Following its fifth meeting this month, the Department of Building Inspection’s oversight commission on Jan. 21 selected interim director Patrick O’Riordan as the next full-time director of the department.
Once again, a “national search” for a San Francisco department head has turned up someone who was already in the building. San Francisco may not peg itself as resembling Kansas — but, like Dorothy Gayle, when it comes to looking for its heart’s desire, this city often never looks further than its own backyard.
Friday’s appointment came after three hours of closed session in the fourth special meeting this month for the DBI oversight commission, and on the heels of a City Attorney report finding no evidence of wrongdoing from O’Riordan on several highlighted projects.
That investigation was spurred by a pair of Mission Local articles from October. The City Attorney concluded in the report released last week that veteran inspectors Norman Gutierrez and Christopher Schroeder, who told Mission Local that O’Riordan kept them off projects to appease connected builders, are not credible. The report surmises that they are fabricating these stories out of spite because O’Riordan suspended them, in 2013 and April, 2021, respectively.
You’re not going to believe this, but we find flaws in the City Attorney’s report. We find flaws in the personnel who were interviewed, a number of whom are architects and beneficiaries of the department’s problematic status quo. We find flaws in the conclusions drawn and the points emphasized. Finally, we question the purpose of a report that doesn’t merely mitigate complaints made against O’Riordan, but elevates him in prose reminiscent of Enrique Pearce canonizing Ed Lee.
To start with, there is quite a gap between an employee being rankled at a boss over discipline issues and an employee making knowingly false accusations about his boss, on the record, in newspaper articles and during interviews with City Attorney personnel.
The notion that both inspectors would independently decide to craft malicious lies to a reporter in on-the-record interviews and, in Schroeder’s case, to City Attorney personnel, strikes me as a stretch. The assertion that these inspectors’ disciplinary incidents is, in and of itself, disqualifying — and that, in and of itself, it led them to fabricate elaborate and public lies — strikes me as extremely thin.
But the only rationale offered by the City Attorney for Gutierrez and Schroeder’s alleged fabulizing is rancor over those suspensions.
The City Attorney’s report portrays Gutierrez’s decision to not participate in the investigation, and Schroeder only being interviewed after being mandated to do so, in a sinister light. Perhaps. But had Schroeder been eager to slag his boss, he shouldn’t have needed to be prodded.
As for Gutierrez, he declined to be interviewed, fearing that the City Attorney’s M.O. of protecting the city might translate into protecting O’Riordan.
The City Attorney repeatedly states that Schroeder’s purported animus against O’Riordan stems from his April, 2021, suspension. The report lists no other potential motive for Schroeder’s alleged dishonesty. But Mission Local found written evidence of Schroeder making allegations that O’Riordan showed connected builders preferential treatment — in February, 2021. That’s two months before the suspension that the City Attorney offers as the sole reason for Schroeder concocting an on-the-record cock-and-bull story.
He made these earlier allegations in a sworn deposition for the Dennis Richards lawsuit vs. the city. In that Feb. 12 deposition, Schroeder used the acronym “FIPO” to describe “File Placed in O’Riordan’s Office.”
“Then it’s returned down there to [senior inspector] Kevin McHugh, as you can see, and this is one of those called fipos (phonetic), file placed in O’Riordan’s Office, and then McHugh abates the case,” reads the transcript of Schroeder analyzing a file.
“What’s the significance of the file being placed in Patrick O’Riordan’s office?” asked Richards’ attorney, Scott Emblidge.
“Typically that’s the limbo place where connected people have their files placed, sometimes for years,” Schroeder responded. “I have seen it up to 10 years for the connected people.”
“If you were a connected person, why would you want to be in limbo for 10 years?” Emblidge asked.
“Because no abatement action or order of abatement would be issued,” Schroeder replied, “and it puts the brakes on code-enforcement action.”
Schroeder also discussed the project at 3418 26th St., which was the subject of Mission Local’s original story. To be clear, he did not explicitly state in this deposition — as he did to Mission Local — that he, in 2012, repeatedly informed O’Riordan of the unpermitted construction of a five-story structure by Mel Murphy, one of the city’s most connected builders and the former president of DBI’s oversight commission.
Rather, Schroeder downplays his involvement and merely says “it was reported to the interim director who was my senior at the time.”
But, from there, Schroeder in February, 2021, made some of the same complaints about the subsequent handling of the situation that he did in October, 2021, to Mission Local.
In his February sworn deposition, Schroeder bemoaned DBI’s hands-off treatment of the 26th Street project after its belated intervention, its overreliance on dodgy special inspection reports and dodgy project engineer Rodrigo Santos.
That’s along the lines of his complaints to Mission Local in October: In lieu of actual DBI inspections on the foundation and other critical elements at the 26th Street project, DBI relied on an engineering report from Santos, now an accused federal criminal several times over whom the City Attorney has additionally charged with permit forgery and dangerous, cavalier excavation work.
