EmPAC Folds Up Tent: Last Vestige of the Emeryville Chamber of Commerce Collapses

The Once Mighty EmPAC Quietly Folds

News Analysis
The Political Action Committee known as EmPAC, used for more than a decade by Emeryville's right wing to consolidate and expand its political power, has quietly folded last week, ending the last vestige of the recently closed Emeryville Chamber of Commerce and bringing to a close an era of runaway development for the town. The termination of EmPAC ends speculation about whether the once powerful and widely recognized election game changer would continue on without its Chamber of Commerce progenitor and partner.  After the death of the Chamber of Commerce in August and with the rolling up of EmPAC, the business community in Emeryville is now left without any official local lobbying capacity and without a way to effectively and clandestinely influence City Council elections.

The Chamber of Commerce invented EmPAC many years ago as a way for businesses and especially developers to secretly donate to City Council candidates of their choice.  Before EmPAC, out-of-town developers with development proposals impending would have to give directly to the candidates of their choice at election time but rival candidates could and did make use of the donations by publicly 'outing' the contributors to draw votes away from the Chamber's candidate.  In response, the Chamber introduced EmPAC.
EmPAC made large corporate political campaign contributions in Emeryville much harder to trace in a direct way.  As a consequence, EmPAC was used in every election to funnel lots of money to their candidates and in so doing, the outcomes of many elections were presumably changed.
The left wing side in Emeryville has never made use of a Political Action Committee it should be noted, probably because their candidates generally receive small donations from Emeryville residents exclusively and as a consequence, there's no need for attempting to hide anything.

It has been widely reported the rise of the resident activist group RULE brought great difficulties for the powerful and secretive Chamber of Commerce and EmPAC and grassroots democratic electioneering helped spell its end.  With election season starting in a few months in Emeryville and given EmPAC's rousing past success however, the termination of EmPAC does not preclude a new right wing PAC from rising up to replace it if developers and the business community so deem it.

The Alameda County Registrar of Voters received the 410 form officially disbanding EmPAC on September 3rd and Chamber members Jason Crouch and John Gooding were listed as assistant treasurer and principal officer respectively.  Both those men have been heavily involved in Chamber and EmPAC business over the years including an unsuccessful attempt in 2005 to defeat Measure C, Emeryville's 'living wage for hotel workers' ordinance, an election that cost the group some $140,000.

The Ignominious End of the Once Mighty EmPAC
Will its demise bring a rise of transparency?
Will developers and businesses now donate to City Council
candidates directly and openly like everybody else?

The Emeryville Chamber of Commerce, Dead at 29

The Chamber of Commerce 1986-2015

Private Power Hegemon Lorded Public Policy
For 29 Years in Emeryville

News Analysis
Last month, the Emeryville Chamber of Commerce, a private company, finally packed it in and closed up shop for good after a storied and controversial 29 year run representing business interests at City Hall out of their publicly funded Harlan Street storefront headquarters.  The end for the business lobbying group has been a long time coming and last month's closure of the organization's website was really just a formality, a final turning off of the lights and the shutting of the door for the once powerful and hegemonic private controller of City Hall.
Although it has been out of power for some time and it hasn't been in the news of late, back in the day, the Chamber ruled this city; its vision for Emeryville carried out to a 'T' by a compliant City Council majority it hand selected and funded via its own political action committee, EmPAC.  So complete was the Chamber's power in its hay day, virtually the entire cityscape as one sees it now is attributable in one way or another to this private organization, it's political power and its non-democratically elected Board of Directors directing the decision makers at City Hall to make the town as they saw fit.  The story of the Emeryville Chamber of Commerce, its rise and its fall from power over the last thirty years is synonymous with the story of Emeryville over the last thirty years.  For better or for worse, the Chamber's history is our history.

The Salad Days
And what a history it's been; at its peak the Chamber got its agenda taken up at private closed door regularly scheduled weekly meetings with our City Manager.  The content of these meetings at the people's hall were never made public and the pubic was decidedly not allowed in.  The Chamber enjoyed a great deal of public largess showered upon it from the City Council including perpetual free rent in the City owned storefront on Harlan Street, and a $40,000 yearly stipend paid by the taxpayers to produce the the Chamber's glossy newsletter and pay office staff.  In addition to pushing the Chamber's agenda, the newsletter, sent to every Emeryville household, was used to elect the Chamber's Council members and push back against the odd Council member not toting the Chamber's line.  The Chamber years were the go-go years for developers in our town and the Chamber's philosophy of putting the developers in the driver's seat by directing the City Council to never say NO to any proposed development, brought us the built city we have today.

