The Dogged Determination of Franco Consolacion

It is the customary practice at funeral wakes to recall and honor only the good deeds of the dearly departed and to ignore or forget the bad. But that custom often prevents a full appreciation of the life of an individual and it would not have done justice for my friend, Franco Consolacion.

Franco died on June 6, 2014 from serious health complications that had debilitated him since 2005. When a mutual friend, Cip Ayalin, invited me to say a few words at his Cypress Lawn funeral wake, I joked that I wasn’t sure if I could find enough good words to say about him. Cip quipped that if I didn’t think of something positive to say, Franco would surely come back to haunt all of us.

Best friends forever? 

Franco and I were close friends in the 1980s, as my law office was just right across his accountancy office on San Francisco’s Market Street. We would often have lunch together, along with another friend, the late Jess Esteva, publisher of the Mabuhay Republic, and we would talk endlessly about politics and how we could empower our Filipino community.

Franco would argue that politics was easy, pare, because all we had to do was mobilize our kababayans to a room in front of a politician and he or she would be impressed by our numbers and readily agree to our demands. That mau mau tactic doesn’t work, I told him, because the politicians know who vote and who don’t and because our community doesn’t, we don’t get our fair share of funding for our community programs nor do we get Filipinos appointed to top commissions in the city. “We’re not fooling them,” I said, “we’re only fooling ourselves.”

But despite our constant disagreements, Franco and I were so close that I was the first one he called when he was arrested for pointing a gun at a man who had harassed him late at night as he was walking to his car. He woke me up one very early morning to ask me to bail him out. I asked him why he didn’t call his wife. “She would kill me if she found out,” he explained. So I did as he asked and I also represented him in court in getting the criminal charges against him dismissed.

In 1987, we worked together to get Art Agnos elected mayor of San Francisco, who appointed 15 Fil-Ams to city commissions, more than all the Filipino appointments of previous mayors combined. I was appointed president of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the largest city commission.

End of BFF

When I ran for election to the BART Board in 1990, where I would have been the first Filipino elected to public office in San Francisco, Franco inexplicably supported my opponent, James Fang, who enjoyed the backing of his Chinese community and the endorsement of every major political official in San Francisco. When I lost the election by 56 votes, Franco publicly claimed credit for my defeat, boasting that he personally convinced at least 56 Filipino voters in San Francisco to vote for my opponent.

Many years later, Franco apologized and explained that he just wanted to teach me a lesson. A lesson in how the Filipino crab mentality works perhaps? While we renewed our friendship, and I would regularly attend his December 11 birthday celebrations, it was never the same again as our friendship had been strained.

So it was with mixed feelings that I agreed to deliver a eulogy for Franco. I began by declaring that of all the Filipino community leaders I had met and known over the past 43 years in the U.S., I would say, without fear of contradiction, that Franco Consolacion had the biggest ego of them all. He was an unapologetic egomaniac.

To my surprise, the Newall Chapel audience composed of his family and friends all nodded their heads in agreement and smiled. Yup, that was also the Franco they knew. He was the best Filipino community leader, the best accountant, the best lover, the best in everything he did. If you had any doubt, just ask Franco.

Greatest flaw, greatest strength 

But sometimes, I said, one’s greatest flaw is also one’s greatest strength.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson was once asked if his big ego explained why he was running for the Democratic nomination for president in 1992. “Show me a presidential candidate without a big ego,” he replied, “and I’ll show you a national security risk.” The general consensus then was that an African American could never hope to win the presidency, so his election campaign had to be a joke, a futile exercise. Imagine, an African American man elected as president of the United States. Dream on.

Franco was always a dreamer. He immigrated to the US with his family after martial law was declared in the Philippines in September 1972. He had been a successful Certified Public Accountant (CPA), a “topnotcher” in the accountancy exams, and was teaching accounting at the University of the East.

In his new country, Franco secured a job as a senior accountant of the UCSF Medical Center and earned enough to buy a home in Pinole, a bedroom community outside the City.

But Franco dreamed of being a CPA in California and knew he either had to pass the accountancy exams or obtain a “waiver” from the California Board of Accountancy, which was granted to a qualified applicant that was “a holder of a valid and unrevoked certificate as a Certified Public Accountant issued in a foreign country.”

