No one is questioning Supervisor Eric Mar’s integrity
or his Progressive politics, or his concern for global climate change,
but his refusal to allow for more analysis of an important solar energy contract
with Recurrent Energy is raising questions about his political acumen.
Photos by Luke Thomas
By Hope Johnson
May 15, 2009
“As one,” commands Maximus Decimus Meridius in an arena blood sport scene from the 2000 Oscar winning movie Gladiator.
In the scene, Maximus no longer leads a well-funded and highly-trained group of soldiers dedicated to the common cause of expanding the Roman Empire. Instead, he must cobble together a motley group of unkempt and enslaved men, most of whom are unpolished fighters and terrified for their lives.
Those who recognize the strategy of cooperating to survive not only escape death but become formidable opponents of the best arena fighters Rome has to offer. Even the arena crowd, bribed and bloated with free food and drink from the Roman power structure, begins to support Maximus and his “team” as the crowd is thrilled by their ability to play an impressive strategy game.
Extreme comparisons aside, Supervisor Eric Mar could have used a strategy lesson from Gladiator during Tuesday’s vote on the Recurrent Energy contract.
San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted 7 to 4 in favor of a deal with Recurrent to install solar panels on the Sunset Reservoir. This is San Francisco, so, of course, the deal is every bit the “c” word. Controversial.
Public power activists, clean energy advocates, and the six Progressive supervisors, Mar included, disagreed on the quality of the deal. The debate on the issues continued up to the final vote and, very early on, it was obvious a consensus on specific issues and amendments would be a mission impossible.
“There’s an honest disagreement at times over what is the best way to move forward our goals for clean energy in our city,” Mar said, making clear he was aware of the deal’s merits and flaws.
Mar’s position on the merits is not under critique here. The main concern is his failure to recognize the advantages of remaining “as one” in strategic solidarity and in tune with the Progressive majority on the board. He passed up an opportunity to bring an “honest disagreement” discussion to the Progressive table rather than leaving public power planning to be manufactured by Mayor Gavin Newsom’s allies on the Board.
Recognizing the time to go into strategy mode requires believing others use strategy to maneuver to favor their position. Supervisors Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi quickly and easily set aside their recent discord and political egos to describe past experiences with tricky strategy used by supervisors loyal to former Mayor Willie Brown and Newsom. They wanted the new supervisors to learn from past mistakes rather than making the same errors over again.
“I think on this contract let’s learn from the past,” urged Daly. “Let’s learn from the bad Calpine deal we were rushed into and told we had no choice and we could not negotiate better terms, we had to act right then.”
“Let’s learn from the hydrogen super highway which is flashy and sounded really good and sold well in the press, but which did not make as much sense as these little plug-in hybrid electrics that we seem to have chosen with our fleet.”
Supervisor Chris Daly
Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi
Mar chose to ignore the experience of his senior colleagues on the Board. Perhaps he believes Newsom’s allies are truly concerned that San Francisco begin clean energy projects and are not attempting to control who negotiates and benefits from those projects. Perhaps he failed to notice the attempts to use issues to muddy the waters, such as Supervisor Sean Elsbernd switching the discussion from price-per megawatt-hour of energy to the scare tactic of contaminating water supplies, all of which could have been addressed by sending the contract back to committee for a more thorough review.
Daly and Mirkarimi’s pleas to recognize the strategy of mayoral allies did not fall on deaf ears. Supervisor David Campos was willing to defer to their experience, requesting time to investigate their concerns.
“I understand there may be a difference of opinion, I don’t understand why you’re unwilling to give us the time we need to verify if it is the case, as you note, this is the best deal possible,” Campos said to Mar. “Give us the time to actually assess the very specific points where you have a process that, in a very short period of time, has demonstrated that in fact every time we have been told that this is the best project that we can get, that hasn’t been the case. Every time we wait and see whether or not on a specific issue we can do better, it’s been demonstrated time and time again we in fact can do better.”
Supervisor David Campos
Mar’s refusal to join strategically with his Progressive colleagues damaged the recent allied front shown by the Progressive majority voting bloc. Speaking truth to power is not always using words. Strategic solidarity allows issues to be controlled by the Progressive majority and sends the message the majority is no longer at the mercy of decisions made by their political opponents.
Good people have volunteered and worked hard on fair and clean power for the City for many years. Mar, intentionally or not, has left the impression their arduous, unpaid work will go unsupported when push comes to shove. Each time volunteers feel electeds don’t have their back, especially when that support would give influence to their voice, it becomes more difficult to convince them to help the next time.
The real loss of Tuesday’s vote was revealing a vulnerability in the majority Progressive voting bloc, a vulnerability the conservative bloc will try to exploit again.