The recent City Attorney’s report investigating the allegations against O’Riordan in 2021 never addresses this. It never addresses what to make of the fact that there are no recorded DBI foundation inspections on site, or that the special inspections a DBI higher-up signed off on in March, 2013, weren’t recorded as complete until July, 2013. The Department of Building Inspection could have insisted on thorough and intrusive testing — jackhammering out concrete and bringing in ground-penetrating radar. But it didn’t.
The City Attorney’s report also doesn’t address why Matt Greene and Bernie Curran were the subsequent inspectors on this site. This is relevant, as, by cross-referencing a previously confidential 2014 city report the City Attorney released last week and 2021 depositions in Richards’ lawsuit, it appears that Greene was Murphy’s handpicked, preferred inspector. And Curran has since been run out of the department and hit with federal bribery charges, in tandem with Santos.
Finally, the City Attorney claims Schroeder contradicted himself in his 2021 claims, compared to a 2014 interview. Some seven years prior, he told the City Attorney, among other things, “I was never out there.” This is a matter of semantics; Schroeder clearly has been in the vicinity of Mission and 26th, but he never performed an inspection on this building.
But Schroeder is, undeniably, prevaricating. Why do this? We are only privy to the portions of the interviews the City Attorney has chosen to highlight. And the Department of Building Inspection refused to allow Schroeder to speak a second time with Mission Local.
But, when confronted with this apparent contradiction by the City Attorney in 2021, the report states that Schroeder responded, “As I said before, because what I was told was that they wanted me to lie. O’Riordan and Dan Lowery wanted me to say that they tried to call me four times.”
He then goes on to use cryptic and defensive language, eventually stating that his memory is better now.
The City Attorney sees this as evidence that Schroeder is fabricating this story. But that’s not the only way to see it.
The jarring claim about being asked to lie by his superiors is never addressed, even though Schroeder’s excerpted quote states “as I told you before.” Clearly this issue was discussed, but the general public isn’t being told why it’s not worth examining.
Because if Schroeder’s superiors asked him to be less than truthful many years ago, it would go a long way toward explaining why he dodged discussing the 26th Street project in 2014. It’s a significant risk to tell the authorities that your bosses, plural, have engaged in wrongdoing and enlisted you in a cover story. A worker making such accusations could find himself subject to retaliation and transfer out of the division, especially if the City Attorney chose to side with management rather than a front-line worker.
Going over DBI organizational charts and based upon Schroeder’s own statements in the February sworn deposition in the Richards case, it’s clear that, in the intervening years, he’s been transferred through the department repeatedly. By the time of our October, 2021, interview, he told me that, after many years in the field, he’d been transferred to code enforcement, and then transferred again to technical services. He described himself as “the phone guy.”
Freedom, as Kris Kristofferson could tell you, is just another word for nothing left to lose. Perhaps Schroeder’s memory has improved, as he abstrusely stated, because he is no longer concerned about events that have already come to pass.
That seems at least as plausible as claiming that he and Gutierrez independently conspired to tell vast and flagrant on-the-record lies.
Incidentally, in his own deposition in the Richards case, O’Riordan said that Schroeder lacked patience, didn’t have a knack for customer service and could behave poorly. But he also described Schroeder as “even-handed,” someone who never “showed favoritism” and is “honest.”
The overwhelming majority of the page count for the exhibits attached to the City Attorney’s investigation of Patrick O’Riordan — something like 90 percent — has little to nothing to do with Patrick O’Riordan. The materials deal in large part with former director Tom Hui, who was pushed out of the department in March, 2020, at legal bayonet-point after the City Attorney uncovered written evidence of longstanding nepotism, cronyism and corruption.
The City Attorney has done great work uncovering wrongdoing by Hui, Curran and others. And, since 2019, O’Riordan has been helping them with that. After only seven years of directly supervising Curran, in 2019 O’Riordan went to the City Attorney with “suspicions,” as the report puts it.
So it was hard to miss the theme in the City Attorney’s report that DBI was a cesspool of corruption for the past decade, and the people Hui elevated were deeply compromised, with one notable exception: The guy who’s cooperating with the City Attorney when they sew up his longtime former colleagues. It was hard to miss how malfeasance and wrongdoing was heaped on everyone who’s no longer in the picture.
The City Attorney didn’t say that Hui’s last word when he scurried out of DBI headquarters was “rosebud.” But it felt that way.
But not everybody is no longer in the picture: Angus McCarthy has been the president of the DBI’s oversight committee since 2012, notable continuity in leadership throughout this terrible decade for the department. Mission Local earlier wrote about a bevy of permit irregularities on his properties, spurring a separate City Attorney investigation.
McCarthy did not come off well in the most recent City Attorney report. As Mission Local reported, he has an admitted habit of sending internal DBI materials to Sean Keighran, the president of the influential Residential Builders Association. Last week’s report documented more of that.
