Sometimes it is hard to understand why businesses join the Silicon Valley Organization (SVO), otherwise known as the Chamber of Commerce. The SVO’s record in political campaigns certainly does not stand its members in good stead. It has opposed, abandoned or offended a majority of the San Jose City Council and the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors.
The SVO’s political lowlight reel includes campaigns to support outspoken homophobic candidates Larry Pegram and Steve Brown and most recently accused sexual harasser Pierluigi Oliverio. Calls to rescind their endorsements of these bigoted and sexist candidates went unheeded. The business community continued(s) to support them.
Maybe the SVO is bad at politics, but good at policy. No. Afraid not. They have not a single significant policy win to their name. In fact, the SVO has made a name for itself by vehemently and often dishonestly opposing major policies that were adopted anyway. Here is a short list of those policies:
- Minimum wage increase to $10,
- Minimum wage increase to $15,
- County living wage policy,
- Opportunity to Work initiative to give part-time workers access to additional hours, and
- San Jose local hire policy.
Recently, in a Mercury News opinion piece, SVO President Matt Mahood attacked a compromise measure to hire local construction workers on big San Jose developments and to pay those workers decent wages. The grounds for the attack were that the compromise would make housing more expensive to build. This argument struck housing advocates as hypocritical since the SVO has opposed, or a best been neutral on, every affordable housing measure in memory, including the:
- $950 million affordable housing bond,
- Just cause eviction protections,
- Reasonable rent control, and
- Inclusionary zoning.
The SVO and the businesses they represent appear to have no positive vision for addressing Silicon Valley’s most pressing problems, like the housing crisis. Although they just renamed themselves, it might be time to change names again, to SV-NO. They are a “no” on affordable housing, decent wages, local hiring and fair treatment of women and the LGBT community.
It is hard to believe that the Silicon Valley business community, which often congratulates itself on being forward thinking, supports these positions. But why else would they be members of the SVO?
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