Elsbernd Muni Reform Measure Has Money and Signatures to Spare

Supervisor Elsbernd displays his abundance of signatures. Photo: Matt Baume.

Supervisor Sean Elsbernd triumphantly delivered eighteen Bankers Boxes full of signatures to the Department of Elections on Thursday, signifying the successful completion of the first phase of a Muni reform campaign that many had claimed was politically impossible.

Elsbernd's drop-off date was no coincidence: on the same day, he pointed out, Muni operators received a 5.5 percent pay raise, costing the city about $9 million.
Elsbernd's legislation would enable the city to set operator wages
though collective bargaining, rather than through an averaging
of the country's top-paying transit systems.

The Elsbernd/SPUR measure will compete with a measure introduced in May by
Supervisors Chiu, Campos, Mar, and Mirkarimi. While both measures would eliminate
the automatic pay hikes for operators, Elsbernd's would also
eliminate "side-letter" agreements that, an
audit recently showed, cost the city millions.

In addition, the Chiu/Campos/Mar/Mirkarimi measure would
allow the Board of Supervisors to appoint members to the MTA board,
a power currently reserved exclusively for the Mayor. It would also
allow the Supervisors to veto Muni service reductions.

Comparing the two measures, Elsbernd said, "one is about empowering the
Board of Supervisors," while his "is about empowering riders of Muni."

To qualify, the measure needed 47,000 valid signatures. A cushion of over 20,000 additional signatures was thought necessary to make up for
any found to be ineligible.

By July first, the campaign had collected 74,887 signatures and was
ready to submit them to the Department of Elections, days ahead of the
drop-off deadline.

The campaign recruited volunteer signature-gatherers though a website at
FixMuniNow.com, a Facebook
group, and a Twitter feed,
and Elsbernd recognized their hard work. "We couldn't have done this
without tremendous volunteer effort," he said.

Of course, money helped, too. Elsbernd estimated that the campaign had
raised about $325,000 for signature gathering. As
the SF Appeal pointed out, that equates to $4.27 per signature --
far higher than the average of $2.50 to $3.

The additional funding may have been necessary to overcome stiff
opposition from the drivers' union, which was joined by unions
representing hotel workers and firefighters, as
well as Supervisor Eric Mar.

Last

month, Newsom criticized both efforts, calling Mar's measure a "bailout"
of the transit agency since it
would divert $40 million to Muni from the city's general fund. Newsom
claimed that both attempts at legislative reform were partly to blame
for Muni drivers'
rejection of concessions that would have reversed service cuts.

Others went even further. Gillian Gillett, Chair of SPUR's Transportation Committee, recounted warnings that Elsbernd received after proposing the legislation. At one point, she recalled, "he got a call saying his political career was over."

SPUR was a critical ally in supporting the legislation and in collecting signatures. At Thursday's news conference, Elsbernd credited Gillett as being the top signature-gatherer.

Despite union opposition and skepticism from the mayor and his fellow supervisors, Elsbernd proved capable of exceeding fundraising and signature-gathering expectations. That support from voters and donors bodes well for the
measure's success in November.