Muni drivers and management remain as far apart as ever over the city's demand for major contract concessions - but then, the list of proposed take-backs is long.

Among them:

-- The 8 percent pay premium for drivers who work after 6 p.m.

-- The 50-cents-an-hour premium for employees who work in the same Muni division for more than five years.

-- The $2-an-hour premium for drivers who are transferred to another shift or division.

-- Free fitness club memberships for employees, which cost the system about $200,000 a year.

-- Free Muni passes for drivers and their families.

Management also wants to reassign the six employees now paid to do union business full time. And it wants to boost the workload for the three dozen or so "full-time" drivers who, for reasons no one can explain, are now assigned to just one run a day.

Officials of the Transport Workers Union say their members are being "scapegoated in the mass media for the financial mess," and that the real problem is Muni mismanagement and bloated salaries for executives.

Some of the work rules that Muni is trying to amend were supposed to have been changed under a 2007 City Charter amendment that guaranteed Muni drivers would be the second-highest-paid in the nation.

One manager told us, however, that as soon as Muni started negotiating the changes, the union went screaming to Mayor Gavin Newsom, who was gearing up to run for governor at the time - and Muni was told to back off.

Bunk, says mayoral spokesman Tony Winnicker. He insists it was Muni brass that didn't want to put the screws to the drivers at the time, fearing they would end up with an even more entrenched union leadership.

Besides, once the charter was amended, the city had given away any leverage it had to get the work rules changed.

It's not helping the current situation that the union is in such disarray that it canceled votes this week on its counteroffer to Muni.

Or that union local President Irwin Lum, pleading that he needed a break from the stress, took off to Paris for rest.

Kaplan kicks it up: She's been in office for just a year, but Oakland City Councilwoman RebeccaKaplan announced Tuesday that she's forming a committee to raise money for a mayoral run - a move she hopes will kick the race wide open.

"It's taking the next step on what is a fascinating journey," Kaplan said.

The first step might have come during her run for City Council when she switched from Green Party member to Democrat, securing a number of endorsements in the process.

Kaplan - who served on the AC Transit board before winning her at-large council seat - joins fellow Councilwoman JeanQuan and former state Senate President Pro Tem DonPerata in the lineup to replace Mayor Ron Dellums, who has yet to announce whether he will run for re-election in November.

Kaplan is a progressive, an environmentalist and a lesbian - three groups that have healthy constituencies in Oakland. Since coming on the council, she has also courted the town's small businesses and builders and was instrumental in the campaign to create a tax on medical marijuana clubs.

"Oh boy," said City Councilman Larry Reid. "This is going to make things very interesting.

"But then, things are always interesting here in Oakland."

Party time: For somebody who never liked to ask for money, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom sure has been burning up the phone lines lately to score dollars for his run for lieutenant governor.

Newsom raised $121,000 in the past month, on top of the $255,000 he already had on hand - and he'll need every bit of it.

His rival for the Democratic nomination, Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn, isn't backing down - as evidenced by her decision to seek the state party's endorsement at this weekend's convention in Los Angeles, something she had pledged not to waste resources on before Newsom's late entry into the race.

Hahn is breaking out the checkbook big time, for everything from a Friday night chocolate and martini party for the convention's 2,800 delegates to "Hahn 2010" hand sanitizer.

As a result, Newsom is being drawn into a party endorsement fight his advisers don't expect to win.

He's also having a bit of trouble on the local front: Newsom failed to get the 60 percent vote he needed to win the city's Irish American Democratic Club endorsement, and the San Francisco Women's Political Committee went for Hahn despite a pitch from the mayor.

EXTRA! Catch our blog at www.sfgate.com/matierandross.