So, keep your eyes open and be very careful, Supervisor Mar, because right now, you are the weakest link.
What Chiu Smokin’?
Even though I’ve said before I’m not psychic, I can hear readers thinking, “Wait, what about President Chiu’s vote on Recurrent?” Why focus on Mar?
Board President David Chiu established he played a formidable game of strategy during the Recurrent Energy contract vote. First, he voted in favor of sending the item back to committee, remaining in solidarity with the Progressive majority. Then, realizing that wasn’t in the cards, he voted in favor of the deal, acknowledging the victory of those favoring the contract.
Strategically, Chiu comes out the winner here. He assisted both sides without damaging either side. Brilliant move. What are you smoking, Pres C? Can we get some of that?
Stay tuned.
The Hunger Site
May 20, 2009 at 12:37 pm
The Jacobins were a very radical group, although they were still considered relatively moderate. They firmly believed in the need to remove all social class distinctions. They also believed that the vote should be universal and that government should provide for the welfare of the poor.
May 19, 2009 at 1:49 pm
What are Jacobins?
May 18, 2009 at 12:28 pm
I seem to be the last person still feeling admittedly bitchy about this, but, just to be precise about the possibilities:
PG&E could buy Recurrent whole, easily, anytime, but the City would still, of course, have the right to buy the solar array from Recurrent, or PG&E, or whoever owns Recurrent seven years from now.
May 18, 2009 at 10:45 am
Sierra Club President John Rizzo told me that the Recurrent contract stipulates that only San Francisco can buy the Sunset Reservoir solar array from them.
However, I don’t believe that anything prohibits PG&E, or, any other catastrophically capitalized corporation, from buying Recurrent whole.
If I’m incorrect about this, I hope someone here will let me know.
Recurrent, with $75 million from Hudson Clean Energy Partners, and $200 million from Morgan Stanley, is buying small solar companies insufficiently capitalized to survive recession.
PG&E, with assets of $40 billion plus, is doing the same.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124050412774848571.html
May 18, 2009 at 7:20 am
Eric,
I regret that you disapprove of my style. I’ll just have to begin anew and somehow put the pieces of my life back together.
Arce’s a plant and you’re his number one enabler.
Would you like some crackers and cheese with your whine?
h.
May 18, 2009 at 5:10 am
H. I know a lot more about Arce than you do. When I first started working with him, because APRI at the time was his client, I was extremely careful and skeptical of him. But over the last two years he has proved to me that he is genuine. I’ve worked with him side by side for two full years; you have not.
As to getting personal, you need to hear it. Your very life gig is to build up your psyche by tearing down the reputation of others, which is both bad for the movement, and really screwed up on a personal level. You need to go see a counselor and get your shit straight.
May 17, 2009 at 5:52 pm
eric,
Let me be as clear as I can. I’ve watched your work for years and I admire you and virtually every stance you’ve taken. In fact, you took the same stance I took on Recurrent. But, you keep defending Arce and I honestly think he’s a plant.
No need to get personal.
h.
May 17, 2009 at 4:17 pm
I can’t help but think that we’re looking more and more like a pack of Jacobins.
May 17, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Not to cast, not to cast. Excuse me. I meant to say “all those of us who were dismayed by Eric’s vote for the Recurrent contract should make every efort to persuade him not to cast similar votes against public power in the future.”
I’m getting stupid here. i’ve been trying to unpack this Recurrent Energy Corporation for too long.
May 17, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Before this discussion goes any further, I want to say that I believe in Eric’s sincerity, and believe that all those of us who were dismayed by Eric’s vote for the Recurrent contract should make every effort to persuade him to to cast a similar votes against public power in the future.
I remember recently showing up at a LAFCO hearing, to try and connect a few dots between LAFCO’s decisions and the covert dirty energy wars now waged by AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command, in Africa, which has superseded the Middle East as a source of U.S. oil imports,, speaking to the urgency of developing renewable power.
I appreciated Eric at that hearing because I sensed that he was really making an effort to listen to me, at the end of the day, despite obvious exhaustion, as I tried to speak about something so far away, in Africa and D.R. Congo.
Thinking back to that hearing I now realize that i joined a chorus of environmentalists’ anguished demands for renewables and clean power, without arguing as strongly for public power.
May 17, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Re personal attacks, could everybody just lay off?
I just finished writing up some of what I’ve been able to figure out about the financing and corporate strategy of Recurrent and other players, after which I spoke to Anthony Fest at KPFA News, who’d told me he wanted to know who owned and managed Recurrent, but, when I did my best to simplify it, he said, “Annie, I just don’t quite get it; I think that’s too complex for radio news. I think it’s only gonna work in print. (Meaning online.)”
