Bay Area Lawmaking -- the Weird and the Wonderful

City Councilwoman Jane Brunner never imagined that her idea of a fast-food trash tax might tumble cross-country like a castoff Big Mac wrapper.

Her proposal to charge restaurant chains and corner markets to pay crews to pick up the litter from their products, she says, was simply a common-sense solution to a mounting local trash problem -- not a template for dealing with urban litter coast to coast.

But the Bay Area has earned a national reputation for concocting cutting-edge laws that raise public awareness and the occasional skeptical eyebrow. Before it was passed Tuesday by the City Council, Brunner’s trash tax had prompted copy-cat calls from curious city officials in half a dozen states.

“I was on the radio in San Antonio, Texas, where this interviewer in a real folksy voice said, ‘California sure comes up with a lot of kooky ideas that come east. But this one just might be worth it,’ ” Brunner said.

With a long history of activism, the Bay Area has for decades compiled a legislative resume unlike any other in the United States. From city council chambers and voter-supported measures in San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Oakland, Berkeley and Marin County have come pathbreaking laws on such thorny issues as public smoking, domestic partner benefits, the rights of the disabled and restrictions on land use.

Recently added to San Francisco’s political curriculum vitae was a voter-enacted ban on the manufacture, distribution and sale of handguns and ammunition, currently ensnarled in a National Rifle Assn. lawsuit.

But the Bay Area’s record of trendsetting progressive legislation is often lost in the grandstanding, political correctness and shrill public pronouncements by elected officials that have inspired ridicule elsewhere.

City councils have passed pie-in-the-sky resolutions denouncing alleged human rights abuses in South Africa, Nigeria and the People’s Republic of China -- not to mention criticism of President Bush’s handling of the Iraq war.

San Francisco supervisors are considering a resolution calling for a “full investigation, impeachment or resignation” of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Santa Cruz has already voted to impeach Bush, and nearby Watsonville passed a resolution last week calling for the president to bring California National Guard troops home from Iraq.

Experts say the Bay Area’s penchant for taking stands on national and foreign issues shows how little voters here trust federal officials.

“Citizen expectations are very low that the Bush administration will take any positive action to solve problems,” San Francisco State political scientist Richard DeLeon wrote in an e-mail.

Then come such measures as Berkeley officially referring to manholes as “sewer openings” to avoid perceptions of sexism. Oakland requires firms doing business with the city to reveal whether they or their parent companies bought or sold slaves. In San Francisco, a city with more canines than children, supervisors have decreed that dog owners are “pet guardians.”

Many critics dismiss the Bay Area as a liberal wasteland.

“The view held by a lot of the rest of the country is ‘What’s up with those people?’ ” said Tony Quinn, a nonpartisan political analyst based in Sacramento. “Some write it off as just kooky. But the Bay Area is by far the most Democratic area in the entire country, when you consider who they elect to office.”

Berkeley voted for Democrat John Kerry by more than 90% in the 2004 presidential election. San Francisco hasn’t seen a Republican elected to its Board of Supervisors in a generation. And Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) was the only member of the House to vote against the war in Afghanistan.

Although Southern California is solidly Democratic -- especially Santa Monica and West Hollywood -- there are distinct areas, such as Orange County and the Inland Empire, that give the political sea of blue a reddish hue.

And they’re not always pleased with their not-so-conservative cousins up north. Soon after San Francisco gave the boot to on-campus military recruiters, the pro-Bush town of Highland in San Bernardino County axed the city from its list of sites for city conferences.

The Bay Area traces its liberal roots back generations, when free-thinkers dissatisfied with the nation’s political direction made their way west.

Beat Generation writers of the mid-20th century were followed by the anti-Vietnam War fringe that created San Francisco’s Summer of Love in 1967. And academics were lured by UC Berkeley, a bastion of free expression.

“More than half of city council members here come out of the civil rights or student movement of the 1960s,” said Oakland’s Brunner, who said she was a Vietnam-era activist at UC Berkeley. “We’re products of a legacy of progressive politics.”

Berkeley in the 1970s was among the nation’s first cities to curb public smoking and still works to stamp out the habit within city limits: Officials are considering laws to outlaw smoking in multiunit housing as well as in vehicles when children are present.

“The lesson of the anti-smoking drive is that local initiatives matter,” said David Karol, a UC Berkeley political scientist. “People may not feel they have the power to take on an entrenched lobby or a powerful industry like Big Tobacco on a national level. But added up, city and county ordinances make a difference.”

The Bay Area’s social battles go far beyond smoking.

San Francisco in 1996 mandated that private firms and nonprofits doing business with the city provide equal benefits to domestic partners of all employees -- a law soon passed by numerous cities and states across the United States.

The city is also among a handful nationwide to approve a citywide minimum wage for all workers, as well as protections for people who face prejudice because they’re too fat or skinny, or too short or tall.

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates says the region prides itself on thinking outside the political norm.

When it comes to progressive legislation, he says, the region either leads the nation or nearly does.

“In Berkeley, politicians have permission to try new ideas, to push for change,” he said. “People here are receptive to new ideas.

“We were the first to divest from South Africa during apartheid, and we took on the fast-food franchises with a ban on Styrofoam,” Bates said.

Over the years, the city also declared itself “nuclear free” and has replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day.

But not every over-the-top idea has a home -- even in Berkeley.

Voters rejected a petition-driven initiative to ban the sale of coffee that was not fair-trade, shade-grown or organic, which would have brought possible jail time for repeat offenders. An anti-tree-cutting ordinance that would have subjected frequent abusers to having their car seized also was defeated. So was a proposal to decriminalize sex workers.

“We may be able to mock places like Berkeley as outside the political mainstream,” said Thad Kousser, a UC San Diego political scientist who attended UC Berkeley. “But if any of these supposedly wacky ideas pass and catch on in other communities, then the laugh is on us.”

UC Berkeley political scientist Darren Zook said he was called to testify at City Hall at the start of the Iraq war after a resident proposed that the council declare Berkeley a “nondefended locality.”

“This is a term from international law that would have required Berkeley not to take a stand on either side of the war in Iraq but would also have obligated Berkeley to cooperate with the Iraqi army and, had the Iraqi army decided to come to Berkeley, to render them the same courtesies and assistance as to American forces and even to hand over local police powers to them,” Zook wrote in an e-mail. “Fortunately, once I offered my testimony, the measure failed.”

In Oakland, the California Restaurant Assn. has trashed Brunner’s fast-food tax measure as bad for business and argued that owners will merely pass on the cost to consumers.

Chicago passed a similar law in 2000, which was successfully challenged as vague and unfairly applied.

But Oakland’s city attorney is confident his city’s tax will hold up under California law.

Under Brunner’s measure, the city will use an estimated $237,000 in taxes collected from fast-food chains and other merchants to pick up litter in commercial areas around public schools and bus stops where most of the garbage is found.

Several cities have contacted Oakland about the measure, including Philadelphia; Oxford, Ohio; North Miami Beach, Fla.; and Salem, Mass. -- causing restaurant industry officials to worry that the trash tax may be the next Bay Area-inspired trend.

“There’s a tendency for having things like this spread,” said Jordan Traverso, a restaurant association spokeswoman. “We’re concerned that people might say, ‘The city of Oakland doesn’t have to pick up their trash, so why should we?’ ”