The independent and non-partisan counsel’s office reviewed  legislation governing how the commission, which also operates as the Bay Area Toll Authority, can spend that money, and said: ”We think that the purchase and operation of a regional governance co-location facility is not among the purposes that BATA or MTC is authorized to engage in or promote.”

The opinion says the Main Street building “substantially exceeds the administration office needs related to toll bridge project and program administration.” It says the Legislature could pass a law requiring the commission to rescind the purchase.

“I think they should sell the building because what they did was illegal,” said state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, a former member of the commission who requested the review and has opposed the building purchase.

A state audit, requested by a legislative audit committee at DeSaulnier’s suggestion, is pending, and expected in June.

MTC officials declined to comment, saying only that they received the 10-page opinion late and were carefully reviewing its conclusions.

The commission voted in  October to buy the 1942 building for $93 million, and to spend up to $74 million in improvements. The Bay Area Air Quality Management  District and Bay Conservation and Development Commission have stated their intentions to move into the shared building.

Article source: http://blog.sfgate.com/cityinsider/2012/05/07/mtc-real-estate-deal-questioned/

California’s 56 bar pilots provide a vital service, boarding commercial ships as they approach a buoy west of the Golden Gate Bridge and guiding them through dicey Bay Area waters. A giant sandbar in the bay gives bar pilots their name and helps make the zone one of the most treacherous ports in North America.

Bar pilots also make a handsome living, splitting the spoils of a state-sanctioned monopoly that earns them about $400,000 a year each – costs borne by the shipping industry. They take business-class trips to France for training, which they sometimes combine with European vacations. And they work seven days on, seven days off – enough for one full-time pilot to spend more time working as a real estate agent, according to a legislative staff report [PDF].

This week, a legislative oversight committee considered some reforms to the state’s Board of Pilot Commissioners for the Bays of San Francisco, San Pablo and Suisun, which licenses and regulates the pilots. The goal of the Joint Legislative Sunset Review Committee is to ensure that various government agencies are “still necessary and that they’re running as efficiently and effectively as they can,” said the committee’s chairwoman, Assemblywoman Alyson Huber, D-Lodi. The committee will vote on staff recommendations at its next hearing.

Committee staff noted that pilots continue to fly to France in business class, an expense that was criticized in a 2009 state audit as potentially “a misuse of state resources.” The training, which costs $17,600 per pilot plus about $3,000 and up for travel, is paid for by surcharges on the shipping industry.

Some pilots spent extra time in Europe, going through Rome or Munich, according to staff. The report noted that the latest business-class tickets were free upgrades but recommended that “to avoid future concerns about propriety” the board use the state’s standard system for purchasing tickets.

Board President K. Michael Miller, however, offered a full-throated defense of business-class travel at the hearing.

“At some point, you just gotta be a stand-up guy and you gotta say what you think, even if it ruffles some feathers,” he said. “And what I’m going to say is going to ruffle some feathers.”

“Sending someone on a 16-hour transit, through eight time zones, sitting up in what I like to call ‘pretzel class,’ in economy, guarantees that that pilot is going to be fatigued when he or she gets off the plane at the other end.”

Miller said it was a “safety issue” to have a pilot tired from traveling go back to work in California. He noted that international business travel includes seats that recline all the way.

“If you like to sleep in a fetal position, which I do, you can bring your knees up to your chest,” he said. ”You get the opportunity for rest, and it mitigates the effects on your circadian rhythms.”

Committee staff also recommended that the board competitively bid out its training contract, as there are a few other training facilities besides the one in France. Staff noted that when the board put out a bid for 2011 training, it included qualifications that only the French facility could meet.

“Everyone seems focused on our training in France, because that’s a grabber, because it’s France,” board Executive Director Allen Garfinkle acknowledged at the hearing.

Garfinkle said he hadn’t meant to exclude other bidders. He noted that of the two U.S. training facilities, the one in Louisiana had been closed and the one in Massachusetts was small and geared to military training.

“We are looking around for the best facility we can, ’cause you want the best training for the pilots in the bay that you can get,” Garfinkle said.

Garfinkle said in an interview that the board signed a two-year training contract, instead of five years, because “we’re looking at the other providers more closely.”

The most important committee recommendation, according to the shipping industry, is to implement rules making sure pilots don’t maneuver ships while overly fatigued. Currently, voluntary standards for 12-hour rest periods between jobs are often violated, according to the staff report.

“It’s important to us … that when a pilot gets assigned to our vessel that we have confidence that that pilot is as well rested and well trained as any other pilot,” Mike Jacob of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association said in an interview. “What we would like is to have enforceable and publicly adopted standards.”

A rigid rule, however, could result in perfectly capable pilots being prohibited from boarding a ship, slowing down port business, said Miller, of the Board of Pilot Commissioners. 

“I’d rather have the pilots figure out how it’s going to work because they know their business,” he said.

Committee staff also recommended putting an administrative law judge in charge of contentious hearings on rate increases, which raise surcharges on shippers. Bar pilots split their profits, so rate increases lead to higher pay. A battle over compensation last year ended with the Legislature nixing a rate increase recommended by the pilot board.

The issue popped up again this month with dueling op-eds between pilots and shippers in Capitol Weekly.

“What we find offensive is for them to say, ‘For us to safely move your ship, we need more money,’ ” Jacob said.  

But Mitch Zak, spokesman for the San Francisco Bar Pilots Association, emphasized that the job is extremely tricky and that the pilots are in an elite class of their own. He said pilots sometimes guide ships as far as Sacramento and Stockton.

