Despite strong evidence against Supervisor Ed Jew, with most of his colleagues either urging him to resign or calling on the Mayor to take action, Gavin Newsom has remained aloof. In fact, the Mayor announced on Friday that the laws regarding a Supervisor’s residency and taking cash payments “need to be strengthened,” and asked the City Attorney to draft legislation to clarify the law. It’s an easy out for the Mayor – allowing him to express concern about what happened, without alienating the Asian-American community in a re-election year. But Newsom never tried to “fix loopholes” in the City’s Catastrophic Illness Program, after Dennis Herrera found nothing illegal about the Mayor’s girlfriend getting $10,000 in payments for alcohol abuse. At seven different points in that report, Herrera said that the facts surrounding Ruby Rippey-Tourk’s paid leave raises “policy questions” that the City should look into, but Newsom never proposed “clarifying” amendments.

Despite heroic efforts from his lawyers to obfuscate the intent of the law, it is clear that Ed Jew does not live in the Sunset District. His neighbors never see him there, the house has practically no water usage or garbage collection, and for crying out loud – he turned himself into police authorities in Burlingame!

While it’s true that “residency” is based on a Supervisor’s subjective intent of where they plan to reside, there is enough evidence to prove that Ed Jew intends to live in Burlingame. Merely saying otherwise does not make it so.

Newsom, however, has passed the buck to the City Attorney – rather than get himself involved in a politically explosive situation that could be a net loss for him. Because Ed Jew is the only Asian-American Supervisor, the Mayor could lose serious political capital in that community by helping contribute to his downfall. It’s a lot easier for him to seek clarifications in the law where none are needed, so that he can appear to be concerned about a glaring illegality without doing anything about it.

But Newsom did not care about amending the law after his ex-girlfriend got $10,000 in retroactive paid sick leave for her alcohol abuse. The City’s Catastrophic Illness Program (CIP) was designed to help city employees who have exhausted their vacation and sick time, but who need more paid leave because they suffer from a “catastrophic illness.” Over 1200 city employees have applied under this program – with the vast majority citing AIDS, cancer or heart attacks as the catastrophic illness. Rippey-Tourk was the only employee in the City’s history to get such leave for mere alcohol abuse, whereas other applicants who applied for the same reason were denied.

In the City Attorney’s report, Dennis Herrera said that Rippey-Tourk’s payments were not illegal – because the definition of a “catastrophic illness” is left to the Department of Public Health (DPH), and the City has never established guidelines. Because Health Director Mitch Katz approved her application and she had filed the necessary paperwork, said Herrera, no laws were broken. But as I reported last April, the City could still be sued for abuse of discretion by other employees who had applied for the same reason and were denied the paid leave.

“The CIP Ordinance,” said Herrera, “expressly grants broad discretion to DPH to make the determination of what is a life-threatening illness or injury for purposes of participating in the program. Whether there should be amendments … to set forth additional direction or criteria for making future determinations about what qualifies as a life-threatening illness or injury, and what any such criteria ought to be, are policy matters for the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor.”

Besides the definition of a “catastrophic illness,” the City Attorney also said it was a “policy matter” whether we should amend the law to prohibit retroactive payments, or to extend the City’s anti-nepotism law to prohibit a City employee from approving their spouse’s time sheets. Herrera suggested policy changes at seven different times in his 19-page report, so why did the Mayor not seek any amendments in the law under this circumstance?

Like Ed Jew, the answer was politics. Newsom wanted to put the Ruby Tourk scandal behind him, and the City Attorney’s memo gave him the perfect opportunity. It didn’t matter that Herrera had whitewashed over the dangerous implications of what had happened – only that they didn’t find a “smoking gun” to prove that any laws were broken. If Newsom had sought policy changes in response to Herrera’s memo, it would have suggested that something wrong had occurred – and kept the story in the spotlight.

Now Newsom is hoping to seek changes in the law surrounding “residency requirements” and cash payments – so that he doesn’t have to get involved in the Ed Jew scandal. But as Board President Aaron Peskin told the Chronicle, “it is self-evident that elected officials shouldn't take large amount of cash and that people know what it is to be a resident. [The Mayor’s action is] just a form of political obfuscation rather than real leadership.” Once again, Newsom is trying to have it both ways.

Just don’t expect most of the media to call out the Mayor on this double standard.

Send feedback to paul@beyondchron.org