City, State, Federal: Could things get worse?
• • • • • • • • • • May 2025 • • • • • • • • • •
The author remains anonymous, but it could’ve been President Trump or his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, only a mother could love, who declared: “In my whole life I’ve only had one client— My Career.
Last month, the University of California changed course and abolished its 75-year practice of requiring a sworn national loyalty oath of all faculty members and all State of California employees in general. It was the UC faculty that the law was named after, the legislator, Harold Levering, who had introduced the bill in the aftermath of Wisconsin’s Republican US Senator Joseph McCarthy’s attacks on academic and federal employees he suspected were Soviet Union agents and supporters. The Levering Act forced a court challenge as an unconstitutional abridgement of state employees’ constitutional rights. One union labeled it a “political test” for employment, and 31 UC tenured professors refused to sign such an oath. They were fired. It’s 75 years later, and the UC Board of Regents, led by San Franciscan Janet Reilly of Seacliff, whose husband, Clint Reilly, once ran for S.F. mayor and is publisher of the San Francisco Examiner. For many years, the Board of Regents resolved that “no political test shall ever be considered in the appointment and promotion of any faculty member or employee.” That expression of freedom was altered this century with a policy statement based upon “a commitment to diversity and excellence,” with an order to use “pro-active steps to seek out candidates committed to diversity, equity and inclusion.” The result required faculty applicants aspiring for promotion to show superiors “diversity statements.” The purpose was attention to African-American, Hispanic and Native American students, or “communities,” one of today’s favorite catchwords. It was the Levering Act in reverse.
As H.L. Menchen once noted: “For every complex problem, there’s a solution that is simple, neat and wrong.”
Now, however, the worm (and US president) has turned. President Trump is on the warpath over “diversity, equity and inclusion” in government, corporate America, and academia. He vows the end of US government subsidies for following “DEI” (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and scares the bejesus out of UC urgents and their faculty unions. What did UC’s Board of Regents do last month? It discards “DEI” which was always a political loyalty act by barons of higher learning. Good riddance!
Meanwhile, local politics, stimulated by public transit academics and planners, proclaim BART, ridden by operational deficits and declines in farebox revenue recovery, considers borrowing money (as in a districtwide general bond issue) to build another lavish station at 13th Avenue and East Eighth Street in East Oakland. BART covered its 2025-2026 deficit with federal and state subsidies. But, in 2026-2027, it predicts a $378.7 million operating deficit. I expect realism will influence the BART general manager and elected directors to forget that crushing ambition.
City Hall continues to absorb and corrupt. And conducts more government than is justified. I spoke thusly about the establishment of a Commission on the Status of Women in 1978 as a Supervisor. I argued it was an unneeded taxpayer cost. It spawned a full and costly City Hall Department on the Status of Women. What happened in late March of this year? Its worthless status was burnished by former Mayor London Breed’s appointment of Kimberly Ellis, a failed democratic party state chair candidate, in 2020. Her 2024 salary was $230,000 per annum.
What does she do? She turned her supposed responsibilities into a political machine – for herself. She was paid $10,000 in 2023 by Power PAC, which sponsors Black political candidates, without receiving permission from her commission members at City Hall to hold a second job, as required by city and county law. (After almost two months, and no action against her had yet happened.) She gave two political entities no-bid contracts costing taxpayers almost $1 million. The Commission on the Status of Women’s seven members all voted to let her do so.
She gave some organization called “She the People” money to film a campaign about four S.F. female politicians. If these aren’t crimes, they should be. Meanwhile, we still haven’t received a report from the 2024 voter-approved committee to reduce city and county boards and commissions to 65 from more than 130.
Finally, on April 23, the Commission voted 7-0 to dismiss Ellis.
My Park Merced inside reports the company owning it defaulted on its $1.5 billion loan in January and February. A federal court has now ordered a receiver placed in charge. Its vacancy remains about 25% even with homeless people placed in some apartments. Yet the YIMBYs and State Sen. Scott Wiener continue to claim San Francisco needs more housing, destroying neighborhood areas like the Upper Great Highway closure which must be reopened to motor vehicles whose operators pay the gasoline taxes that constructed the famous Great Highway.
US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., out of Santa Monica, not Boston, announced last month he will advise the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to cease recommending fluoridation in local water nationwide. He dubs it an “industrial waste.” Readers may recall then-Supervisor Wendy Nelder arguing San Francisco should stop fluoridating Hetch-Hetchy water in the early 1980s. Other supervisors and I opposed and prevented it from happening. As H.L. Menchen once noted: “For every complex problem, there’s a solution that is simple, neat and wrong.”
Fear not over aid to illegal immigrants in New York City, however, because the Department of Homeland Security fired the chief financial officer and three other Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) employees who authorized $59 million to pay for the housing of illegal immigrants in plush NYC hotels. That tax money is intended for disaster relief to Americans. Congress and then-President Biden had enacted authorizing legislation in 2023 and 2024. Illegal aliens in New York City have enjoyed immunity from the law, surpassing even California.
And, maybe, draft-dodging can achieve acclaim – if you’re a one-time US president, that is. The US Navy announced it’ll name one of its next aircraft carriers the USS William J. Clinton after former President Clinton, who avoided the draft during the Vietnam War by becoming a Rhodes Scholar in Great Britain. That’ll probably work for Trump. President Gerald R. Ford, remarked upon taking the oath of office following Richard Nixon’s resignation (forced by his misconduct) as follows: “I believe that truth is the glue that holds government together, not only our government but civilization itself. That bond, though strained, is unbroken at home and abroad.” (August 9, 1974).
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.
May 2024
