Newsom accepts more than two dozen resignation letters
By Steven T. Jones
In the week leading up to Mayor Gavin Newsom's Jan. 8 second-term inauguration ceremony, he accepted more than two dozen of the resignation letters he demanded Sept. 10, 2007, from his senior staff.
"Today I am proud to introduce a new team of 27 people that is a blend of fresh talent, extensive policy expertise, and proven experience in government," Newsom wrote in a prepared statement released at 5 p.m. on Jan. 4, a Friday, which is not considered the spot in the news cycle for "proud" announcements.
"Other than the very unfortunate firing of Susan Leal from the [general manager job at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission] — who, by all accounts, has been doing a good job — the rest of the changes are fairly perfunctory and far from the bold or audacious move he promised," Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin told us.
Yet the changes — which the Guardian discusses in more detail in Editor's Notes, the editorial page, and our politics blog — do seem to signal that Newsom is placing a high value on personal loyalty and political pragmatism.
Some examples are the promotions of inner-circle members Mike Farrah (new director of the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services), Ben Rosenfield (controller), and Wade Crowfoot (now the newly created director of climate protection initiatives) and the hiring of former United States attorney Kevin Ryan, a conservative Republican, to head the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice.
But gone are Leal and Metropolitan Transportation Agency board member Leah Shahum, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition director who has chided the mayor for not supporting alternative transportation. "The Mayor's Office was none too pleased that the SFBC did not endorse him," she told us, noting that she is urging Newsom to fill the spot with another advocate for sustainable transportation. "I hope this is not a sign of what's to come."
-- "I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." – Che Guevara