But now Emeryville moves forward, without a central organizing business advocate at the helm.  A different city with different values and a different built environment is likely to be the result.

With the demise of the Chamber of Commerce, the business community in Emeryville is not left unrepresented by lobbyists it should be noted.  As the Chamber's star began to fall, local businesses swapped out the Chamber for a host of other business lobbying firms around the region; notably the California Association of Realtors, the California Restaurant Association, the Bay Area Council and others.  Those who may worry that business won't get a fair hearing can rest at ease however because business lobbying continues, unabated in City Hall, with or without the Chamber of Commerce.

The Chamber Is Born
The Emeryville Chamber of Commerce started when a local businessman, Ken Bukowski, found himself aced out of the sole business lobbying group in Emeryville at the time, the Emeryville Industries Association.  "The Industries Association was an old boys network for big business" Mr Bukowski told the Tattler.  "If they didn't like you, you were out, also I ran a small business, not something they were very interested in" added Mr Bukowski, who later went on to become a long time Emeryville City Councilman.  The powerful Industries Association was allied with then Police Chief John LaCoste, a corrupt patronage machine boss who ran Emeryville like Tammany Hall and the Association was not adverse to using their might to run over opposition Council candidates. Bukowski said he thought a business advocacy group shouldn't be so exclusive and shouldn't operate in such an overtly political manner and after the Industries Association ran a major hit piece against such an opposing Council member, Stuart Flashman in special election, Ken decided to start his own business advocacy group.  "They called Stuart a Berkeley radical leftist and they helped tip the scales for a LaCoste candidate Tom Fox, who ended up beating Flashman by 13 votes" Mr Bukowski said.

Ken's group, the Emeryville Chamber of Commerce, let anyone join, the mirror opposite of the exclusive Emeryville Industries Association, "I imagined it to be for businesses large and small and also for Emeryville residents.  I saw it as an opportunity to bring the business community and the residents together" he said of the fledgling Chamber.  Ken himself won a City Council seat in 1987, after which he resigned from the Chamber Board.   In what must have been a moment of schadenfreude for Councilman Bukowski, the rise of the new and popular Chamber of Commerce meant the demise of the old Industries Association; they folded and were never heard from again.

Meet The New Boss
Local political consultant and power broker John Gooding took over at the Chamber with Councilman Bukowski's resignation and took action to change the group to something more resembling the Industries Association,  "The first thing Gooding did was re-write the Chamber's Mission Statement getting rid of the residents" Mr Bukowski said.  "He got the City to start supporting the Chamber and they lost all independence."  The City was running the powerful Redevelopment Agency and the Chamber was plugged into that, Mr Bukowski noted.  "They [the Chamber] pretty much stopped representing small businesses after that.  They started charging much higher fees at Chamber mixers, acing out Emeryville's small businesses" he said.

After the Chamber hitched its wagon to the City, the end was only a matter of time as it turned out.  First the Redevelopment Agency was taken down by a mandate from Governor Jerry Brown who said these RDA's across the State had moved beyond their initial useful role and had become huge boondoggles who's real purpose was to funnel money to connected developers.  The ending of the Emeryville RDA was a major blow to the Chamber.

Enter the Emeryville Tattler
The Chamber newsletter promoting candidates and Measures while tearing down others all on the public dime (rather $40,000) was a bridge too far for the Tattler.  We did several stories and editorials on this unethical corruption of the public interest.  The stories resonated with the public and the Council came under pressure to delete the newsletter funding which they finally did.  The City started its own electronic newsletter except they have omitted the overt politicking of the Chamber newsletter.  Chamber insiders have noted the demise of the newsletter quickened the demise of the Chamber.

After the loss of the Emeryville RDA and the funding of its newsletter, what followed was devastating for the Chamber; the election of a new progressive City Council majority and the rise of the citizen's activist group Residents United for a Livable Emeryville (RULE).  Shortly after the November 2014 election, the new Council majority took action to end the Chamber's free money gravy train from City Hall.  The private business would have to sink or swim on its own.  Shortly after, Chamber CEO and president Bob Canter, a Martinez resident, folded his tent and decamped to Florida.

