Assemblymember Tom Ammiano's bill to create state regulations for pot clubs just got a boost: Although I disagree with the Supreme Court decision allowing towns to ban the dispensaries, it's kicked local governments into gear. Now mayors from around the state are asking the Legislature to weigh in and craft "sensible marijuana policies."Read more »

Willie Brown, the former mayor and current unregistered lobbyist, has been trying to undermine Assemblymember Tom Ammiano for years. But take a look at two Ammiano bills this spring and you get a sense of how effective San Francisco's veteran representative can be.Read more »

Ron Lanza, a pioneer in San Francisco’s gay rights movement and an impressario who promoted queer arts through the worst of the AIDS crisis, has died after a long battle with colon cancer. He was 78.Read more »

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano’s new medical marijuana bill seems pretty straightforward. Almost everyone in the medpot biz thinks there ought to be some sort of statewide regulations for a growing industry that operates in a mish-mash of local jurisdictions with no overall rules. If nothing else, consumer-protection policies ought to be in place. Read more »

The state Senate Business, Professions, and Economic Development Committee was slated to hold a hearing Feb. 11 on Assemblymember Tom Ammiano's efforts to create a regulatory framework for medical marijuana. That's a fairly common practice when a new set of professional regulations is proposed; it's called a "sunrise" hearing, and the idea is to get all the players in the room and see what kinds of concerns they have. Read more »

The Chron continues its jihad against Harvey Milk Airport today, arguing that the price tag airport administrators came up with -- $4 million -- makes the plan too expensive. Not that $4 million is a trivial amount of money, but please: Compared to the tax breaks, upzonings, and other giveaways the the city routinely hands over to big corporations, this is birdseed. That's if we can trust the folks at SFO, who are opposed to the name change. Read more »

The guv is quite proud of his new budget: He's eliminated the chronic deficits, he's giving some more money to the schools, and he's vowing that the state will live "within its means." Which sounds like no more taxes. Read more »

The Chron's conflict-laden columnist made an interesting admission Dec. 9: The multibillion-dollar tax loophole that allows corporations to avoid reassessments under Prop. 13 was all his fault:Read more »

First, the bad news: Jerry Brown has vetoed a couple of important bills by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, showing that he's still a strange and unpredictable guy. He rejected a measure that would have provided some basic labor protections to domestic workers and another that would have opened up state prisons to a modicum of media access. Read more »