I asked him if he’d talked to Ross Mirkarimi about this, as I’d suggestd, and he said that Ross was unavailable when he called . because he was speaking at an anti-war rally in the Castro.
And that, when Anthony went to do a story about the anti-war rally, and someone held a cell phone up for Anthony to record, the voice he’d gotten was Ross’s, and, he couldn’t put the same voice on the KPFA Sunday Evening News re both the Iraq War and the Recurrent contract.
So we’re gonna talk again in a couple of hours, and I told him this issue is hardly over, even though the mayor Twittered his greenwash photo-op at the Recurrent signing on Friday.
Last time I tried the URL on mayor’s Tweet was still crashing.
I can understand why Anthony said “It’s too complex, Annie. I don’t think it’ll work for radio,” because it is too complex; it’s way too complex.
Studying available evidence and putting yourself inside the world of crony capitalism to try and understand how things did, or could have concluded in something like the Recurrent deal is such an exhausting effort. that I keep telling myself I’ll never do it again.
Only two words are really needed: public power.
May 16, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Yes H. Can you do us all a favor and at least have your comments somewhere within the ball park of reality. The idea that I would have anything to do with supporting PG&E, for example, is completely ludicrous.
Has it ever occurred to you that you waste most of your life in one long fruitless attempt to gain what small fragile sense of self that you can muster, solely by viciously attacking other people so that you can feel superior to them, regardless of whether they are in fact good or bad people; and sometimes you do good people real harm in the process.
Wake up man.
May 16, 2009 at 4:50 pm
H, you’re a little bit off. The only report we sent out re: Sophie Maxwell was that as of Monday we finally have a plan to shut down the Potrero Power Plant this year without building the SFPUC’s proposed new dirty power plants in Bayview-Hunters Point. Not related to Sunset Reservoir…
To wit:
SUPERVISOR SOPHIE MAXWELL ANNOUNCES PLAN TO START SHUTTING DOWN POTRERO POWER PLANT THIS YEAR
Community, City United In Effort To Shutter San Francisco’s Last Fossil Fuel-Burning Power Plant By End Of 2009
San Francisco, California, May 12, 2009 — Just over a year after one hundred Bayview-Hunters point residents and environmental activists rallied on the steps of City Hall in advance of a marathon 10-hour hearing on San Francisco’s Potrero Power Plant, Supervisor Sophie Maxwell announced a plan to begin closing the facility this year without the construction of a new power plant to replace it. Last summer, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors was engaged in a heated debate about whether to approve a controversial plan to spend $273 million on new power plants in and around the Bayview-Hunters Point community to replace the Potrero Plant. Supervisors Michela Alioto-Pier, Ross Mirkarimi, Chris Daly, and current Assemblymember Tom Ammiano prevailed upon colleagues to apply pressure to state regulators at the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO) to revisit Cal-ISO’s 2004 position that the only way to close the Potrero Plant was to build new power plants.
Intervention by Mayor Gavin Newsom in June of last year led to Cal-ISO President Yakout Mansour opining that San Francisco’s need for in-city standby “peaker” power to prevent possible outages had dropped from 200 megawatts to 150 megawatts since 2004, leading City officials to question all underlying assumptions about the need to condemn San Francisco’s low-income Southeast communities of color to future years of pollution with brand new power plants. Yesterday’s announcement by Supervisor Maxwell, who represents the neighborhoods most affected by the old power plant as well as the proposed new power plants, marks the end of the journey that followed, in which the City sought out a path to closing the Potrero Power Plant in the most environmentally just way possible.
Supervisor Maxwell’s presentation highlighted the fact that further analysis by the Cal-ISO has revealed that the gap required to cover San Francisco ‘s reliability needs has shrunk to no more than 25 megawatts, eliminating the need for the 362 megawatt Potrero Plant or last year’s proposed 200 megawatt combustion turbine power plants. As reported in yesterday’s San Francisco Examiner (“New effort afoot to close city plant,” May 11, 2009) San Francisco power official Barbara Hale stated last week that upgrades to San Francisco’s electricity grid put the City “in a strong position to argue that Mirant’s main generator and smokestack could be switched off this year.”
Yesterday’s announcement has excited and united community groups, environmentalists, and environmental justice activists who have campaigned for years to shut down the Potrero Plant without building new plants, an effort that has attracted the support of organizations such as the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, Greenaction, San Francisco Planning and Urban Research, and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, as well as national leaders including Van Jones and Robert Kennedy Jr. The final push to shut the Potrero Power Plant this year carries the added benefit that San Francisco will be able to sell the turbines planned to fire the proposed new power plants, which will add $10 million to the City’s general fund according to a report in this morning’s Examiner (“Equipment sale could net S.F. $10M for general fund,” May 12, 2009).
