View the San Francisco for Sunday, January 26, 2025
Supervisor Joel Engardio speaking at the 118th commemoration of the 1906 earthquake at Lotta’s Fountain in San Francisco on Thursday, April 18, 2024. It starts by preventing it from ever coming to a vote.
He has hired a campaign manager, filed the requisite paperwork with The City’s Ethics Commission and launched a website to promote his effort to dissuade people from signing a recall petition against him. “We want to make sure that we’re taking it seriously, and building up support, and make sure we can stop the recall from even qualifying,” said Engardio, who is halfway throughEngardio’s opponents were enraged by his sponsorship of Proposition K, a 2024 ballot measure that forced The City to permanently close Great Highway between Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard to motor vehicles in perpetuity and ended a temporary compromise in which it was closed to cars only on the weekends. “The fact that he didn’t reach out to his constituents before he placed it on the ballot is an act of betrayal,” said Vin Budhai, a lead organizer of the recall campaign and founder of the organizationNow, the four lanes of Great Highway between Sloat Boulevard and Lincoln Way will be fully dedicated as a recreational haven for runners, rollerbladers and the like. And — according to recall backers — it will be an enormous pain for those who relied on Great Highway to drive. Engardio’s anti-recall campaign is predicated on his belief that politicians should not be recalled based on single issues. Though he was a vocal proponent and organizer of the school-board recall, he said its members had built up a litany of offenses before their ouster. The supervisor is asking constituents to judge him on the totality of his first two years in office, during which time he created first-of-their-kind“Recalling the school board could actually affect change, could actually change the policy, whereas my recall won’t change Prop. K at all, right?” Engardio said. “Getting rid of me is not going to get rid of Prop. K, and it’s just one issue — and you could argue I singlehandedly couldn’t just put it on the ballot. It was five supervisors.” But Engardio led the effort, and his support blindsided opponents of the Great Highway closure, who said he gave no indication that it would be up for a citywide vote in 2024. “As a politician, as a good politician, you would listen to both sides and work out a compromise,” said Albert Chow, a Sunset district business owner and recall proponent.One way or another, Engardio has argued, the issue would have been called into question when the existing compromise — closed to cars on the weekends, open on weekdays — expired in 2025. Thus, he figured, it was better to let voters decide than the Board of Supervisors. It irked Prop. K opponents that the entire city would decide something that disproportionately impacts them, but Engardio countered that “either way, had it not been on the ballot and the 11 supervisors had to decide the fate, you would have east-side supervisors voting for it.” “So either way, the east side is going to have a say — and you could argue that the coast does belong to everybody,” Engardio said. Recall proponents countered that Engardio’s “last-minute” placement of the measure on the ballot deprived them of valuable time to organize against it. Chow said he sees it differently,It remains to be seen whether Engardio’s detractors can accrue the necessary 10,000 signatures to place the recall on the ballot — but he’s not taking his chances. Engardio has brought on the public-relations firm Singer Associates and hired a campaign manager, Lian Chang, who most recently led the proposition to fund public transit by taxing app-based ride-hailing companies in 2024. “Someone like Joel who is working hard, doing great work in his district, doing things that people in his district genuinely wants,” Chang said. “ needs to have the leeway as an elected leader to make decisions and difficult policy choices and and then to be held accountable by standing for re-election on the election schedule, which is next year.”Budhai said he believes waiting nearly two years to vote on Engardio’s reelection would give the public too much time to forget and the supervisor to repair his public image. “The other thing is getting him out now — and maybe working with Lurie’s office, we can try to get somebody that’s more appropriate,” Budhai said. If there’s something everyone can agree on, it’s that Engardio overestimated the level of support that Proposition K would have in his district. Though it passed with, about 64% of residents in his district voted against it. Recall proponents said they expect to be outspent by Engardio and his supporters, but they believe the public sentiment stands with them. “I’m humbled by the those who opposed Prop. K,” Engardio said. “Going forward, I have to be committed to addressing the concerns people had voted against Prop. K, and the, and so I’m doing everything I can to partnering with our new mayor to address all those traffic concerns, and we’re moving forward quickly.”California Attorney General Rob Bonta: “The President cannot eliminate fundamental rights by Executive Order, nor can he order federal agencies to violate the law.” State officials say the gender designations of California-issued Real IDs are unaffected by President Donald Trump’s executive order that the federal government only recognize a person’s assigned sex at birth on official identification. The California Department of Motor Vehicles told The Examiner that the state will continue to issue and update driver’s licenses and identification cards on which state residents can select gender identities of male, female or nonbinary. Trump, in one of his first acts upon returning to the White House on Jan. 20, signed an executive order declaring it the official policy of the U.S. government to, but White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told news website NOTUS on Jan. 21 that transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming citizens “can still apply to renew their passport — they just have to use their God-given sex, which was decided at birth.”Those standards, however, don’t apply to state IDs, for which Congress set the criteria with legislation passed In 2005. The Real ID Act gave states the authority to set gender criteria for their own identification cards.into law. The legislation, co-authored by San Francisco Sen. Scott Wiener, went into full effect on Jan. 1, 2019. The legislation streamlined the process for residents to obtain official documents such as birth certificates and driver’s licenses that reflect their gender identities, providing options for male, female, and nonbinary on such documents. State and local officials said they’re still nonetheless assessing the potential local ramifications of Trump’s order. California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a statement Friday saying that “the LGBTQ+ community is and will continue to be protected under a myriad of state laws and California’s constitution.” “We are keeping a close eye on how this Executive Order is implemented and related actions by the Trump Administration,” Bonta said. “The President cannot eliminate fundamental rights by Executive Order, nor can he order federal agencies to violate the law.” Honey Mahogany, the director of The City’s Office of Transgender Initiatives, said her office and that of City Attorney David Chiu