Assemblymember Matt Haney could be fairly the tree hugger if he merely knew the place to search out one.
The legislator from San Francisco appears to have reprioritized town’s many crises — corresponding to homelessness, drug overdose deaths and a housing scarcity, to call a couple of — by asking Lawyer Basic Rob Bonta final month to launch an investigation into an absence of timber in his district, in response to a letter obtained by The Submit.
Haney, who grew to become the main target of a state political watchdog investigation after blowing $75,000 in marketing campaign cash on boozy sporting occasions, wrote that his constituents lately alerted him to an absence of “important inexperienced infrastructure, particularly avenue timber” in some neighborhoods inside his district, which makes up the japanese half of San Francisco.
In a head-slapping lack of know-how, Haney acknowledged in his letter that many timber aren’t being planted in his japanese San Francisco district as a result of they don’t meet “survivability” standards due, partially, to vandalism.
“This apply raises a important query of whether or not these neighborhoods are successfully being handled as ‘containment zones’ for environmental and social burdens,” he wrote.
Haney, whose district has traditionally included a containment zone for unlawful medicine referred to as The Tenderloin, didn’t instantly reply to The Submit’s request for remark.
Others made conscious of Haney’s letter advised the chair of the state Meeting’s committee on housing is likely to be higher off specializing in extra urgent points.
“It’s simply arduous to take something he does significantly,” mentioned David Latterman, a political analyst in San Francisco. “I’d love extra timber. Timber are good. And he isn’t unsuitable in that there usually are not a ton of timber within the southeast [section of the city]. However then he goes and turns it into an enormous performative difficulty.”
Haney argued in his letter that the shortage of timber in his district might violate SB 1000, a state environmental regulation handed in 2016. He claims that tons of of “tree wells” in his district are sitting empty whereas federal and native funds are being directed to nurture and plant timber in different elements of San Francisco.
A failure to plant extra timber in Haney’s district, which incorporates the Mission and South of Market space, have led to residents paying out of pocket for their very own avenue timber, “successfully subsidizing town’s failure to supply primary environmental well being protections,” he wrote.
It’s unclear how seemingly Bonta is to launch a full-scale investigation into timber. His workplace didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
California’s legal professional basic has been busy combatting the Trump administration in courtroom by submitting a lawsuit at a price of as soon as per week final yr. Bonta additionally would possibly query whether or not state funds must be used on Haney’s alleged Tree-Gate when the state of California is going through a $3 billion deficit that would develop to as a lot as $22 billion the next yr.
In 2022, Haney famously needed to cancel a celebration of a $1.7 million public bathroom after outcry over the prices.
Alexandra M. Macedo, a Republican assemblymember from Tulare, quipped that the letter exhibits how a lot California’s priorities are out of whack.
“We’re being ruled by individuals who assume ‘vandalism threat’ is each a purpose to skip planting timber and a purpose to set off a civil rights probe,” Macedo mentioned in a press release to The Submit. “At this level, the timber would have higher luck getting metropolis funding in the event that they had been a part of a motorbike lane.”