Franco quickly learned that the waiver applications of every Philippine- trained and certified CPA had all been denied. What incensed Franco most was the knowledge that foreign applicants from British Commonwealth countries were regularly granted waivers, and these foreign applicants were invariably white.

Franco led a renewed effort to secure waivers for Filipino CPAs by mobilizing the Bay Area Filipino community to rally to their cause as a civil rights issue. He lobbied to get a law passed that would prohibit discrimination by the Board of Accountancy on the basis of national origin. But his 1977 legislative effort failed because of the forceful opposition of the California Society of Certified Public Accountants and other vested interests.

Franco then sought the legal services of Robert Gnaizda, the founder and senior partner of Public Advocates, who filed an administrative complaint with the State Board of Consumer Affairs (BCA) charging the State Board of Accountancy with discrimination against Filipino CPAs. After a lengthy hearing, the BCA ruled in favor of the Filipino accountants. In his decision, the BCA director, Richard Spohn, wrote: “The Board (of Accountancy) has instituted a double and discriminatory standard for foreign CPAs based on race and national origin.”

But conservative Republican Attorney General Evelle Younger ignored the BCA finding and ruled that the Board of Accountancy was right not to “inquire into the qualifications of the applicant or certification.”

Political empowerment  

Franco joined Philippine News publisher Alex Esclamado in supporting Gov. Jerry Brown’s campaign for re-election in 1978. The Browns for Brown political campaign drew thousands of Filipinos in rallies in San Francisco and Los Angeles where Brown spoke and expressed appreciation for the depth of support for him in the Filipino community.

After he was reelected, Brown repaid the Filipinos’ support by signing Assembly Bill 1495 into law, making it unlawful for licensing boards to establish qualifications for licensure that would have adverse effects on specified classes unless the qualifications were job-related.

Brown also appointed a Fil-Am lawyer from San Francisco, Mel Santos, Jr., to the State Board of Accountancy. Santos and another Brown appointee, Stu Pollack, co-sponsored a Board

resolution granting waivers to all foreign applicants who were otherwise qualified and who had applied for or had been discouraged from applying for the waivers before December 1, 1977. The resolution passed by a 6-3 vote, a major victory for the Filipino accountants.

But it was premature exuberance because the Board, in July 1979, voted to hold public hearings before the resolution could go into effect.

After almost a year of inaction by the Board on the Pollack-Santos resolution, Franco filed a class-action lawsuit in the Sacramento County Superior Court on behalf of the Filipino accountants against the State Board of Accountancy. At the trial of the lawsuit, Gnaizda presented evidence that the State Board of Accountancy had granted waivers to 68 applicants from the British Commonwealth countries, half of whom were only high school or vocational school graduates from their countries.

Victory at last

On October 29, 1980, the Court handed down its decision finding that the Board had abused its discretion in denying waivers to the Filipino CPAs and directed them to re-evaluate all the previous waiver applications. The State Board of Accountancy voted 9-0 to accept the court order and not appeal it to the Supreme Court. Now the celebration could truly begin.

The reason for the Board’s delay, it turned out, was to give time for the California Legislature, buckling to the pressure of the California Society of Public Accountants, to pass a bill abolishing the waiver provision and prohibiting the State Board of Accountancy from issuing any further waivers to foreign applicants. That bill was passed in December of 1980, but it would not be applied retroactively. The Filipino CPAs who qualified to be granted waivers would still receive their waivers if they applied for it before July 9, 1983.

About 646 Philippine-trained CPAs applied for the waivers and 294 of them had their waivers approved, including one Franco Consolacion. By the end of the waiver process, there were more Filipino CPAs in California than there were African American and Latino CPAs combined.

It was a major civil rights victory for the Filipino community and for all foreign applicants who had been discriminated against because of their national origin. It was a victory that was the result of the dogged determination of a Filipino community leader with an outsized ego. Anyone with a small or medium-sized ego would not have had the self-confidence to take on the State Board of Accountancy and the California Society of Public Accountants.

Rest in peace, Franco, my friend. Okay, okay, you win, you were greatest. Now please don’t come back to haunt us.

(For more information on the struggle for justice by the Filipino CPAs, please read “America Beckons: the Chronicles of an Immigrant” by Sal Partible, the partner and close friend of Franco Consolacion. Please send your comments to [email protected] or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429  Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call 415.334.7800). 

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