https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-Rules-Committee-shoots-down-Breed-s-Rent-13770145.php

Trisha Thadani April 15, 2019 Updated: April 15, 2019 8:59 p.m.

The Rules Committee recommended against San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s recent appointment of Reese Isbell to the Rent Board, after tenants’ rights activists questioned his aptitude for the job compared to his predecessor, an attorney and 35-year veteran of the board.

Dozens of tenants’ rights activists spoke out against Isbell during nearly three hours of public comment Monday. Breed appointed him to replace Polly Marshall last month. Isbell served as an aide to Mark Leno during his time in both the state Assembly and Senate. He was also a member of Breed’s transition team last year.

The appointment inflamed tenants’ rights activists, who had long-standing relationships with Marshall. Critics also worried about the lack of tenants’ rights experience on Isbell’s resume.

But Isbell, and the several people who spoke in favor of his appointment Monday, said the challenges he confronts as a renter in San Francisco should qualify him for the position.

“I’m not the same as everyone else on the Rent Board, but I want to use those different experiences with my own 25 years of expertise on policy and advocacy on the federal and state level … to find my own ways of keeping renters in their homes,” Isbell said.

But the committee ultimately voted 2-1 to recommend that the full Board of Supervisors reject the appointment, with Supervisor Shamann Walton in the dissent. Walton said his colleagues should at least consider Isbell, as he has government policy experience and is a renter himself.

“Mr. Isbell is a human being, he’s a renter,” Walton said. “His only sin is that he’s new.”

But Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who voted against the appointment, said she was skeptical about Isbell’s ability to grasp dense legal concepts in the city’s tenants’ rights laws given his lack of experience doing so.

“If it were almost any other commission in the city, I would agree that the ability to learn on the job is completely possible,” she said. But “this is one of those rare circumstances where I feel like it is incumbent upon us to thoroughly vet this candidate.”

The Board of Supervisors will consider Isbell’s appointment at next week’s board meeting. While the full board wasn’t required to approve Isbell’s appointment, it may revoke it with a supermajority, eight-member vote. But removing Isbell from the position does not mean Marshall will get the position back.

— Trisha Thadani