In a blow for those hoping to streamline, modernize and cleanse the Department of Building Inspection’s byzantine and hidebound permitting process, the director hired to oversee this move has abruptly resigned after just 2.5 months on the job.
Issam Shahrouri was hired in late 2020 from Oakland, where he was deputy director of its building department. His status as an outsider in a department renowned for its insularity was a source of pride and hope for reformers, who looked to move the Department of Building Inspection past its reputation for scleroticism and corruption. Shahrouri also came to San Francisco in good estimation, and was accredited as a “Certified Building Official” — purportedly making him the only “CBO” in the department after the hasty March 2020 departure of former director Tom Hui in the wake of a corruption investigation.
But department employees were stunned on Tuesday to receive a brief email from interim director Patrick O’Riordan announcing Shahrouri’s sudden departure.
“I regretfully share with you that Sam Shahrouri, Chief Administrative Officer for Permit Services, is leaving DBI at the end of this week,” reads the message, sent at 5:10 p.m. “Sam has a family emergency and is moving to Southern California.”
Reached in his office, Shahrouri reiterated that a sudden family emergency is forcing him to leave his post.
“It’s a very abrupt personal issue I am experiencing great difficulty with. It really necessitates my presence in Southern California,” he said.
“I love this place, love the city, wish I could continue on. I have a lot of ideas to implement. But it’s really unfortunate. A personal situation has developed in the past few weeks.”
Shahrouri denied that politics or pressure entered into the equation.
“There has been a history of inappropriate things here in the past, but my values and Director O’Riordan’s values are aligned,” he said. “There is none of that.”
Whatever the reason for his departure, it was seen as a major loss for the department.
“I am really sad he is leaving,” said a colleague. “A lot of people had hope when he stepped on board about what he was going to bring to the department. Partly because he was an outside hire, and that inspired a lot of hope for people. Second, he seemed dedicated to improving customers’ experience. When you watched him in Building Inspection Commission meetings, he did not seem dismissive when people were sharing their concerns.”
In other news…
Despite efforts to overhaul the system, the department’s permitting process is slow, archaic and has been beset by corruption favoring well-placed insiders. The vast majority of projects must still be submitted in person and on paper, which has led to crushing delays with the onset of a pandemic. The pitfalls of a slow and largely paper-based system have given rise to “permit expediters,” hired by customers to guide their projects to completion.
While some expediters merely understand a difficult and onerous process, others gamed the system to work for them, and only them, at the exclusion of others. Walter Wong, who last year pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiring to commit fraud and money-laundering, dominated the plan-check and permitting side of the department for years. He seeded it with his allies and their family members, who expediently processed his conveniently color-coded files.
Before being named director of the entire department, the recently departed Hui was deputy director for plan review. Emails uncovered by the City Attorney reveal he continued his close relationship with Wong as department director.
As such, a longtime building department official described Shahrouri’s position as “head of what used to be the Walter Wong group.”
And “that is a tough job to take,” the official continued, “especially if you don’t know the politics of San Francisco. The politics of San Francisco will make quick work of you.”
Department sources, however, say Shahrouri made modest headway in his very brief tenure. A programmer in his own right, he helped craft and implement software that streamlined the permitting process and eased data entry. In the short-term, he took aim at easing the monstrous backlog of projects at the department. In the longer-term, he would have worked to improve the electronic permitting process — so online submissions would instantly generate a permit number.
But neither of these goals could be accomplished in the scant 2.5 months Shahrouri spent on the job. Building department officials say that, despite public talk that an over-the-counter project will be reviewed within 14 days of being submitted, in reality, it will be assigned within 15 days — which does not include review.
On a large project, it may take a month for the department to send an email acknowledging the project has been received.
Shahrouri said he hopes there’s an opportunity in the future for him to continue his work.
“If it wasn’t for my personal issue,” he says, “There is no way I would consider leaving San Francisco.”
