
While Assemblymember Jerry Hill and his controversial anti-local hiring bill AB 356 were busy drawing statewide opposition, the counties of San Francisco and San Mateo were calmly settling their differences for the betterment of workers in both jurisdictions. “There has been one positive thing resulting from the AB 356 debate: It has united leaders and communities all over the state to say that local hire is crucial to economic recovery,” said Greenlining Institute general counsel Samuel Kang. “Jerry Hill awoke a sleeping giant. By trying to kill local hire, he’s only made it stronger.”

On top of already heaping opposition to his plan to limit the ability of California cities to pursue local hiring policies and local hiring project labor agreements, Assemblyman Jerry Hill is now opposed by the San Mateo branch of the NAACP.

A sea of overwhelming opposition in cities from the San Francisco Bay Area to Los Angeles has risen against San Mateo Assemblymember Jerry Hill and his anti-local hiring measure, Assembly Bill 356, which threatens state funding for any California city with a local hiring policy.

A city ordinance authored by Supervisor John Avalos and passed by a super-majority of the Board of Supervisors on Dec. 14 requiring work for local residents on San Francisco-funded public works and new opportunities for workers in disadvantaged communities went into effect Christmas morning.

With unemployment at its highest in decades and 41 percent more San Franciscans requesting assistance feeding themselves and their families this year, out-of-work residents convened at City Hall to ask Mayor Newsom to sign the local hiring law that a super-majority of the Board of Supervisors passed last week.

In an email to the San Francisco Bay View, Laurence Pelosi verified that he was a Lennar senior executive in March of 2004 at the time San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, his cousin for whom he had served as mayoral campaign treasurer, had signed the Hunters Point Shipyard Conveyance Agreement at the behest of Laurence’s Aunt Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.