Activists have offered their commitment to ensure that San Francisco ‘s unused turbines are dedicated to replacing one or more of California ‘s 12 coal-burning power plants that generate 400 megawatts of electricity, the largest of which is a 63-megawatt facility in Kern County .
# # #
May 16, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Ann,
Good point on how these programs suddenly show up fully grown. That’s cause Barbara Hale grows them in her basement illegally until they can mug people on their own. She (SFPUC) did it with the solar program that was supposed to put panels on government and non-profits but ended up on million dollar condos. And, paid for (like the Recurrent project) with tax breaks and loans against public pension funds.
Obviously these projects have been carefully planned along with their public/financial/PR features. There were at least a half dozen PR firms represented at the hearing.
Interestingly, just as I predicted, the first positive press release on the Mar roll-over came from Joshua Arce who hailed Sophie Maxwell as an Alternative Energy Joan of Arc and excitedly related that plans were underway to add more privately owned systems atop public structures.
Hey, I was right on these guys. They got money. They got a plan. Forcing a weak link like Mar into voting for them was just a little bonus. They didn’t need him. They’ve always had Chiu.
Confused? Good. You should be.
Relax. Have a drink. Put on your favorite music. Smoke some of this. Things won’t clear up.
But, you’ll feel better.
h.
May 16, 2009 at 8:55 am
Because I’m trying to write something, or several things, about this myself, and because i, yesterday, arranged a KPFA News segment about the Recurrent controversy, I keep returning here, and to 1) Julian Davis’s Bay Guardian article, plus comments, 2) the video archive of the Supes Tuesday hearing, and 3) the Twitter URL of Gavin Newsom’s Recurrent Contract signing ceremony, which still doesn’t seem to work.
I’m trying to understand this whole process as well as I can, beginning with the way the Sunset Reservoir solar proposal suddenly seemed to come out of nowhere, from, it seems, some federal corporate tax credit created to stimulate us.
I’d like to see the whole federal government go stimulate itself, so I’ve got no sympathy for what seems to be the initial premise of the argument—-a federal tax credit which made corporate solar power on the Sunset Reservoir more affordable, in the short term, than public power on the Sunset Reservoir, no matter who got the contract.
(Am I understanding the premise of the argument?)
I wanted to ask a few questions regarding the argument that h. brown and “highly paid lobbyist” Alex Clemens have engaged, at a Bay Guardian link, http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/2009/05/recurrent_debacle.html, but first, can someone tell me whether I’m understanding the first premise of the argument here, this federal tax credit to corporations, which, in effect, handed another defeat to public power?
May 16, 2009 at 7:47 am
I’d much rather have PG&E running our power grid than a city government that’s been throwing bails of money off the back of the train. Judging from last year’s election, apparently a majority of city voters agree.
May 15, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Someone teted these notes to gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom’s Twitter account earlier today:
“Just signed legislation tripling SF’s municipal solar generation-installing the nations largest municipal PV system.
about 12 hours ago from txt”
“Watch solar signing live http://tr.im/lo7x
about 13 hours ago from mobile web”
Doesn’t seem right for Gavin Newsom to call it “the nations largest municipal solar PV system,” since It’s a corporate PV system, not a municipal PV system.
But, no one who simply reads Gavin Newsom’s Huff Post blog arguing for a tidal energy project in San Francisco Bay, would have any way of knowing that it’s a PG&E tidal energy project, because Gavin Newsom, or whoever wrote this Huff Post post, doesn’t even mention PG&E, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gavin-newsom/power-america-with-ocean_b_187902.html
One might easly imagine he’s arguing for public power.
May 15, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Reasonable minds can differ, sometimes our allies are on the other side, other times our opponents make sense like Elsbernd does with the street resurfacing bond. That’s part of the deal.
I am concerned, however, that it is being put forth as an imperative that the City must proceed on a project due to the presence of a tax credit for a private operator. Didn’t we learn our lesson from doing pulling that fast one with the Breda LRVs?
Let’s channel our disappointment on this vote towards putting the budget season pressure on the PUC towards ensuring that CCA gets up and running in real time so that there will be a future public receptacle for upcoming solar projects and we can leverage our solar revenue bonding authority.
-marc
May 15, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Campers,
This issue was a huge failure for everyone in the Progressive community EXCEPT Fog City Journal. The Bay Guardian barely raised a god damned finger.
