Power and Reform

I've been really surprised by the amount of controversy a post I made last week has caused. At the end of the post, I noted that several people had "claimed" that Gonzalez had made calls about Aaron Peskin's resolution censoring Joe O'Donoghue and the RBA for their sexist remarks at a Building Inspection Commission hearing. I noted that no one was willing to go on the record about the calls or their contents.

Frankly, since nobody was willing to go on record about the calls, I thought of the paragraph as an interesting aside, as much as anything. I assumed that our readers would rightly treat unsourced, unattributed comments with the skepticism they deserve.

I'm sorry to say that Pat Murphy from the San Francisco Sentinel has been personally attacked over this issue. Ironically, the only person who wrote about the claim and the resulting controversy, and didn't resort to personal, nasty attacks was former Supervisor Matt Gonzalez. So props to Matt for dealing with the issue well.

Meanwhile, a real issue that has been missed in the debate lately is the need for reform at the Department of Building Inspection. When the resolution came up at the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, the club took a position that the Supervisors also need to address the underlying causes for the current struggle. The club will be asking the Board of Supervisors to introduce legislation that will reform the Department, like the measure to reform the Police Department last year.