Jonathan V. Holtzman

As San Francisco’s former chief labor and employment attorney, Holtzman is known for representing municipalities in complex collective bargaining negotiations.

“We were at 18 bargaining tables this year,” he said, most of them in the last several months.

In addition, he has been representing municipal governing entities in crafting “project labor agreements.” Those are broad contracts with local building trades council — essentially, all the local construction-related unions — that cover hiring and other matters for all projects of a certain size.

Separately, Holtzman also was retained to help two cities deal with police reform. Early last year, he helped officials in Berkeley negotiate and write a charter amendment to create a police accountability board for the city. Voters adopted the amendment in November by more than 80%.

Soon after, Fresno asked him to serve as chief counsel to a 40-member police reform commission. He was the panel’s lawyer and adviser and helped shape its recommendations. Now, he is in a similar role for the successor panel created to implement the commission’s recommendations.

Those assignments convinced him that true reform in law enforcement is possible. “There are really concrete steps that local governments can take to significantly mitigate particularly the problem of excessive force,” he said, such as by redefining the job of law enforcement officer and changing the tasks it entails.

“It’s not a zero-sum game,” he said. “There are ways in which we can have better public safety and have happier police officers and a safer public.”

Tackling policy issues and reform are nothing new for Holtzman. Much of his practice has dealt with structural reforms, including civil service and government pension systems. Those are “the kinds of issues that are near and dear to my heart,” he said.

He traces the policy side of his work in part to being the city’s labor lawyer under several San Francisco mayors who were interested in labor relations. Another reason is his lifelong interest in politics, going back to when he was 16 and ran the downtown Manhattan headquarters of George McGovern’s presidential campaign.

Holtzman is proud that his law firm is becoming more heavily involved in policy work with its new lobbying branch in Sacramento to support local governments.

“One of the things that’s very exciting is building a firm that is not just the typical commercial firm but is actually a firm that … is really mission driven,” Holtzman said.

— Don DeBenedictis