Scott Wiener
is a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, representing the Castro, Glen Park, Noe Valley, Diamond Heights, Twin Peaks, Duboce Triangle, Buena Vista, Corona Heights, and parts of the Mission . Wiener serves on the Board’s Land Use and Economic Development Committee and Budget and Finance Committee.  Wiener is a leader on both local and regional transportation and housing policy, serving as Chairman of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority and representing San Francisco on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District. Before being elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2010, Wiener served as a Deputy City Attorney in the San Francisco City Attorney's Office, where he represented San Francisco in court (ranging from trial courts to the United States Supreme Court) and supervised a team of trial attorneys. Wiener served as Chairman of the San Francisco Democratic Party and is currently an elected member of the Democratic County Central Committee. A leader in San Francisco’s LGBT community, Wiener co-chaired the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, co-chaired BALIF (the Bay Area’s LGBT bar association), co-chaired the LGBT Community Center, and served on the national board of directors of the Human Rights Campaign.  Wiener received a bachelor’s degree from Duke University and a law degree from Harvard Law School.  He spent a year in Chile on a Fulbright Scholarship doing historical research.  Wiener has lived in the Castro neighborhood for nearly 20 years.

Wiener has a laser-like focus on improving the community’s quality of life and well-being and making our city and region more sustainable. He has been described as “a serious player,” “focusing on bread-and-butter quality of life issues,” “the city’s most active legislator,” “demanding more from Muni,” “whip smart,” “a voice for government reform,” “the board’s most serious-minded workhorse,” “hard working,” and “one of the few board members willing to take on unpopular issues because they need to be addressed.”

Wiener believes that to improve San Francisco, we must start with the City’s foundations: reforming our housing policy to make housing more affordable, maintaining and rebuilding our infrastructure, improving the reliability and expanding the capacity our transportation systems and particularly our public transit systems, ensuring neighborhood safety, supporting our public education and public health systems, improving government efficiency and transparency, and creating an atmosphere of job creation so that we build our tax base. Cementing this solid base for San Francisco will allow it to flourish as the beacon of innovation, hope, and tolerance that draws people from all over the world to live, work, and visit here.

Wiener has done significant work for our community, for example:

Housing: Wiener has pushed to reform San Francisco’s approach to housing and ensure that we have enough housing for our growing population.  His tenacity on housing reform has been publicly recognized. Wiener authored a piece in Medium arguing that more housing will help stabilize housing prices.  He obtained significant funding for affordable housing and authored legislation to incentivize developers to increase the amount of affordable housing they include in their developments, by providing a density bonus for projects with increased affordable housing.  He authored multiple pieces of legislation to allow property owners to add in-law units in their buildings, since in-law units are the most affordable type of non-subsidized housing, as well as legislation making it easier for universities to build student housing and legislation allowing for smaller studios (so-called “micro-units”). He also authored legislation to keep tenants stable in their housing, including a requirement that all tenants receive formal notice before a landlord seeks a permit to demolish their apartments, a prohibition on universities purchasing rent-controlled apartment buildings and converting them to student dorms, and a system making it easier for tenants displaced by disasters to obtain affordable temporary housing while their units are being fixed.

Transportation: Wiener has been a leading advocate for investing in public transportation and expanding its capacity and reliability. He was named “Most Active Transportation Reformer,” and the San Francisco Chronicle has stated that Wiener “has made a mission of getting Muni on track.” He authored Proposition B, which ties transit funding to population growth and authored legislation to ensure that developers pay transit impact fees to take into account the transportation impacts of their projects.  He authored legislation to create a late night transit plan and helped put that plan together. The plan was recently released and has already started implementation. He authored legislation to make it easier to provide car sharing.  He has been a leader in the effort to expand bike sharing and generally to improve bike infrastructure and make it easier to implement pedestrian safety projects. On a regional level, Wiener is helping move forward the effort to plan for and fund a second Transbay tube for BART (including 24 hour BART service) and future high speed rail service, and he helped negotiate a regional agreement to ensure that high speed rail extends to the Transbay Transit Center in downtown San Francisco.

Health: Wiener has focused extensively on access to healthcare and smart public health policy.  He’s been the leading voice at City Hall to support people living with or at risk for HIV.  He’s obtained significant funding to avoid HIV funding cuts and to expand access to services.  He’s a member of the Getting to Zero Consortium, which has formulated a plan to end HIV infections in San Francisco.  He has also worked to address the growing epidemics of type 2 diabetes and tooth decay, including links with sugary beverages, and helped lead the effort to adopt a soda tax with funds dedicated to nutrition, physical activity, and health programs.  He is a vocal supporter of ensuring that children are vaccinated and has fought efforts by insurance companies to charge exorbitant and unaffordable drug co-pays.