RIP
During its day the Chamber operated much like the earlier Emeryville Industries Association; they used their publicly funded newsletter to try to take down Council members they didn't like (Greg Harper, John Fricke, Shilen Patel among them) and support Council members they liked (Nora Davis, Kurt Brinkman, Dick Kassis and Ruth Atkin among them).  They leveraged their City Council majority for support of favored developers and projects, they fought against City projects like Councilman Fricke's Adeline Street bike facilities (changing the street from four vehicle lanes to two lanes with bike lanes on the sides), they fought against Measure C (the Emeryville Living Wage for Hotel Workers).   They also fought against removing Emeryville's notorious business tax cap, a regressive taxation that provides for Emeryville's largest businesses to pay taxes at a much lower rate than small businesses.  They even used the taxpayer funded newsletter to urge passage of various California propositions, notably Proposition 16, a PG&E backed initiative that would have made it all but impossible for municipalities to fund their own power companies like neighboring Alameda Power and Light.

The Emeryville Chamber of Commerce may rise again someday, having sown the seeds of a rebirth.   Virtually none of the new housing the Chamber fought for over the years is for families, a demographic arguably not amenable to the Chamber's vision of Emeryville, rather much of the new housing that has been built is generally for a more libertarian set; tech workers, a demographic much more naturally allied with the Emeryville Chamber of Commerce.

RULE: Resident Activist Group Supplants Chamber of Commerce as Premier Emeryville Power Base

RULE Sweeps Election

Historic Council Majority Shift

Residents In, 

Developers/Businesses Out

News Analysis/Opinion

As ballots are being finished counted in the Emeryville election just passed, one organization, the community activist group Residents United for a Livable Emeryville (RULE), has emerged as the clear representative of the resident's interests here having endorsed every winner: both winning Council seats, all three School Board seats, and the hotly contested Measures U&V.  RULE even endorsed a winning candidate only tangentially connected to Emeryville; new State Assemblyman elect Tony Thurman, giving RULE a perfect record of winning endorsements this year, a proverbial run on the table.  But even as the historic election clearly shows how RULE has been prescient, its finger on the pulse of Emeryville,  the organization has been under attack recently, derided as somehow nefarious; made up of "anti-developer ideologues" and a "foaming-at-the-mouth radical left wing organization", charges notable for how far removed they are from the reality of the election outcome.

2009 Rule Sponsored
Town Hall Meeting
More than 100 showed up for
a Community Benefits Agreement
at the Bay Street Mall expansion proposal.

The election results make it clear, what RULE wants the average Emeryville resident wants and that is to create a livable town for ourselves.  And that makes RULE about as center of the road as it gets.  Despite all the name calling, the charges of being too left wing, too radical, RULE as it turns out is only left when viewed from the perspective of the non-voting Chamber of Commerce and their developer/business proxies.  RULE, the election tells us, is left wing radical only insofar as average Emeryville residents are left wing radicals; only as left and radical as wanting a nice place for residents to live in is left and radical.

So why the uptick in all this anti-resident, anti-RULE hostility?  We think a little post election light shining on RULE and its relationship with its would be countervailing force of the Chamber of Commerce is in order.

RULE members themselves are clear about who RULE is and its role in the conflict between the two competing camps, "Emeryville has always been controlled by people who don't live here.  Developers, corporations, big business have run roughshod over the city for decades, with the blessing of the city's top planners and managers, who don't live here, the leaders of our Chamber of Commerce, who don't live here, and a City Council that puts business interests before everything else," said Lillian Schroth, RULE co-founder and editor of The Secret News.  "RULE is about changing all that.  RULE's goal is to put the power in the hands of the people, the residents, where it belongs."

Modern Emeryville has been shaped in a cauldron with these two competing adjunct powers: the exclusive Chamber of Commerce, representing business/developer interests versus the open to all and democratic RULE, representing the resident's interests.  The two groups interface with City Hall by helping elect City Council members of their liking and by lobbying for policy friendly to their interests.  This twin-pole power sharing relationship has been up until now, asymmetrical; the Chamber of Commerce has permanently elected and held the critical three vote majority of Council members and as a consequence has had far more clout in shaping our town, with RULE only serving to elect a stubborn minority of resident friendly Council members over the years.  This condition delivered us the town as it is and it's responsible for our reputation of being a developer and business friendly locus.

