| Three wishes, Dianne! |
Whatever David Chiu needs in life -- a faster bike, a more stylish helmet -- he doesn't require assertiveness training. The rookie supervisor and president of the board last month audaciously engineered a motion that would allow the supes to shoot down the Municpal Transportation Authority's budget. Yesterday, he audaciously carried it off -- and he notes that, yes, he has lined up the seven votes required to send MTA's budget back to the bus barn for tinkering.
The political ramifications here are obvious: In essence, Chiu and a majority of his colleagues have pulled a Twisted Sister on Mayor Twitter -- no, they're not gonna take it anymore.
Mayoral spokesman Nathan Ballard's comments in the Chronicle today painted a doom and gloom scenario: "The supervisors are failing to grasp the big picture. ... If the board rejects the Muni budget, it will result in cuts to health and human services and public safety -- cuts that nobody wants."
Fair enough -- the millions of dollars other city departments have attempted to pillage from Muni via "work orders" will have to come from somewhere -- likely the general fund -- which is the scenario Ballard is foreshadowing. But the spokesman appears to be justifying the wholesale sacking of Muni's finances with the "Save the children, save the children!" defense.
Chiu earlier told SF Weekly -- and reiterated yesterday -- that the current budget was not acceptable because of the unholy trinity of increased fares, decreased service, and ballooning work orders allowing other departments to use Muni as a till. Yesterday he called it a "triple-whammy." In my family, we have a less polite expression: "You can't shit on my head and then tell me to wear it like a hat."
But, really, it's worse than that. Muni's budget not only shat upon our heads and then told us to wear it like a hat -- it demanded compensation for the hat.
