Supervisor Bevan Dufty stepped out of Board Chambers and change his vote from Sheriff Mike Hennessy to Lee instead. So, in addition to his lie there is also the backroom deal that brought Lee to occupy Room 200 at City Hall.

After years of ignoring the eviction epidemic, rampant gentrification, rabid snobbery and apathy of techies displacing thousands of longtime city residents, Ed 'Backroom' Lee is holding off-the-record and no-members-of-the-public-welcomed summits with Big Tech barons and baronesses and without a ray of sunlight, they're crafting public policy for the 99 percent.

Our lying mayor ran his mouth to Time magazine this week and blathered his usual platitudes, and one phrase stood out and demanded that attention be paid and it was "collaborative politics":

But the ultimate, real answer is you’ve got to go beyond the blame game and get in the real economics and smart, collaborative politics to say how do we get through this? And how do we make sure our principles are in tact [sic]? The city is for the 100%, not the haves versus the have-nots. 

Well, Mister Mayor, that real answer you speak of just ain't happening because your San Francisco City Hall does not respectfully engage in collaborative politics with all City stakeholders.

In reaction to the barricading of Google buses, the SF Municipal Transportation Agency along with the mayor and at least one supervisor, held backroom meetings and designed another sweetheart deal for Big Tech charging them crumbs for using City infrastructure.

The SFMTA meeting about the plan was a charade of democracy because the vote of the directors was decided out of public view. We've seen the same scenario on countless contentious issues where the City Hall one-percenters do the bidding of development forces in backrooms and community concerns are consigned to the dustbin.

We need the mayor to produce incontrovertible evidence that his administration is actually practicing collaborative politics and with voluntary transparency with the 99 percenters.

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