The asymmetry is manifest in both our built environment and in our municipal code.

RULE co-sponsored the
Woodfin Hotel boycott 
A march stretched from the
hotel to City Hall, the largest protest
in Emeryville history.

Most of what you see when you look around Emeryville is the constructed expression of the will of the Chamber/developer nexus; the low slung suburban style shopping malls, the all rental studio and one bedroom drive-in drive-out apartment buildings and the lowest ratio of park and open space to residents of any city in the East Bay.   As of now, there is very little that can be identified as RULE delivered infrastructure; a park here, a locally serving worker owned bakery there, some funny purple signs and lines of paint on asphalt directing bicycles.

The power of the Chamber of Commerce is also manifest in Emeryville's municipal code with it's extreme deference to developers and businesses.  One only needs to look to our radically business friendly tax code to see this; business impact fees set so low that residents have to take up the slack in the form of City Hall subsidies, to ultra low business license tax rates, to our unprecedented and regressive business tax cap which allows Emeryville's biggest business to pay at an even lower rate (at the expense of our smaller businesses).

But all this, as they say, is about to change (business taxes already have begun to change).

After this last election day, the long-standing paradigm of an entrenched and strong Chamber of Commerce business/developer advocacy and a marginal and weak RULE resident advocacy has been flipped.  With RULE having secured a 3-2 majority on the Council in the election, Emeryville will now be governed by progressives for the first time in its 118 year history.

RULE has never had the money to fund their candidates like the Chamber of Commerce has but RULE does have the advantage of representing what the residents actually want.  The Chamber always has a heavy lift convincing residents of their 'trickle down' theory of resident benefit; the idea that if we put developers in the drivers seat, let them have their way, somehow it'll all work out to our advantage.  It's the "win-win" argument so often promulgated by the developers.  Nice things, things the residents want "won't pencil out" they say but bear with us, it'll end up as a "win-win".  After the November 4th election, the lift to make that sound reasonable just got heavier for the Chamber of Commerce.

RULE endorsed
Councilwoman Jennifer West
Joined RULE members at
the Woodfin Hotel protest

First They Ignore You...

For years RULE operated at the margins, winning a Council seat here and there, hosting a town hall meeting, pushing for a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) with Bay Street mall developer Madison Marquette.  Slowly the group became emboldened as it chalked up victories.  This year, RULE finally shifted and employed the tactic used to great advantage virtually every election by the right wing; the slate of candidates.

The shift is not something those on the right have taken lightly. The blog the E'Ville Eye, normally content reporting on Emeryville boosterism, restaurants and posting crime statistics, took the opportunity during the election to discredit RULE, panning the idea of a slate, implying it's somehow nefarious and out-of-bounds.  RULE's shift to running a slate of candidates, what blog editor Rob Arias saw as an outrage, was enough for him to tell his readers to voluntarily give up one of their votes on election day.  Mr Arias suggested his readers "bullet vote" for non-RULE candidate John Bauters to counter the RULE slate of Dianne Martinez & Scott Donahue.  Readers were urged to give up their own agency by relinquishing their franchise in order to help Mr Bauters.

In his zeal to discredit RULE, Mr Arias went as far as to tacitly charge the group with fraud because he has determined RULE is not really a community activist group but rather a clandestine Political Action Committee (PAC), a money dispersing political organization that is required to register with the State.  Mr Arias' charge against RULE is baseless but it's interesting to note that the Emeryville Chamber of Commerce actually does operate a PAC known as EmPAC that bundles campaign contributions for City Council candidates favorable to developers and businesses.

The stories piled on from the E'Ville Eye before the election made RULE seem secretive, too anti-developer and too radical for Emeryville.  Mr Arias finally revealed his pro-developer stance when he warned his readers of anti-developer "ideologues" loose in Emeryville, something Mr Bauters, who calls himself a pragmatist, surely is not: "This election may represent the end of what I've referred to as 'The Developer Era' of Emeryville politics, an era divided by ideologues that contend our city has sold out to developers ...[versus] self described pragmatists that think it was a necessary measure to rebuild our city..." Mr Arias said.  That would be unrealistic and dogmatic ideologues with their heads in the clouds that want to build a livable city for the residents versus the common sense pragmatists who believe it's best to put the developers in the driver's seat and let the good tidings trickle down.  The use of the pejorative word "ideologues" by Mr Arias suggests the end of the" developer era" paradigm he describes would be represented by the election of the RULE slate of Martinez/Donahue he suggests, leaving Emeryville unable to rebuild, as it needs to do.  
It would appear Rob Arias is none too fond of RULE.  Indeed, one anonymous source told the Tattler, "Rob wishes RULE would just go away instead of [the retiring] Kurt Brinkman." The anonymous source acknowledges the distinction between RULE and Councilman Brinkman, who is on the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce. 