Nightlife: Wiener has fought to preserve and enhance nightlife and entertainment, which is part of our city’s cultural heart.  He requested and obtained economic impact studies on the nightlife industry as well as large outdoor events.  The studies showed that our nighttime economy contributes $4.2 billion annually to our economy and employs more than 50,000 people and that outdoor events contribute more than $1 billion to our economy. Wiener authored legislation for better late night transit and easier permitting for live music establishments and DJs.
Parks and Public Spaces:  Wiener has worked hard to improve our parks and public spaces.  He helped lead the 2012 Parks Bond and authored legislation to make it easier to protect our parks from vandalism and dumping and legislation to ensure that public spaces are kept safe and usable by everyone.  He played a key role in obtaining funding for and moving forward the Castro Street Sidewalk Widening project and the renovation of various parks, including Dolores Park, Glen Canyon, Flint Street tennis courts, George Christopher Playground, and Walter Haas Dog Park.

Environment:  Wiener has made innovative and aggressive proposals to increase environmental sustainability.  He authored legislation to expand the use of Hetch Hetchy clean hydro-electric power in new developments and legislation to require that large new developments install water recycling (graywater or blackwater) systems.  He’s taken the lead in protecting San Francisco’s urban forest and is working on funding solutions to ensure better maintenance of trees, more trees, and a move away from forcing property owners to maintain trees adjacent to their properties.

Public Safety: Wiener has worked through the budget process to increase police staffing levels, by funding an increased number of police academy classes. Wiener has consistently supported efforts to improve neighborhood safety, obtain more funding for streetlights, ensure that the police are walking beats in neighborhoods, and empower neighbors to work with the police and others to keep their neighborhoods safe.  Wiener helped pilot and obtained funding for the innovative “Castro Cares” program, which combines enhanced law enforcement and homeless outreach workers to address homelessness and street behavior issues in the Castro area.

Public Education: Wiener has worked closely with the San Francisco Unified School District, and with individual public schools, to improve education in San Francisco. For example, he obtained funding for after school programs, for better access in schools to water bottle filling stations, and for better support for LGBT students.  He has consistently supported improved funding for schools and regularly works closely with parents and teachers at school communities within his district.

Good Government: Wiener has authored various pieces of legislation to improve government efficiency, transparency, and accountability.  He authored legislation to set a clear deadline for filing CEQA appeals to the Board of Supervisors challenging projects, legislation closing a loophole by which people could fraudulently utilize the voter handbook to mislead voters, and legislation to streamline the permitting process for small businesses. Wiener has been working to change San Francisco’s unfair towing practice whereby owners of towed stolen vehicles are charged significant towing and storage fees in order to retrieve their stolen cars.

LGBT Community: As the representative of the district with the largest number of LGBT residents in San Francisco, Wiener has been a leader on many issues of importance to the LGBT community, including funding for HIV care and prevention, more housing for LGBT seniors and at-risk youth, creation of the LGBT Aging Task Force, protection of LGBT seniors in long-term care facilities, and better access to healthcare by transgender people.
Historic Preservation: Wiener believes that as our city changes and grows, we need to embrace what’s best about our history.  He authored legislation to update the historic preservation aspects of the Planning Code, legislation to make it easier for owners of historic homes to access available tax credits, and legislation creating the first new historic district in San Francisco in more than a decade.

Animals: Wiener has worked extensively on animal welfare and access issues.  He has championed Animal Care and Control – San Francisco’s animal safety net agency – in the budget process, authored legislation creating permit and training requirements for professional dogwalkers who use city parks, and authored legislation putting San Francisco on record opposing the federal proposal to restrict dog access at Fort Funston, Crissy Field, Ocean Beach, and other properties. He co-authored legislation to ban the use and abuse of elephants and other exotic animals for entertainment purposes in San Francisco.

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Term:

• Elected November 2010 for term January 2011 to January 2015
• Elected November 2014 for term January 2014 to January 2019

Committee and Board Assignments:

• Board of Supervisors
• Board of Supervisors and Police Commission Joint Special
• Budget and Finance Committee
• Budget and Finance Sub-Committee
• City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee
• Government Audit and Oversight Committee
• Land Use and Economic Development Committee
• Land Use and Transportation Committee
• Neighborhood Services and Safety Committee
• Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee
• Rules Committee