In the latest City budget showdown, we’ve had dueling press conferences planned at the same time, allegations that the Mayor used city resources for campaign purposes, accusations about who’s cutting what, and grandstanding about who’s fighting for housing. Chris Daly has every right to be upset that Mayor Newsom won’t fund the affordable housing package after a veto-proof majority of the Supervisors passed it. But by re-inserting the $33 million into the Mayor’s proposed budget by reducing funding for other projects, Daly caused himself a heap of trouble – with even some of his own allies. And while Newsom has mobilized all the resources of his re-election campaign to fight for his priorities, we don’t see groups who would benefit from the housing money actively confronting the Mayor. Daly says that this will happen next week (when he throws his own press conference), but it’s too soon to tell. The Family Budget Coalition has asked the Mayor and the Supervisors to “work together to find at least $60 million during the add-back process,” which would necessarily require cuts to the Mayor’s budget. Newsom supporters have also urged the sides to work together, which won’t happen as long as the budget becomes a proxy fight for the Mayor’s race.

Funding a multi-million dollar affordable housing package when there’s excess revenue is one thing, but putting it in this year’s budget at the expense of other projects opens up a can of worms. Yesterday’s rally on the steps of City Hall (coordinated by the Mayor’s re-election team) featured a variety of constituency groups who spoke out against the proposed changes that Daly sponsored – public housing residents from Hunters Point, crime and safety advocates, and even Friends of the Urban Forests. “This motion would force us to lay off some of the lowest paid workers in City government,” said Newsom.

Daly insists that that his proposed amendments are not “cuts” because they don’t eliminate actual programs – just new ones that the Mayor has proposed, or additional funding for existing programs. The $700,000 cut in Community Courts, for example, slashes a program that the Mayor has proposed but is still in the development phase. The $713,000 cut to the 311 center would eliminate nine of the 45 new positions, which means that the Mayor would still get 36 additional staff for his pet-project.

Even the $3 million taken out of the Police Budget to fund a new Police Academy class that would train new officers, says Daly, is not technically a cut. “According to the Controller,” said Daly, “five Police Academy classes were appropriated in last year’s budget, but only four were actually filled.” It looks like a cut on paper, but it eliminates unused money.

But the motion, according to the Mayor, also kills the current sidewalk safety repair program ($2.88 million.) It would also zero-out the entire pothole budget ($1.68 million), which would mean no money to refill potholes for a year and involve layoffs at the Public Works Department. “That money,” replied Daly, “could be re-allocated.”

Finally, the motion would cut the $6.35 million General Fund portion of the street repaving budget, which is why the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (who usually sides with Daly) sent out a mass e-mail to its members urging the Board to save these funds. The city already spends $30 million a year on street repaving through other sources, but the extra $6 million is needed to fully fund the street’s repaving needs.

Of course, budget decisions are about priorities – and Daly could argue that these pale in comparison to the daunting task of providing affordable housing. But some housing advocates aren’t happy that Daly’s proposal also stops the $5 million allocated to kick-start the HOPE-SF public housing rebuild. Coleman Advocates, for example, urged Daly not to hold this money hostage to get the $33 million housing supplemental.

“I don’t have a firm position for or against HOPE-SF,” said Daly, “but I believe that there hasn’t been a formal process with Housing Authority residents to rebuild public housing sites for mixed-use developments. HOPE-SF would build market-rate housing on public housing sites, and residents need the chance to get educated on what’s in the proposal.”

The HOPE-SF proposal would involve having the Lennar Corporation renovate the Alice Griffith Homes in Hunters Point – which carries its own set of problems. But including this project in his proposed list of “cuts” was a major PR disaster for Chris Daly. At yesterday’s rally, Newsom supporters could legitimately claim that Daly was trying to “cut money for housing,” undermining the Supervisor’s whole message.

While Newsom complains about cuts to programs, his own proposed budget cuts the Health Department by $6.9 million. These cuts – which by and large would not be restored in the Daly proposal – involve funding for 17 non-profits who provide front-line services to homeless and formerly homeless people, putting their jobs on the line. “If we want to talk about priorities,” said Daly, “I’d like to put the cuts in the Health Department versus the people who they rallied today.”

As I’ve written before, Newsom has used the budget as a proxy fight for his mayoral campaign because he’s upset that Daly won’t run against him. Yesterday’s rally had all the makings of a campaign event. Several dozen people wore orange “Team Newsom” shirts, and attendees included Newsom’s ex-press secretary Peter Ragone, former District 4 candidate Doug Chan (who came in an embarrassing fourth place), and Daly’s ex-opponent Rob Black (who now works at the Chamber of Commerce.)

But you don’t see a comparable effort on the part of Daly’s allies to fight for his Motion. By picking this fight, Daly is in the worst of both worlds. He is the Mayor’s opponent by default and gets all the negative baggage that goes along with being such a candidate, but he doesn’t benefit from the organizational capacity that a formal mayoral campaign would bring. Unlike Newsom, Daly can’t mobilize resources from a campaign website that can get its supporters to send mass e-mails to Supervisors and set up a huge rally.

And what about all the groups who fought hard to get the affordable housing supplemental passed in the first place? You haven’t seen them standing up to protest the Mayor. Coleman Advocates for Youth sent out a press release on June 8th that accused “City Hall politics” of stalling the money, without squarely blaming Newsom’s blatant disregard for our system of checks and balances.

At Newsom’s rally yesterday, the Family Budget Coalition distributed a flyer critical of the Mayor’s budget, but did not advocate Daly’s motion. “We ask that the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors work together,” it said, “to find at least $60 million during the add-back process.” But Daly pointed out that a normal add-back process is about $30 million a year. The only way to get such a large pool of money during that process, he said, is to make the type of cuts in the Mayor’s proposal that he’s talking about.

Daly’s allies were not the only ones who were trying to call an end to the grandstanding and urge working together. “Supervisors,” said Mission District resident Rita Alviar, “please go back to drawing board. Meet with the Mayor and pass this budget.” Too bad the Mayor won’t meet with the Board of Supervisors – even after the voters asked him to.

If the budget standoff will end, both sides need to take the politics out of the process. And that means stop making it a proxy fight for the Mayor’s race. At the rate things are going, Daly will probably have to back down because he doesn’t have the votes. The only thing that could save him now is if a progressive Mayoral candidate (e.g., Matt Gonzalez) entered the race, so that the Mayor can re-direct his campaign machine elsewhere. Because right now, Daly is by default the Mayor’s opponent.

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