Early in the election, RULE was a topic of discussion City Council candidate John Bauters had with the Tattler.  Asked why he hadn't sought out RULE, a community activist group that ostensibly would dovetail with his pro-community empowerment and progressive views, Mr Bauters said, "I was told by several people RULE is a foaming at the mouth radical leftist organization" and he explained that's why he has stayed clear of the organization.

RULE  Co-Founder
Judy Timmel
We represent the views 
of many residents.

RULE co-founder Judy Timmel isn't buying that assessment.  Speaking to the mainstream nature of RULE as revealed by the election, she told the Tattler, "Progressive values are the norm, not the exception in the East Bay.  It doesn't make sense that RULE would be portrayed as radical when we represent the views of so many Emeryville residents."

The right wing in Emeryville has long trashed RULE, albeit with greater intensity recently.  We know why they do it.  They do it because they're afraid of RULE.  They do it because RULE works for Emeryville resident's interests, not developers or businesses.  RULE serves as a vexing counterpoint to the right wing 'trickle down' meme.  Like the right wing elite everywhere, they want to keep the charade of the illegitimacy of people power going as long as they can because it's so profitable for them to do it.  They had a very good run in Emeryville.  But now it's developers/businesses out & residents in- sorry guys.
The results of the last election has increased the legitimacy of the resident part of the Emeryville political calculus and put all claims of RULE's illegitimacy to rest. 

Emeryville Residents Warned of Mass Exodus of Business

Businesses: "Unless We Get Everything We Want We're Taking Our Marbles and Leaving"

City Hall: "We Have to Do What Business Says or All Will Be Lost"

Opinion/News Analysis
The record is stuck.  Can somebody move the needle forward?  It keeps repeating itself.
What we refer to is the oft repeated mantra heard year in and year out at City Hall; the call and response followed by the familiar hijacking of public policy for private gain.  It's the old stand-by warning from developers and businesses that they'll....wait for it....pack up and leave unless they get everything they want on whatever relevant proposal is being discussed at City Hall.  The conciliatory reaction always comes from Councilwoman Nora Davis with a second from Councilman Kurt Brinkman; we have to do what developer X says is their response.  Emeryville is in no position to ask for anything good they remind us.  With Councilwoman Ruth Atkin as their third vote, it's been a highly effective formula for delivering the goods to developers and business in Emeryville.  This reputation of ours is earned.

Emeryville: Charter City
The old formula is going to repeat itself this summer.  As concerned Emeryville citizens begin their signature drive to put the proposal before voters that Emeryville become a Charter City on November's ballot, a new paradigm that will permit us to tax businesses like other Bay Area cities do, the Chamber of Commerce will once again join forces with the deep pockets in the corporate community to try to defeat it.  No new parks for us and sidewalk repair must wait, you understand.

We can hear it now, loudly proclaimed, nay screamed this summer and fall: all will be lost if Emeryville becomes a Charter City.  It's going to be in our mailboxes in torrents of professionally designed glossy color flyers.  It's going to be on our answering machines after we come home from work, warning us of the coming apocalypse.  Our dinners will be interrupted this fall; poorly paid young men and women from places other than Emeryville will be warning us in 7:00 PM phone calls.  You may be able to ignore the phone calls but your door will be incessantly knocked on as well.  Behind the door will be an Oakland resident or a Hayward resident telling you how bad it'll be if the Charter City Initiative passes and Emeryville taxes business like other cities do.  They won't tell you they're not from Emeryville and they won't tell you they're being paid to knock on your door and make phone calls but they will assure you they only have your interests at heart.

These well funded scare campaigns rise up every time business is asked to pay their fair share in Emeryville.

We remember the card room plebiscite of 1997, a tax increase for Emeryville gambling parlors where in the Oaks Club, the only such parlor, would be "driven to bankruptcy" we were told if they were required to pay the Bay Area card room average tax rate.  It passed of course, and the Oaks Club is doing just fine....but now paying Emeryville what other card rooms in the Bay Area pay.

