Haney Wants Tree Investigation While Fentanyl Kills

You cannot make this up. San Francisco Assemblymember Matt Haney—the guy who chairs the state Assembly’s housing committee—is asking California Attorney General Rob Bonta to launch an investigation into… a lack of trees in his district.

Archived tweet

NEW: Assemblymember Matt Haney, of San Francisco, seems to have reprioritized the city’s crises — such as homelessness, drug deaths & a housing shortage — by asking Attorney General Rob Bonta to launch an investigation into a lack of trees in his district. https://t.co/UsRQz0rp7J

Josh Koehn @Josh_Koehn January 17, 2026

While people are dying on the streets. While the city spends $2.5 billion on homelessness and watches it increase by 50%. While San Francisco runs a $15.9 billion budget for under 900,000 people—nearly double what comparable cities spend.

The Priorities Are Insane

Let’s be clear about what Haney is doing here: He wrote a letter to the state’s top law enforcement officer arguing that the lack of trees in his district might constitute a civil rights violation under SB 1000, a state environmental law.

Here’s the kicker—Haney’s own letter admits that trees aren’t being planted partly due to vandalism. So vandalism is both the reason the city can’t plant trees AND the reason the AG should investigate? As Republican Assemblymember Macedo put it: “We are being governed by people who think vandalism risk is both a reason to skip planting trees and a reason to trigger a civil rights probe.”

A Pattern of Misplaced Priorities

This isn’t Haney’s first rodeo with absurd priorities. This is the same guy who had to cancel a celebration of a $1.7 million public toilet in 2022 after public outcry. He’s currently under investigation by the state political watchdog for blowing $75,000 in campaign money on boozy sporting events.

Meanwhile, the Tenderloin—in his former supervisor district—remains an epicenter of the drug crisis with open-air drug markets. California is staring down a $3 billion deficit that could balloon to $22 billion next year.

Political analyst David Latterman summed it up: “It’s just hard to take anything he does seriously.”

San Francisco priorities are fundamentally broken. We have 8,000 homeless residents and thousands of drug users with hundreds of dealers operating openly—that’s a public safety crisis. But our state legislators are writing letters about trees.

This is exactly why people are fed up. We need effective government that focuses on business, abundance, and having tax dollars go to things that actually help Californians—not this performative nonsense.

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