Do San Francisco City Hall politics need to be so toxic?

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Do San Francisco City Hall politics need to be so toxic?

Subject: 11000000 – Politics

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“I love San Francisco,” Haney told me in an interview. “I don’t miss City Hall.”

He doesn’t miss the viciousness and the resulting paralysis that leaves the city’s biggest problems — homelessness, the drug crisis, public safety and the lack of housing — festering and unaddressed in any major way. City Hall has become a place where it’s often more important to tar those who disagree with you as enemies than it is to work with them to find compromise.

Since Haney’s swearing-in four months ago, the former San Francisco supervisor has met one on one with 67 of his fellow state legislators in their offices or over coffee.

Haney has met with fellow progressive Democrats, more moderate Democrats and Republicans of all stripes. He’s shared his priorities such as fentanyl, homelessness and housing. They’ve talked about their own priorities such as wine, water rights, well drilling and agriculture.

And all 67 meetings have been meaningful, productive, friendly and collaborative, he said. It’s enough to make a San Franciscan deeply jealous.

“In the last few months, things seem to have gone even further off the rails,” Haney said of his former stomping grounds. “The real, honest, respectful dialogue on issues is a lot more rare than it should be in San Francisco.

“The political culture makes people very guarded,” he continued. “People always have their knives out. If you say something or you have a difference with somebody, you can expect that will be shared and people will come after you.”

After Haney ran for Assembly against former Supervisor David Campos, and tacked toward the center with policies favoring more housing development, many of his colleagues on the board were furious. Here’s betting this column will spark even more anger among them.

It’s like San Francisco needs marriage counseling — but for all of City Hall.

To be fair, City Hall has had some notable successes this year, including a smooth, productive budget process helmed by Supervisor Hillary Ronen.

But in just the past several weeks, behavior at City Hall seems to have worsened. Board President Shamann Walton, for example, acknowledged he used racial slurs when a sheriff’s cadet asked him to remove his belt before passing through a City Hall metal detector. The cadet says Walton also threatened to “whoop your ass.” Both men are Black. Walton, who disputed the cadet’s account, didn’t apologize.

Leanna Louie, a candidate for District Four supervisor who was stricken from the ballot in light of evidence she doesn’t live there, referred to a Jewish journalist as a Nazi on social media after he revealed her suspicious residency claims.

But the toxicity at City Hall has existed for a long time. Supervisor Aaron Peskin apologized last year for “the tenor that I have struck in my public relationships” and said he sought alcohol treatment. He and other supervisors have bullied department staff in meetings, driving some to tears, and he’s famously berated people in late-night phone calls.

Mayor London Breed has been known in the past to yell at staffers and freeze out supervisors with whom she doesn’t agree.

Then there’s the constant thrum of Twitter fights (of which Haney sometimes partakes), mansplaining and personal attacks by many City Hall denizens. Calling fellow liberal Democrats right-wingers advancing a Trumpian agenda has become just part of the landscape. Several meetings in recent months — from the school board to the redistricting committee — have descended into chaos.

Sometimes the nastiness at City Hall spills into the neighborhoods. Supervisor Gordon Mar, who as far as I can tell is one of the nicest people at City Hall, had his reputation smeared with flyers posted around the Sunset calling him a “communist pedophile.” It’s unclear who posted the hateful screeds.

If this was the culture in a city government that was solving San Francisco’s big problems and improving the lives of its residents, that would be one thing. But it’s not.

That’s in contrast to Sacramento. Sure, the Legislature has had its spats over the years, such as contentious fights over who should be speaker. But it doesn’t tend to get as personal or nasty, according to several people who work there.

And look what the Legislature accomplished this year: It passed major housing bills, Care Court to urge mentally ill people into treatment, an impressive agenda to tackle climate change and a strategy to reduce plastic waste. Credit to the Legislature for also passing a bill to allow supervised consumption sites for drug users in San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles — though Gov. Gavin Newsom, in a wrong-headed move, vetoed it.

Nate Albee, an aide to Haney, said working in Sacramento has been refreshing after years at City Hall as a political consultant who helped get several current supervisors elected and as a legislative aide to progressive Supervisors David Campos and Ronen. He said he regrets sometimes escalating conflict himself — and has come to see it as harmful in a city with such minor political differences.

“We really, truly are arguing over arcane differences in planning code,” Albee said of City Hall. “And it’s no-holds-barred viciousness on a daily basis.”

Albee said he intends to avoid working at City Hall again because he’s come to see the infighting as not only distracting but detrimental to solving the city’s real problems. He acknowledged that Sacramento is deeply political and has its share of conflict, pointing to the recent killing of an effort to unionize legislative aides as an example.

“But there’s a basic level of respect and recognizing the humanity in your opponents,” he said. “In San Francisco, we’re frozen in animosity.”

Several others who’ve made the move up Interstate 80 agreed.

“That’s 1,000% correct,” Assembly Member Phil Ting said when I told him about Haney’s early assessment.

Ting was appointed assessor-recorder by then-Mayor Gavin Newsom in 2005, a fact that earned him scorn throughout his tenure at City Hall from those who thought the mayor was too moderate and, thus, Ting was too.

“I was fortunate I didn’t have to take a vote every Tuesday, but it always colored anything I supported,” he said of being labeled too far right on the city’s narrow political spectrum. “Our city government doesn’t run as well as other governments because everything is so political — whether you’re in the Planning Department or the parks department or Public Works.”

State Sen. Scott Wiener, a former city supervisor, called City Hall politics “very, very, very personal” and “extremely intense.”

“It’s a different vibe in Sacramento,” he said. “There is a lot of collaboration across the aisle.”

David Chiu has made the move twice now — from San Francisco supervisor to state Assembly member and back to San Francisco as city attorney. He famously coined the phrase “knife fight in a phone booth” to describe city politics.

“Because we’re in such a small city, the assumption is you’re going to think like me and agree with me, and if you don’t, things go south quickly,” he said. “In Sacramento, it’s exactly the opposite. The expectation is you’ll think differently so the emphasis is on building bridges and finding common ground.”

Mark Leno, who also moved from the Board of Supervisors to the Legislature before being termed out in 2016, said there’s a certain “rambunctiousness” to city politics. Ever the gentlemen, he stressed he wasn’t singling out any particular city leader and appreciates their hard work, but said coming together for the sake of the city is important.

“It’s our responsibility to do our best to find common ground so we can craft thoughtful and effective legislation to benefit our constituents,” he said. “As tough as that may be, that’s the job.”

Haney said he’s curious to see whether the city’s political culture can be mended or whether it gets even worse.

“Do the knives just get bigger, or do we put our weapons down and try to talk each other and see if that might work?” he asked.

“Somehow,” he said, “we’ve got to turn the volume down.”

Heather Knight is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @hknightsf

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