Only in San Francisco

Fasten your seat belts, I am not making this story up. I am not that good of a fiction writer.

Tammy Haygood, our city elections director (the fifth in as many years) was recently fired by the newly formed Elections Commission. The exact details of her ineptitude are lost in the fog, but it had something to do with running up a multi-million dollar deficit.

Naturally, Mayor Willie Brown comes to Haygood's defense, shouting cries of "Racism". This should not be a surprise. Most ordinary mortals have various physiological reflexes -- a Babinski Reflex , a Papillary Reflex, even a Defecation Reflex . Mayor Brown was also born with a Racism Reflex, whereby every allegation of incompetence against an African-American political appointee brings a Knee-Jerk cry of "Racism!" from Da Mayor.

So now we have a race-charged public hearing where supporters from the neighborhood were comparing Haygood's dismissal to the recent alleged beating of a black teenager in Inglewood by a white sheriff's deputy.

But wait! It turns out that Tammy Haygood is fighting this fight not only for the good of her race. She also has a personal reason for wanting her job back. Put your beverage down for this one. Haygood needs the generous public employee medical benefits for her husband, who is in the middle of a female-to-male sex change.

The Civil Service Commission reversed the decision of the Election Commission and reinstated Haygood. A judge issued a temporary stay until a court can decide whether Two of a Kind and a Civil Service Commission trumps an Election Commission, or if it's the other way around. Meanwhile Haygood is elated:

I never wanted to go through this," she said. "But if I had to go through it and I had to be uplifted by a community, I wanted it to look just like the people here, every color, every ethnicity, every religion, every sexual orientation, anything they want to be because that is why I love San Francisco. "

Because in San Francisco you can be anybody you want to be, and nobody requires you to be competent to get or keep a job in City Hall. In the meantime, Haygood's legal battle continues, at the expense of those of us who are fortunate enough to pay their business and property taxes.

On a lighter note, the S.F. Chronicle has discovered that the SFPD manages to solve only 28% of violent crimes, earning us the big 20th place among the 20 largest U.S. cities.

So here is my deepest, darkest, most sinister dream, that I have shared only with my wife, and here in my web diary where it may be read by hundreds of people I will probably never meet: Last night I dreamt that Tammy Haygood disappeared without a trace and that the SFPD never figured out what happened to her. Is there something wrong with me that I had such a mean-spirited dream?

Nah.

UPDATE (12/09/2002) The latest twist in the bizarre saga is here

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at July 18, 2002 08:00 AM