Then there was the recent attempt to remove Emeryville's infamous business tax cap, a mechanism that allows Pixar and other large businesses to pay much less taxes than other smaller businesses in town pay.  That voter drive was sabotaged before it even got to the ballot box thanks to Council members Nora Davis and Kurt Brinkman.  It would be the end of Emeryville they assured us after Pixar threatened to leave town if Emeryville voters were allowed to decide about the tax cap.

Of course there was also Measures T & U, a 2004 campaign to get a Community Benefits Agreement in trade for a planned Pixar campus expansion. A YES vote would negate the CBA, give Pixar millions in Emeryville subsidies in cash and property transfers and negate our General Plan and zoning regulations.  Again Pixar was going to leave Emeryville the Chamber of Commerce assured us (right after they spent tens of millions of dollars on their Phase One campus build out).  The NO on T&U simply asked for a Community Benefits Agreement to be entered into, a standard procedure for City Halls outside Emeryville.  But Pixar told us it was an existential threat.  It was a scare tactic that worked; Emeryville rolled over with prompting from Nora Davis, Kurt Brinkman and the Chamber of Commerce, netting Pixar millions of dollars in City Hall subsidies.
It should be noted Pixar, the multi-billion dollar corporation is now paying us $8000 per year in taxes (thanks to the tax cap) the Tattler found out.

We also fondly remember the anti-Measure C campaign of 2005.  It was a lavishly funded campaign to stop Measure C, Emeryville's 'Living Wage for Hotel Workers' ballot initiative.  The campaign, run by Councilwoman Nora Davis and the Chamber of Commerce, assured us all would be lost if Emeryville hotels were forced to pay their workers a couple of dollars more per hour; a living wage. Nora joined with the hotels and scores of other businesses in town to warn us of the dire consequences in store for us.  The Chamber of Commerce even fired up their Political Action Committee (EmPAC) with it's massive war chest of donations from out-of-town businesses to take the fight to the hotel workers.  Hotels would fold up their tents en masse and leave Emeryville we were told.
In the end, Emeryville voters DID pass the living wage for hotel workers, regardless of all the hyperbolic screaming from Nora Davis, the Chamber and their corporate paymasters.
One hotel, Woodfin Suites on Shellmound Street actually did leave town in protest after they lost a bruising court battle to not pay their workers their back wages.  Woodfin was subsequently bought by Hyatt.
The mass exodus of hotels never materialized curiously.  In fact, Emeryville is about to get a brand new hotel, Hyatt Place at Bay Street.  And they're going to pay their workers a living wage.  Tellingly, Nora Davis, her sycophants and the Chamber of Commerce never admitted they were wrong about the consequences of Measure C.
Instead they've begun preparing themselves for the next apocalypse looming this fall for Emeryville.  The Charter City Initiative is coming.  Emeryville voters will be allowed to decide for themselves.  All will be lost people, all will be lost.

Jesus Christ Loses Woodfin Backwages Fight

Woodfin CEO & Christian Evangelical Laments:

In Emeryville It's 

Woodfin Workers: 1, Jesus: 0

Loser

Woodfin Hotels CEO Sam Hardage tries to do the Lord's work.  A self-professed Christian evangelical, he's a member of the Council for National Policy,  a right-wing group pushing what it terms Christian precepts on policy-makers.  It's also why Mr. Hardage fought so hard against Emeryville's 'Living Wage ordinance for Hotel Workers' and then refused to disburse unpaid wages, even after ordered to do so by a 'secular' court.  As a good Christian, Mr. Hardage was presumably following Christ's example. After all Jesus would certainly never have paid His workers what they earned if He had owned a hotel chain back in the day in the Bethlehem/Nazareth metropolitan region.  Mr. Hardage put up a good fight but in the end the Woodfin workers proved more than a match for Sam or Jesus.

Sam Hardage: Works

for Jesus and against

his employees.

The non-profit organization East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE), recently announced that Woodfin workers finally received their back pay, some $125,000 in a negotiated agreement divided among 54 workers.  Woodfin for its part, hired a phalanx of attorneys and fought the workers and the City of Emeryville for four years in an effort to impose upon the employees the moral philosophy of Jesus Christ: that the wealthy dwell upon a mountain of riches and dispatch the less fortunate to penury and pestilence. Mr. Hardage and Woodfin spent an undisclosed sum on their losing cause, a figure likely exceeding what was owed to the hotel maids.  After their bruising loss, they have indicated they now intend on obeying Emeryville's laws.

