As progressive activists worked feverishly on November 7 to get out the vote, San Francisco Supervisors Sophie Maxwell and Jake McGoldrick had other priorities. In a shocking and unprecedented misuse of the legislative process, these Supervisors engineered a secret November 7 morning Land Use hearing for the sole purpose of killing Angelo Sangiacomo’s $700 million project at Trinity Plaza. The duo had also secretly placed the legislation on the full Board’s calendar at 2:00pm, arranging matters so that either a yes or no vote would send the project back to the Planning Department. San Francisco brags about its sunshine and open government laws, but the Board of Supervisors now must decide whether it will allow two of its eleven members to sabotage democracy.

It became clear as Jake McGoldrick viciously slandered Supervisor Chris Daly’s “backroom deal” at Trinity Plaza that San Francisco’s Land Use Committee is absolutely out of control. After Committee chair Maxwell held up hearing the Trinity Plaza project for over one month, she then scheduled an Election Day special hearing without even telling the project sponsor.

Incredibly, Maxwell had met with Trinity representatives Jack Davis and Walter Schmidt the preceding week and never mentioned any plan to hold a November 7 special hearing. She told them that the project would be reviewed “after the election” (the two assumed she meant the November 7, 2006 election).

So while Jack Davis was calling District 6 voters on behalf of Chris Daly’s campaign, neither he nor Schmidt had been alerted to the fact that a 10:00am hearing on Trinity Plaza was proceeding. Nor did anyone have any idea that the full Board of Supervisors would have to vote on the legislation that came out of the hearing, even though this was not the measure that Trinity backers supported.

If this fiasco had occurred anytime other than Election Day, then blame would clearly be pointed at Board President Aaron Peskin, who is supposed to ensure a fair legislative process. But Peskin was also focused on the task at hand, which was not the Board calendar for November 7 but helping to ensure the re-election of Daly and other progressive candidates.

It turns out that by continually refusing to calendar the Trinity Project, Maxwell learned that it would automatically be approved unless the Board intervened. She then complied with city rules allowing Supervisors to hold hearings on 24 hours if 2 of the 3 members agreed, which McGoldrick happily did.

Maxwell never called Trinity representatives to alert them to the hearing----an unimaginable affront for a Supervisor who has not hesitated to bestow every possible special favor on the national developer, the Lennar Corp. Incredibly, Maxwell had told Trinity representatives that she was committed to preventing further African-American displacement in San Francisco---a goal she is pursuing by supporting Lennar’s plans to eliminate 400 rental units and by opposing Trinity’s plan to build 1900 such units.

Progressives have spent years denouncing Congressional Republicans for not allowing issues like the minimum wage to come to a straight up and down vote, and Maxwell appears to be operating out of Tom Delay’s legislative playbook. She knows that the full Board will approve the Trinity Project, so her only hope of killing it is to prevent the item from leaving her committee.

As noted above, Maxwell was apparently unaware that she could not prevent a Trinity hearing indefinitely. City law requires that general plan amendments approved by the Planning Commission be either voted on within 90 days or are deemed approved.

So having bottled up Trinity for 87 days Maxwell was forced to hold a special hearing on a day when Land Use committees are not normally held, and on Election Day, when the vast majority of those likely to testify about Trinity were preoccupied.

Had Maxwell simply announced at the start of the hearing that she had erred in not holding a regular hearing earlier, and that this special hearing was only procedural and would not delay the project, then the resulting confusion would have been avoided. But she instead allowed McGoldrick to go ballistic attacking the Trinity deal, creating the impression that the Supes were killing the project on the merits.

As Board observers know, Jake is often too busy trying to show how smart he is to pay attention to the facts. But his attack on Trinity as a “backroom deal” brought him to new levels of ignorance.

In June 2005, McGoldrick and his colleagues voted unanimously in support of a resolution that remains the essence of what he now calls a “backroom deal.” This vote occurred in the Board of Supervisors chambers, with normal rules of debate.

Subsequently, Planning Director Dean Macris suggested to Sangiacomo that he build more units on the site. Macris recognized the project’s ability to revitalize a long-neglected key city location at 8th and Market, and felt that this goal, as well as the project’s design, would be improved with more units.

So the project’s size went from 1400 to 1900 units, and this increased density required an amendment to the general plan. Some people believe that this greater density should trigger increased community benefits from the project, but this is different from claiming that the change in the number of units was part of a “backroom deal.”

The 1900 unit project had to be approved by both the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors in public meetings. McGoldrick certainly has the right to oppose the revised project, but his personal views should not deny due process to Sangiacomo and the Trinity Plaza tenants who spent months with Supervisor Daly hammering out the deal.
Can you imagine what McGoldrick’s reaction would be if Chris Daly tried to upset a carefully negotiated agreement in Jake’s Richmond District? Remember how Maxwell kept insisting that her proposed Potrero Hill zoning controls were in her district and that she knew best? Not to mention her use of the “it’s my district” argument to win approval of a Home Depot within blocks of District 9.

When it comes to Trinity Plaza, however, both Maxwell and McGoldrick claim that it is a citywide, rather than District 6 issue. Once again, issues affecting the upscale Richmond District and Potrero Hill neighborhoods are treated one way, while a different standard applies to issues in the low-income areas of District 6.

Thanks to Maxwell and McGoldrick’s shenanigans, the Trinity Plaza project will not return to the Board until January. The Planning Commission approved the project in August, and its been delayed six months solely because two supervisors do not care about what Trinity Plaza tenants want, and are even less concerned about forging economic and social progress in the Mid-Market neighborhood.

Perhaps Mayor Newsom can help expedite a $700 million housing and commercial project that would change the face of Mid-Market and be the city's largest new rental housing development in fifty years.

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