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Dick Spotswood

MARIN and Sonoma's new state Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, just threw three bills in the legislative hopper.

All are substantial. They nicely balance the interests of the political coalition that elected Levine and that he'll need as he goes forward.

The boldest of the three is AB 1163. It's a revival of one of Gov. Jerry Brown's famed 12 points for public employee pension reform that was not included in last year's pension reform deal.

The legislation restructures CalPERS, the California Public Employees' Pension System. It authorizes a ballot measure that, if passed, adds the governor's finance director and two other independent gubernatorial appointees with "financial expertise" and who have no personal, family, financial or organizational connections to CalPERS.

Despite being very much an insider's bill, it would significantly reform CalPERS by diluting the control of public employee unions when setting the agency's all-important assumptions upon which public pension financing is based.

AB 1163 is Levine's salute to Marin pension reformers who used their clout last November to defeat Levine's opponent, Assemblyman Michael Allen, a former public employees' union staffer.

At the same time, it's a subtle message to the famously frugal Brown that Levine is an ally. It's also a tip of the hat to anti-union Republicans who voted for him over Allen.

AB 745 is a mild reform of the one-size-fits-all housing mandates issued by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). The legislation acknowledges Levine's support from Marin homeowners determined to preserve local planning.

The seemingly innocuous bill would authorize a city or county to request, in the case of Marin, that ABAG adjust a mandated housing density if it is inconsistent with a jurisdiction's existing housing density.

Big deal, you say.

ABAG sets housing densities in its controversial One Bay Area Plan. Say Novato or Corte Madera disagrees. AB 745 simply allows the aggrieved jurisdiction to appeal the mandate to ABAG, the very same agency that made the decision in the first place.

Who would oppose such a timid compromise? The answer: housing activists, organized labor who builds those structures and developers who profit mightily from high- density housing.

Former Assemblyman Jared Huffman introduced similar legislation and it got nowhere.

Levine simultaneously submitted AB 746, prohibiting smoking inside multi-unit housing. The proposal has a good chance of passage.

It will appeal to smoking prohibitionists concerned about secondhand smoke, most of whom are progressive Democrats.

Expect opposition from the notoriously unpopular tobacco industry and libertarians.


GIVE Supervisor Steve Kinsey credit for not sitting on the fence. The supervisor was a featured speaker at the protest rally before last week's town hall organized by Citizen Marin.

That's the Marin homeowner association collaborative upset at ABAG's One Bay Area Plan for high-density housing.

Unlike San Rafael Mayor Gary Phillips, Mill Valley Councilwoman Stephanie Moulton-Peters, Novato Councilwoman Pat Eklund and more than 400 Marinites, Kinsey didn't take the opportunity to actually attend the town hall.

As seen on YouTube, he did have time to address the 50 or so protesters, denouncing the town hall organizers.

Some protesters held up inflammatory "End apartheid in Marin" posters and placards supporting One Bay Area.

Speaking of the pickets, Kinsey told them "this group stands with me."

If Kinsey had stayed for the town hall, he would have heard the featured speaker, Mill Valley's Bob Silvestri, proclaim, "We don't need less affordable housing, we need more."

Silvestri's point was that the homes need to be provided in a far better and more environmentally sensitive manner than the brutal high-density model so favored by ABAG, Kinsey and the housing industry.