Nora Davis:

Not too fond of

working families.

Measure C, the ordinance that mandates a living wage for hotel workers in Emeryville was passed by voters and implemented five years ago in December.  During that time, Measure C has delivered a cumulative 1.2 million increase in employee wages. The ordinance increased the pay-rates by up to $5 per hour (most received less), putting up to $5,000 a year into the wallets of working families, helping them make ends meet without relying on public assistance.

Ken Bukowski: He's poor so

why should workers make money?

The Measure was passed by Emeryville voters on November 8, 2005 and was endorsed by the Alameda Labor Council, UNITE HERE Local 2850, Congresswoman Barbara Lee and Assemblywoman Loni Hancock.  54% of Emeryville voters approved Measure C despite $115,000 spent by the Chamber of Commerce and the hotels to defeat it.  Local politicians who worked to defeat the living wage in Emeryville include Council members Nora Davis, Ken Bukowski and Dick Kassis.  Political operative and Chamber of Commerce political action committee (EMPAC) chairman John Gooding also joined in the fight against the living wage.  See Tattler story (May 18).

Another loser: John Gooding,
strangely he works for Barbara Lee
and against living wages.

Mr. Hardage, in addition to spreading Jesus' word, has sat on many conservative councils and public policy think-tanks including the Council for National Policy, an umbrella organization for social conservative activists described by the New York Times as a "little known group of the most powerful conservatives in the country".  Mr. Hardages' colleagues on the CNP board included Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.   Mr. Hardage also sits on the board at the Adam Smith Institute, an anti-government libertarian think tank that is among the most effective groups advocating for privatization of government functions in the United States.  Rounding out the list of powerful appointments is the Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger  appointed State Commission on Judicial Performance.

Mr. Hardage was the Republican nominee for Governor of Kansas in 1982 and was twice an elite 'Bush Pioneer,' the highest echelon of campaign donors that each bundled contributions of more than $100,000 for former President George W. Bush campaigns.

The impressive political work of Mr. Hardage was joined by our own Emeryville City Council members and Jesus in their fight against living wages for Emeryville workers.  

Patronage Politics At Play: Opinion

Bukowski, Davis & Brinkman Play Politics With Public Money

Opinion

An anonymous Tattler commenter got it right: The recent vote by council members Ken Bukowski, Nora Davis and Kurt Brinkman to extend public money to restart the Chamber of Commerce's newspaper sounds like mutual backscratching.

The newspaper produced by the Chamber, The Emeryville Connection, can't make it on its own.  The last issue came out in October of 2009 just before the last Emeryville election where they strongly endorsed Chamber member Kurt Brinkman and Planning Commissioner Frank Flores.  They called subsequently elected council hopeful Jennifer West, "inexperienced" and "against growth" and urged voters to reject her.

Just that offensive and those endorsements alone should automatically disqualify the Chamber of Commerce and their Emeryville Connection from receiving any public money.  But the Emeryville Connection also strongly endorsed the re-election of Ken Bukowski and Nora Davis in the previous election while they ran a campaign of disinformation and smears against challenger Shilen Patel.

In addition, Mr Bukowski, Ms Davis and Mr Brinkman all took election campaign money from the Chamber of Commerce's political action committee before they voted to grant the Chamber free rent at their headquarters at 3980 Harlan Street, a property leased by the City. The fact that the Chamber of Commerce even has a political action committee should bar the organization from taking public money.

Distressingly, the one year contract with the City voted on by the three council members will enable the Chamber and the Emeryville Connection to smear some candidates and endorse other candidates for council, all with public money in the November 2011 election,  a point undoubtedly not lost on the Chamber.

This all smacks of old fashioned patronage politicking, perhaps not illegal but it certainly lacks transparency.  We call on these three council members to call back this arrangement with the Chamber of Commerce.  We feel it is OK for the City to spend money to try to attract business to town but funding a partisan newspaper produced by an organization so heavily involved in Emeryville elections is beyond the pale.  We say this public money for the start-up of the defunct Emeryville Connection is dirty politics.  The people of Emeryville deserve a better kind of politics than this.