Bottom line is that PG&E takes over $300 million a year out of the City yearly and that would balance the budget nicely. Anyone who backs PG&E and their various tentacles (Mar, Arce and now, Eric Brooks of the Green Party for God’s Sake?) is ignoring the fact that there are hundreds of millions out there that should belong to the citizens of SF and they are favoring handing them over public space to new entities funded by the same dark cloud.
Picking on Mar? Frig him. He’s screwing every poor person who could benefit by the money Private Power can bring to the City. Screw the Bay Guardian too on this issue.
h.
May 15, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Mar took the lead when he was on the school board to challenge Lennar Corporation’s impunity with its gentrifiaction and poisoning of the Bayview Hunters point.
Mar is also taking the lead on green jobs, which is the main reason he voted for the Recurrent deal (while making clear that he recognized problems in the deal). The deal has an excellent local jobs component.
It also had some very big guns like Sierra Club, Ella Baker Center and Green For All behind it, and that kind of grassroots muscle is a hard thing to push back on.
May 15, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Chris Daly is correct. This is not a time for such disunity. Eric Mar could have been on the Board 8 years ago only for circumstances but that’s a different story. He has a strong commitment to the progressive agenda.
This is a time to be respectful of different opinion. Eric mar is a good man and while he may have made a poor decision on this occasion, overall he is solid.
May 15, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Hope,
I disagree with your assesment of David Chiu. Like the progressives on the Board, he should have voted against the Recurrent contract on principle (and please don’t equate “principle” with “pettiness”).
I also have a different perspective on David Chiu’s so-called strategy. There seems to be a pattern with Chiu where he plays both sides against the middle (something that too many Democrats have done for too long — now they have reinvented it as “post partisanship”) and it is disingenous and even dishonest — not admirable.
Chiu wants to come across as a guy who is trying to please everyone but, in actuality, he is pleasing no one and, in the process, is increasingly becoming a pushover for the conservatives (as the MTA contract debacle has shown). Like Jerry Jarvis, I didn’t trust Chiu from the start. I’ll be particularly interested to see where Chiu goes with this infrastructure bond group effort with Newsom’s people (who are smelling blood, I assure you).
May 15, 2009 at 11:58 am
Chris,
And what, pray tell has Eric been leading us on? I mean, you must mean re-naming the Richmond as the Richmond? Hey, keep Mar in the shallow end of the pool cause he’s pitiful to watch when he’s in over his head.
h.
May 15, 2009 at 11:29 am
Let’s not forget that Eric Mar was a solid San Francisco progressive long before most of us arrived here and will likely be so after most of us have moved on.
Clearly progressives are stronger when we stick together. But we must figure out how to best move forward when we have legitimate policy disagreements. While I may not have all the best answers, I know for sure that publicly calling one of our leaders the “weakest link” is not helpful.
With an epic budget battle looming, it is most critical that we use this moment to build unity among the progressive camp. I, for one, know that Eric Mar will be a staunch ally of John Avalos as he leads our charge. Let’s support all the progressive Supes as they ready to take some very difficult stands.
May 15, 2009 at 9:17 am
Missing Jake yet?
Naw. Jake was getting rolled by the big boys too his last year and we had to listen to ‘Tales of Philly’ as he rubber-stamped one gentrification project after another.
Eric’s next vote for privatizing more public space will be easier for him and he won’t even blush the third time. He’s still much better than McGoldrick. The Board might not be voting the way I like but it has been upgraded.
Avalos is a quantum leap forward. He actually held off on deciding on Recurrent til he heard all Mar and his allies at PG&E were gonna let him hear.
Chiu is better than Peskin. Campos has generally been a brilliant surprise. Notice the difference in body language in Campos and Mar? When Harrington acted the snotty bitch with the D-9 rookie, Campos got right back in his face and kicked his parliamentary ass. When Campos asked Mar why he wouldn’t at least allow some study of the issue, Mar refused and in doing so slunk so far down into his seat that you could barely see the top of his head. I honestly thought he was going to crawl under his desk and come out wearing a disguise. Perhaps a JROTC uniform?
It’s all Larry Mazzola Jr.’s fault.
h.
May 15, 2009 at 8:50 am
In all fairness, Hope, Eric has been giving his vote for many other Progressive legislation, such as tenant issues. We know that he rides his bike to work at least once a year. Not sure if he hops on the MUNI or not.
But what scares me is, will he turn into another Maxwell and Duffy? At least we didn’t get a Sue Lee! Let’s just hope that when it comes to major issues that Mar doesn’t become a weeble like his predecessor, Jake.
As far as board president Chui is concerned, I never trusted him from the start.