“Imagine tipping the Empire State Building over, packing it full of these containers … and then having to steer that in a very narrow channel with all the currents,” Zak said. “It is definitely one of the most difficult professions.”

“Even though we’re disappointed in the stance of the shippers,” he added, “we’re not going to let that affect our focus, which is the safety of the bay.”

Bar pilots and the board that regulates them faced increased scrutiny after a ship hit the Bay Bridge in 2007, spilling 53,569 gallons of oil. A U.S. Coast Guard investigation blamed the pilot for navigating at an unsafe speed with near-zero visibility and noted that he had health problems.

The state Legislature instituted reforms in the wake of the accident. Still, the Board of Pilot Commissioners remains obscure. Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod, D-Montclair, said at the hearing that before this week, she hadn’t known what a bar pilot actually was. 

Negrete McLeod quipped that bar pilots should get the word out about what they do so that people don’t think they are “pilots that sit at bars.”

Article source: http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/state-looks-spending-regulations-sf-bay-bar-pilots-14931

The commission, the Bay Area’s regional transportation planning and financing agency, voted 8-6, with two members absent, to buy 390 Main St. for $93 million and spend up to $74 million on improvements to the 1942 building. The deal is expected to close today or Friday.

The almost 500,000-square-foot building, constructed as a tank assembly plant and most recently used as a postal center, will be overhauled and turned into a regional government headquarters. In addition to housing the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and its bridge operations division, the Bay Area Toll Authority, the structure will be home to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the Bay Conservation and Development Commission and, possibly, the Association of Bay Area Governments. Part of the building will be leased out.

“It will serve as an excellent regional governance center,” said Jack Broadbent, executive director of the air board.

Joyce Roy, a transit activist who opposed the move, agreed that putting regional agencies in the same building “is going to speed up the process of getting a true metropolitan planning agency in the Bay Area.”

The decision came after hours of testimony and four meetings at which Oakland officials, including Mayor Jean Quan, argued that the commission should keep its offices in their city, preferably by building a glass high-rise downtown. Other critics said the half-mile distance from BART was too much.

The commission first voted to buy the building in July – for $105 million – calling it the best option for a new home that its real estate consultants could find. The decision angered Oakland officials and captured the attention of East Bay legislators who questioned whether it is legal to use bridge toll revenues to buy real estate, some of which will be leased out.

Six weeks later, after state legislators backed a request by Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, for an audit of the legality of using toll money, the commission backed off the decision and appointed a committee to investigate the deal further. Last month, at the committee’s recommendation, the commission voted to bid on the building, then back on the open market. Last week, the bid was accepted. After a 45-minute closed-session meeting Wednesday, the commission voted to buy the property.

Rehabilitation of the building, which will be almost completely gutted then modernized, is expected to take about a year.

Voting to buy the building were Commissioners David Campos, Bill Dodd, Steve Kinsey, Jake Mackenzie, Kevin Mullin, Jim Spering, Scott Wiener and Adrienne Tissier. Opposed were Tom Bates, Dave Cortese, Federal Glover, Mark Green, Scott Haggerty and Amy Rein Worth.

E-mail Michael Cabanatuan at mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page C – 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/12/BA241LGVHF.DTL

In response, Senator Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord), Chair of the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee, issued the following statement:

“MTC is disconnected from those they serve,” said DeSaulnier.  “By refusing to await an independent review by the State Auditor, today MTC became a prime example of what is wrong with government.  MTC needs to be held accountable for their use of toll payer money.  I am also concerned that if MTC is spending reserve revenues for this acquisition, there may not be sufficient funds available for an emergency.”

“MTC has not demonstrated an immediate need to spend $179 million of toll payer funds on a building in San Francisco,” said DeSaulnier.  “After MTC’s behavior I plan on introducing comprehensive legislation next year to drastically overhaul regional governance in the nine county Bay Area region.  Government needs to be more transparent and responsive to the people they serve.”

The Senate Transportation and Housing Committee will also hold hearings this fall to examine MTC’s governance structure and statutory scope of authority.  The Committee’s review may include but not be limited to the following:  (The State Auditor is also scheduled to examine much of this.)

• How did the MTC AdHoc Committee (charged with making a recommendation to the Commission on this deal) do its research to make its recommendations?  Did it meet in public?  If not, why not?  As the Committee took an official vote, was the AdHoc Committee governed by the Brown Act?  If so, how did the AdHoc Committee comply with the Act?
• The promise MTC made with voters to spend excess toll proceeds for transportation improvements:  Is it legal and appropriate for MTC/Bay Area Transportation Authority (BATA) to spend toll revenues on the purchase of an office building?
• Should the Commission have sought legislation to amend the law to provide the authority for this deal?  The Legislature regularly analyzes changes in law to provide specific statutory authority for real property acquisitions and disposal.  Why didn’t MTC/BATA seek such authority for this project and the creation of the Bay Area Headquarters Authority, where it could be fully vetted and debated in public?
• Where did MTC/BATA get the $179 million available for this project? 
• Are there projects that will not be built because MTC/BATA is tying up toll revenues for decades to pay off bonds issued to finance the building? 
• If there are no projects to spend this money on, doesn’t that imply that the tolls are too high and can be lowered? 
• If these are bond proceeds, does that mean MTC/BATA issued too many bonds and are keeping tolls unnecessarily high to support them?

Give us your opinion on this issue….

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Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/incontracosta/detail?entry_id=98585