will soon release information about identification and official documents in order to keepCity Attorney’s Office spokesperson Jen Kwart said that the most Chiu’s office could say about Trump’s executive order at this time is that it’s “abhorrent and offensive.” “We have a lot of protections,” said Mahogany, who also said she has fielded calls about Trump’s order from concerned friends elsewhere in the Bay Area. “But it is really sad that we have to think about these things when traveling out of state or out of the country.”President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025, in Washington. Trump’s executive order is likely to face legal challenges. Clark Freshman, a professor at UC Law San Francisco and an expert in discrimination law, said it’s likely in the coming days that Trump’s order would be challenged on one of two fronts: seeking a declaratory judgment in which a judge directly and immediately weighs in on the order’s constitutionality, or a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking its implementation while a court examines the rule. “There’s a big advantage to doing that,” Freshman said of a preliminary injunction, predicting a case asking for one could be filed within the month. “You can try, to some extent, to control which judges will initially steer the case.” Were a case involving the executive order to reach federal court — or even the U.S. Supreme Court — Freshman said justices could look to the precedent established in the high court’s 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, Ga. In a 6-3 ruling, the court held that an employer who fires a gay or transgender worker because of their gender or sexual identity is in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination. The Trump administration argued in its executive order that the Biden administration’s reliance upon that precedent to direct the federal government to enforce civil-rights protections against sex discrimination for LGBTQ Americans was “legally untenable and harmed women.” Neil Gorsuch — a Trump appointee — wrote the majority opinion in Bostock, while Republican-appointed Chief Justice John Roberts also sided with the majority. Freshman said the court would approach questions of constitutional protections and legal ones under the Civil Rights Act very differently. He said that — along with the court’s own record — would make it difficult to predict how the Supreme Court might rule on a case centered on Trump’s executive order.Still, he said, it’s clear that California’s identification standards would stand independently of the federal government’s own. Bonta emphasized as much Friday in announcing that Californians could file complaints with his office about “violations” related to the executive order. “Agencies and entities receiving state funding are reminded that members of the LGBTQ+ community are protected against discrimination and harassment and that our office will be monitoring to ensure the law is followed,” he said.A pair of Waymo self-driving cars on Castro Street at Market Street in San Francisco on Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024. The autonomous-vehicle company — whose whirring white Jaguars are now commonplace on San Francisco streets — paid lobbyists to meet with city government officials 348 times last year, compared with 137 times in 2023.The company — which is owned by Alphabet, the parent company of Google — has also embarked on a robust push to gain access to San Francisco International Airport. Such service could be a major source of revenue, but the move remains staunchly opposed by labor unions. A Waymo spokesperson told The Examiner in an email that the company is committed to consistently engaging with policymakers and regulators as it expands. Waymo is easily the largest player in the robotaxi game in San Francisco, with more than 300 cars available to passengers and millions of trips taken last year, according to the company.Access to the airport is coveted — by taxis, app-based ride-hailing companies and now Waymo — as a source of thousands of BART-wary customers willing to pay top dollar for rides into The City.to and from the airport by Uber and Lyft. That adds up to about $50 million in revenue per year for SFO, according to airport data gathered by SFGate. Waymo told The Examiner that there is high demand for trips to the airport, according to surveys of its customers.to The City’s Planning Department to obtain a first-of-its-kind permit that would allow it to map the airport for use by its autonomous vehicles. The Teamsters union, which represents drivers, is eyeing Waymo carefully. It accused Waymo last year of violating the law by failing to disclose lobbying of airport officials. The Teamsters, too, stepped up their lobbying of local officials on matters related to autonomous vehicles, but at a level far below that of Waymo. “These companies know that their products are unpopular, unsafe, and bad for working families, so they’re trying to steamroll policymakers and the public by putting AVs on the road before anyone has a chance to find out just how dangerous they are,” said Peter Finn, Teamsters western region vice president and president of Joint Council 7, in a statement last year.Former San Francisco Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson, who retired last year, was sharply critical of autonomous-vehicle companies when state regulators were considering permitting them in 2023. The fire department cited a number of instances in which the driverless vehicles — not yet permitted to carry paying passengers at the time — allegedly obstructed first responders at the scenes of emergencies. San Francisco went as far as to sue the California Public Utilities Commission over its August 2023 decision to grant Waymo and Cruise authorization to accept paying passengers. (Now, the political landscape in and around City Hall has changed significantly. Mayor London Breed lost her reelection bid. Jeffrey Tumlin, formerly the director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, resigned and returned to the private sector. Nicholson retired last year, as did San Francisco International Airport Director Ivar C. Satero. Their replacements arrive after Waymo further strengthened its foothold in San Francisco and across the country, and as the company’s main competitor here exited the area. Cruise, which was permitted by state regulators to solicit paying passengers in autonomous vehicles simultaneously with Waymo in 2023, was forced to take its cars off the streets later that year after an incident with one of its vehicles. In that incident, a Cruise vehicle struck a woman who had already been struck by a human-driven vehicle while crossing the street; the Cruise car dragged the downed woman, causing significant injuries.about the crash, leading it to revoke Cruise’s permit. Despite a brief attempt to reenter the market, the company never fully recovered and its owner, General Motors, announced last year that it would shut down Cruise. It stopped lobbying city officials in 2024.Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. You can click and drag the clipping box to move it or click and drag in the bottom right corner to resize it. When you're happy with your selection, click the checkmark icon next to the clipping area to continue.This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. Choose wisely!Create a password that only you will remember. 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