Candidate for
City Attorney; City of San Francisco

Steve Williams: "Folk hero of the San Francisco zoning wars" -- SF Chronicle

Qualifications: Steve Williams is a partner with Fitzgerald, Abbott & Beardsley, having been with one of California's oldest law firms for more than 16 years. He has served several times on its management committee. He has been the lead or sole practitioner in over 40 civil trials and arbitrations over the last dozen years - a record unmatched by his opponents. As a 1985 University of San Francisco graduate and twice appointed as USF General Counsel, Steve has broad legal experience in labor, contracts, discrimination, environment, land use, civil litigation and tort law - all work of the City Attorney.

He comes from a modest background, the middle child of a single mother and schoolteacher in Maryland, Texas and Montana. He worked his way through high school and college as a garbage collector, dishwasher, painter and laborer, among others. Since his 1985 admittance to the Bar, he often participated with the Bar Association of San Francisco's Volunteer Legal Services Program. He also helped establish and staff a Western Addition program known as "Lawyers in the Library," which provides legal counsel to low income and homeless clients.

Steve Williams was born on July 18, 1957 in Havre de Grace, Maryland, a working class farming town on the northern part of the Chesapeake Bay. Steve grew up bucking hay and doing other farm chores in this close-knit community with his older brother and younger sister. When Steve was eight years old, his parents divorced and Steve's mother raised three young children alone while working as a high school English teacher. In 1972, the Williams family moved to Texas where Steve's mother started working as an organizer for the National Education Association. A year later, the family moved again to Colorado then finally settled in Great Falls, Montana, where Steve graduated high school in 1975. During this time, Steve had to work at various jobs after school, on weekends and during summer vacations in order to supplement the family income.

Influenced by his mother's teaching and subsequent education association work, Steve developed a strong work ethic and a respect for the difficult challenges so many families face just trying to maintain a decent livelihood.

Education: Steve attended Montana State University and graduated with honors in 1981. He paid his way through school, working as a dishwasher, nighttime janitor, garbage collector, construction worker, house painter and factory worker. Steve also traveled every summer to Boise, Idaho to work at more lucrative construction jobs. In addition to serving as an intern at the Montana State Legislature in 1981, Steve was also active in the 1980 Montana Presidential campaign as well as being an actor and stage crew for the Idaho Shakespeare Festival.

After graduating from Montana State, Steve was accepted to the University of San Francisco School of Law. Steve moved to San Francisco in 1981 and quickly fell in love with the City. He rented in the Haight-Ashbury and Castro districts for the next eleven years. While completing law school, Steve continued to do construction work. During the later stages of his legal studies, he was employed as an assistant to the General Counsel at the University of San Francisco and assisted in establishing USF's in-house legal practice in 1983. In 1984, Steve was accepted as a summer associate for one of California's oldest and most prestigious law firms, Fitzgerald, Abbot and Beardsley and was subsequently hired upon graduation. Steve graduated from USF's School of Law in 1985 in the top 20% of his class and with numerous awards including:

• Best oral presentation, Moot Court
• American Jurisprudence Award - Criminal Procedure
• American Jurisprudence Award - Administrative Law

Steve also has an extensive knowledge and experience with the current body of San Francisco's Municipal Law. Steve is presently handling cases involving San Francisco's Charter, the Building Code, the Planning Code, the Public Works Code and the City's Administrative Code. No other candidate can come close to Steve's experience with the Municipal Codes of San Francisco and actual "hands-on" work with these laws and regulations.

Steve has been a member of the law firm of Fitzgerald, Abbott & Beardsley LLP for more than 16 years. He has been a partner in the firm for the past nine years and has served on the firm's management and finance committees dealing with every aspect of administration of a mid-size law firm. The firm has 24 lawyers and a staff of more than 40. He has more experience managing and mentoring civil lawyers than all of the other candidates. Steve has also twice been appointed as Interim General Counsel at the University of San Francisco and has served as outside litigation counsel to the University since his graduation.

Steve has built a reputation as a hard-working and tenacious attorney for his efforts on behalf of neighborhood groups throughout San Francisco. Steve's stake in San Francisco's neighborhoods comes from personal experience. In 1996 he challenged an illegal demolition within his neighborhood by helping his neighbors save an affordable and protected Victorian house. Although rebuffed by both the Planning establishment and the Board (Permit) of Appeals, Steve prevailed in court, eventually taking the matter to the California Supreme Court, for which the San Francisco Chronicle dubbed him "a folk hero in the annals of San Francisco's perennial zoning wars." (SF Chron.12-22-97). Since that astounding victory in 1997, Steve has come to the assistance of over fifty San Francisco-based neighborhood associations in each of the eleven districts.

With his representation of tenants, homeowners and small business owners, Steve has been valiantly fighting on the front lines of the City's development battles against illegal demolitions, destruction of affordable housing and rent controlled units, monster homes, inappropriate and out-of-scale development. Steve has also filed public interest law-suits on behalf of clients to fight the $30 Million give-away to the out-of-state developer at Bloomingdales and the illegal 41% garbage rate hike which was given to Norcal. Steve has passionately fought to save San Francisco's unique architectural heritage and cultural diversity and is still fighting to stop the piecemeal destruction of San Francisco's unique neighborhoods by real estate speculators. Steve has organized and empowered a broad coalition of progressives, liberals and moderates from each of the eleven districts to rebuke the Planning establishment and Board of Appeals for facilitating the gentrification of low-income and communities of color by hi-tech dot-com companies, corporate monopolies and other special interests.

Steve has been recognized and honored for his work on behalf of the people and neighborhoods of San Francisco with a number of very recent awards, including:

• Certificate of Honor from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors,
• Potrero Hill Good Citizen Award and
• San Francisco Tomorrow's "Unsung Hero" Award.