Pardons, recalls, Bay Bridge & non-citizen voting — just for starts
• • • • • • • • • • February 2025 • • • • • • • • • •
It’s been said that many politicians should beg for pardons instead of granting them. Ex-president Joseph Biden granted a pardon to his son, Hunter Biden, after previously declaring he wouldn’t be so furtive, then added pardons for thousands before January 20, 2025. After Trump pardoned all those Washington, D.C. lawbreakers of January 6, 2021, who must believe in autocratic government, I concur with a Wall Street Journal reader from Spring Lake, Michigan, that the U.S. Constitution should be amended to prohibit pardons and even executive orders between Election Day and Inauguration Day by lame-deck presidents like Mr. Biden and in 2028 by Trump.
In several California jurisdictions, noncitizens are permitted to vote. San Francisco’s Unified School District authorizes even illegal aliens, therefore, to vote in School Board contests. They’re not “undocumented” aliens; they’re lawbreakers. Suppose that’s expanded to court proceedings. Could you be judged for some infraction by noncitizen jurors selected from the voting rolls? Maybe the state legislature and Governor will thusly react to Trump’s border policies. Meanwhile, The Epoch Times reported in December that Chicago’s black and Hispanic residents blame their city government for resultant crime, overcrowded public schools, and scarce jobs.
The struggle over banning motor vehicles from the Great Highway to build a park that has no funding continues. A local lawyer (Matt Boschetto) raises the legal question of the invalid California Coastal Commission’s illegal collusion with our Recreation and Park Department before the November 5, 2024 Election and may file a lawsuit. Retired S.F. Police Commander Rich Corriea, Albert Chow, and Tien Shen of the Sunset and the Richmond Districts lead the effort to recall Supervisor Joel Engardio, sponsor of the legislation, approved narrowly last November but rejected by 64% of his Sunset district’s voters. (About 70% of Richmond District voters also rejected it, but its passage was based on the votes of non-affected residents in Pacific Heights, Telegraph Hill, Nob Hill and Bayview.) Recall proponents must, by May 22, 2025, obtain 10,000 Supervisoral District 4 voter signatures to qualify their petition at the Department of Elections for a probable special election. I’ve signed. Have you? Telephone 415-732-7700 to do so. The campaign Website is: https://www.recallengardio.com. Email is: team@recallengardio.com.
When the Bay Bridge opened in 1937, motorists were charged $0.25 per crossing and were assured tolls would end once the bonds sold to fund it were repaid; you’d cross without a toll.”
Regarding transportation, there’s good news. The MTA director, Jefferey Tumlin, bade riders and taxpayers farewell last month, a New Year present for all. He admits focusing on “basic walkability, bikeability, street safety…”. The Muni concedes, as Karen Cliffe pointed out in the January 3rd Chronicle, that only 16% of San Franciscans are bicyclists, but Tumlin obviously cared less about seniors and disabled people or the motorists whose gasoline taxes built the roads used by bicyclists who paid nothing.
Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which never lost on schemes to fleece toll-payers, has issued a report to the state legislature revealing questionable spending of $4,500,000,000 emanating from Regional Measure 3, which nine Bay counties’ voters approved in 2018. Beginning January 1, 2025, tolls on the seven state-owned bridges over San Francisco Bay jumped from $7 to $8. On the Golden Gate Bridge, you pay $9.25 if you use Fast-Trak and $9.50 if you don’t. When the Bay Bridge opened in 1937, motorists were charged $0.25 per crossing and were assured tolls would end once the bonds sold to fund it were repaid; you’d cross without a toll. By 2030, tolls on state-owned bridges will rise to $10.50. The Golden Gate Bridge District toll payers also support its bus system instead of compelling the member counties (Del Norte, Mendocino, Napa, Sonoma, Marin and S.F.) to pay for transit used mainly by them to commute into the city. MTC owes nearly $10,000,000,000 for bonds it sold from 2001 for public transit, not for bridge upkeep. MTC’s original purpose was to distribute federal and state transportation money to Bay Area Transit projects and entities. It’s now claiming a 2026 effort to increase taxes for BART and other transit agencies that can’t generate fares sufficient to function as they did pre-Covid 19. Another toll increase of $2.50 obtained from 50 cent raises each year from 2026 to 2030, supposedly for maintenance and rehabilitation of 7 bridges, constitutes hoodwinking of voters and taxpayers.
The next hoodwinking of daily and other travelers to San Francisco could be a “congestion tax.” New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority claims it needs $15,000,000,000 annually for subway repairs and concocted last summer a tax not new to Bay Area commuters from the 1970s when then-Supervisor Dianne Feinstein proposed such levy on commuters to San Francisco. Fortunately, then-Mayor Joseph L. Alioto, who’d have to sign such an ordinance, stopped Di-Fi in her tracks. History repeats. The N.Y.C. vehicle commuters would’ve been paying in between $15 and $36 for driving into Manhattan below 60th Street starting in June 2024. New Jersey’s Democratic Gov. (Phil Murphy) filed lawsuits to prevent it. Then, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul, also a Democrat, stopped it unexpectedly. One journalist (Daniel Hemmingen, Wall Street Journal) dubbed it “the demise of governance” in New York City. Why can’t Californians, including San Franciscans, stage tax revolts?
Abraham Lincoln’s birthday is February 12th. On the 150th anniversary thereof in 1959, Carl Sandburg began his address to a joint session of Congress: “Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is hard as a rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect.” We should be so lucky in today’s White House.
Quentin Kopp is a former San Francisco supervisor, state senator, SF Ethics Commission member, president of the California High Speed Rail Authority governing board and retired Superior Court judge.
February 2024