Thanks for the detailed insights C.F.! I feel like I’m auditing a seminar for free here.
Keep ’em coming.
From KQED Forum Archives, Feb. 25, 2021, 45 minutes into program:
KQED Forum: “Here’s a question or a comment from a listener who writes: ‘With the recent indictments of top city officials, what structural changes do you recommend for preventing this from happening again, especially at the Dept. of Bldg. Inspection (DBI), where so many of these pay-to-play problems have existed for many, many years?’ “
Mayor Breed: “Yeah, and right now we have an Acting Director at that Dept. who is working very closely with our City Attorney’s Office to clean up what was a “hot mess”, and I want to be clear, there are some challenges with this dept., but there are a lot of incredible (sic) public servants there who just want to do their jobs, and the person that I have now, who’s the Acting Dir., who’s cleaning up the mess, who’s redoing the systems and setting it up to make it user-friendly and easy for people, and the safe-guards that we’ve put into place, because we had the City Attorney come in and investigate, make recommendations for system changes to avoid these kinds of problems, making sure we have the right checks and balances, and who’s signing off on what, and making the process work better for the people who rely on this dept. We’ve already implemented a number of things. So, we anticipate that all of this work that we’re doing – by the spring, there will be a noticeable change for people who use this particular dept., and it will be a lot better, and there will be checks and balances in place that will help to prevent some of the issues that happened before.” http://www.kqed.org/forum
Comments:
So, Mayor Breed thinks that things are now under control at DBI. Apparently, she didn’t realize that the new Chief Administrator for Permit Services had just resigned the day before. Regardless of that, it’s going to take a lot more than just hiring a new Director and a couple of new Deputies to clean things up. The hiring practices need to be straightened out completely, starting at the lowest levels and continuing to the top. That means announcing and publicizing job openings broadly, fairly, and professionally. It means giving meaningful and honest tests and interviews. It means valuing employees for their competence and integrity, and not their connections and loyalty to their supervisors.
And, meanwhile, it won’t be possible to promote qualified and deserving candidates from within the ranks to supervisory positions, until only qualified and deserving candidates are hired from the get-go for inspector and plan check positions. Otherwise, relatives and friends will continue to fill positions from top to bottom. And those relatives and friends will continue to hand out favors to their favored applicants and promotions to their most loyal subordinates, just as it’s happened at DBI for years. Former Director, Tom Hui, was by far the worst example of this, but not the only one; there are others who worked closely with Hui for years.
In addition, the existing DBI culture, which places too much value on keeping applicants happy, has to be changed. It’s not the main job of a professional, competent, building department to keep its applicants happy. The building codes are a complex set of laws, and building inspectors are law enforcement officers (read the Code!) In many cases, it’s not possible to do a competent job of plan checking over the counter, as most applicants would like. Not only are there complicated issues, but many plan checkers and inspectors face intimidation from applicants every day. That said, if that enforcement can be improved and expedited with better technology and management, that’s great. And if voters don’t like the Codes, they can take their complaints to the ballot box. (In fact, many of the complaints that are leveled at the Bldg. Dept. have to do with Planning Dept. policies, not those of the Bldg. Dept.) But most important is establishing and maintaining the department’s professionalism, competence, and integrity. It’s no surprise that the Bldg. Depts. at many nearby cities – where Building Officials enforce the Codes with professionalism and enthusiasm – have a very low opinion of S.F.’s Building Dept.
I also suggest to Mayor Breed that she ask Acting Dir. O’Riordan to show her the applications that were submitted for the pending Dep. Dir. position. At the Feb. 17 BIC meeting, he claimed there were several of those, but he didn’t offer any evidence of that. He also bragged that 60% of permits are now issued over-the-counter. What he didn’t say is that the vast majority of those permits are for reroofing, window replacement, water-heater replacement, bathroom remodels, etc., and that’s always been the case at DBI. In other words, business as usual. How about they tell us some of the changes that the Mayor says the City Attorney has made at DBI? Just where is the transparency that O’Riordan, Breed, and the BIC are so earnestly espousing, or is that simply too much to ask for from this city?
