SF Business Times : “Short Circuit SF’s Costly Bid For Public Power” - No On H

Today, the San Francisco Business Times announced its opposition to Prop. H - the multibillion dollar power grab by the Board of Supervisors. It joins the San Francisco Examiner, Asian Week, and a coalition of citizens, leaders, labor and business groups opposed to Prop. H.

The Business Times took a look at the text of the measure and found its promises to be long on talk and short on specifics , and criticized the disingenuous tactics of the measure’s supporters.

The editorial took direct aim at the claims made about “clean energy” by the measure’s supporters, saying “Contrary to the imaginings of public power backers, it isn’t the dreaded profit motive that’s getting in their way. It’s that too few large-scale renewable power production facilities are up and running, nor distribution networks to serve them. More renewable power sources will come on line in future years, of course — but at a pace and quantity determined by larger economic realities and technological advances, not by the fiat of city voters. In other words, wishing for more renewable power doesn’t make it so.”

The Business Times also criticized the dishonesty of Prop. H’s supporters, who have used the cover of “clean energy” to try and pass an open-ended power grab by City Hall politicians : “Perhaps worst of all is that public power proponents just aren’t playing straight with voters. Technically, all voters are authorizing is a “study,” which doesn’t require a charter amendment.
Giving San Francisco supervisors the power to push the button on public power and issue bonds without further approval does — and that’s what voters would be giving them. What’s worse, it’s broadly worded enough that municipal madness could be extended to gas, cable, telephone or broadband services should supervisors choose.”

The Business Times read Prop. H and like SPUR, and thousands of San Francisco voters, didn’t like what they saw when they found out the facts. Prop. H’s supporters can’t get their power grab passed honestly, so they’ve resorted to shady (and sometimes disgusting) campaign tactics to sneak a multi-billion dollar boondoggle past the voters.

On the Web:
http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2008/10/13/editorial1.html