Thanks for reporting on this! Frustrating to see more delays in getting DBI efficient. Hopefully this breakdown leads to an opportunity
Article fails to mention that few remodels/additions get permits. You know why: too fraught, time, frustration, corruption, etc. So neighbors get no chance to weigh in, unless they want to report a neighbor who is doing the only rational thing to do.
If anything the DBI employees are only victims of a corrupt system. Permits are obtained on false pretenses daily. Crooked architects, contractors, builders, etc.. It’s a never ending battle. Employees constantly being offered gifts. It never ends. I can’t help to think these articles are a concerted effort to help privatize the DBI. Joe who are you working for?
Freddy —
I’m working for Mission Local. Implying that a journalist, let alone a longstanding city journalist, is secretly in cahoots with unseen powers because you didn’t like his or her article is just about the most reductive reaction possible. Not impressed.
Best,
JE
He may not have done his research prior to taking that job. Give him credit…it took less than 90 days for him to realize what a dumpster fire DBI is and bail.
Hahaha
My initial reaction was to think oh, this is terrible! But by the end of it, it seems like the impetus for new, good leadership and transparent governance is in place as much as ever and this setback, however unfortunate, isn’t a sign of something bad. Is there no one who can pick this ball up and just keep going with it? Is there anxiety about this among activists, groups ans folks who’ve been working to clean up the department now? tl;dr *should* we be worried?
I wonder if the Building Commission will tap member Jon Jacobo to head up the search committee? Jon seems to have a lot of connections that could be useful.
Willy N.
That is exactly the thing we don’t need at the BIC. “Connections” are what got us into this mess in the first place. What we do need is a professional manager or managers on the BIC to oversee the DBI, not a bunch of amateurs who don’t even get paid for their work. As Rudy Nothenberg, the S.F. City Administrator in 1994, warned at the time, passage of the Charter Amendment that established DBI would place the Building Dept. in the hands of special interests, and this prediction has proven to be correct. (S.F. Chron., 7/17/00) The voters, however, were duped into approving this self-serving Amendment by two of the City’s greatest opportunists, Joe O’Donaghue, former head of the Residential Builders Association (RBA), and Randy Shaw, longtime Tenderloin housing advocate.
As it worked out, the only people who would want these non-paying jobs are ones who see it as a way to benefit themselves or their constituents. And the Charter Amendment limits that even further: “The four mayoral appointments shall be comprised of a structural engineer, a licensed architect, a residential builder, and a representative of a community- based non-profit housing development corporation. The three Supervisorial appointments shall be comprised of a residential tenant, a residential landlord, and a member of the general public. The members of the commission shall serve without compensation.” Typically, almost none of these representatives are familiar with the Building Codes, and none has any experience overseeing a Building Dept. or any other large organization. If they did, they wouldn’t be spending their valuable time with the BIC.
What they do bring to the table is a personal and/or constituent-based wish list, whether that means personal access to DBI staff and services (e.g. Rodrigo Santos, Mel Murphy), DBI programs that benefit their constituents, the hiring of people like themselves at DBI, their own political agenda, or public exposure for themselves.
Unfortunately, the only way to clean up this mess now is to go back to the voters with a new, significantly changed Charter Amendment. (Under the current system, even a proven outsider in the Director’s position will have a steep, uphill battle fighting the entrenched special interests.) And maybe some day in the hopefully not-too-distant future we can look forward to a professional, competent, and well-respected DBI.
Conversely, appointments are made to the BIC for political reasons. It stands to reason that everyone involved has been accurately informed of the minefield they were stepping into so as to avoid stepping on any mines and embarrassing anyone.
Who honestly still defends this system? I don’t get it.