Keighran is McCarthy’s close friend and, evidently, a talented editor. That’s for the good. But, like McCarthy, he’s also a member of the Residential Builders Association, an organization that the Department of Building Inspection ostensibly exists to regulate.
The City Attorney’s report this month documented that McCarthy emailed Keighran a draft Department of Building Inspection document regarding Mel Murphy’s home sliding down Twin Peaks in 2013. McCarthy and Keighran workshopped this DBI document to place more blame on Murphy.
Now, Murphy deserved this. But the City Attorney did not delve into the more overarching and troubling context here. Murphy was, at the time, the Residential Builders Association’s arch-rival. McCarthy and Keighran were, in effect, weaponizing the Department of Building Inspection to target a political foe.
Murphy, again, had it coming. But it’s troubling that a group that should be regulated by DBI is, instead, wheeling the guns on DBI’s deck to blast an opponent. Other targets may be less deserving of a cannonade than Murphy. Essentially, this is what happened to Dennis Richards.
The City Attorney’s report additionally revealed that, in 2014, McCarthy was one of very few people given a then-confidential city report outlining the corruption and malfeasance in the department — and, specifically, the shortcomings of Tom Hui. Nothing was done to address the report’s findings. Six years later, Hui was frog-marched out of city employment.
McCarthy was also deposed in the Richards case. When asked in September, 2021, if he had any misgivings about Hui, he responded: “Based on what I am reading now, and what I am finding out about now, I am still going to hold judgment on that until I read the report fully.”
McCarthy, is, again, the president of the body tasked with overseeing the DBI, and has been for a decade. And, nearly eight years ago, he was one of just a handful of individuals given access to a report spelling out Hui’s penchant for favoritism. If cleaning up the department was McCarthy’s aim, he’s had many years to lift a finger.
So, it’s unfortunate that, in 2022, McCarthy was the president of the commission that has selected the next director. It’s even more unfortunate considering that a quartet of San Francisco supervisors have put an anti-corruption measure on the June ballot that would fundamentally remake the DBI commission tasked with overseeing the department and choosing its leadership.
“Gone will be the days of behind-closed-door appointments like Mel Murphy and Rodrigo Santos and the crooks that have run that commission,” Supervisor Aaron Peskin told us in December.
But, on Jan. 21, that commission made its move regardless. The die is cast. It remains to be seen if, as The Who put it, the new boss is the same as the old boss. In more ways than one.
The City Attorney’s Jan. 18 Memorandum on DBI and Chief Building Inspector, Patrick O’Riordan, is admittedly very thorough and professional and well worth reading. It looks like the product of Head Attorney for Public Integrity, Keslie Stewart, and not that of new C.A., David Chiu. It does appear to exonerate O’Riordan of ethics violations during the 2009 – 2012 period and in general. However, that report is only about whether he was involved in any corruption at DBI, and not about whether he would be a good choice for the DBI Director’s position.
It looks like he did try to hold the line against the corruption of others, and for those actions he should be commended. But there are still nagging questions about the charges made against him by Inspector Chris Schroeder and others. (Joe has made a good case for this.) How, for example, could an entire 5-story building be constructed illegally in 2012, including excavation, concrete, and framing without O’Riordan, the Senior Inspector then for that area, knowing about it? There was a Site Permit for the project, but that doesn’t allow any construction. (A Site Permit is mainly for obtaining Planning Dept. approval, and the developer and former Building Inspection Commission (BIC) President, Mel Murphy, had to know this perfectly well.) The Senior Inspector not knowing about the construction defies credibility. Also, how could he stand by and witness Tom Hui’s and Bernie Curran’s corruption for 7 years before reporting it to the City Attorney (C. A.)? Has he only changed his stripes when it benefited himself? Consequently, it remains to be seen whether O’Riordan can be committed to change at DBI now, when he’s spent so many years working in and accommodating a system that has been so corrupt.
Permit cheater, scofflaw, multi-millionaire developer, and current BIC President, Angus McCarthy, has now pushed through the appointment of O’Riordan as Director, just as he did that of the corrupt Tom Hui 10 years earlier. No surprise that O’Riordan is a former contractor and fellow Irishman of McCarthy. He’s also an employee whose rise at DBI was no doubt greased by his Irish-American (I-A) builder connections and I-A control of DBI’s Inspection Division. It’s as if Tammany Hall in NYC has been resurrected in S.F. And like Tammany Hall, McCarthy has been active in aiding undocumented Irish immigrants to S.F., as well as promoting the I-As like himself to positions at DBI. The fact is that McCarthy and O’Riordan, along with Hui and former DBI Dep. Directors Ed Sweeney and Dan Lowery, have invited the C.A.’s scrutiny by the way they have run DBI for years. Regrettably, all of this could have been halted years ago, if the District and City Attorney’s Offices had paid attention to complaints from Grand Juries and numerous informers. Instead, they sat on it all, until 2019. Thank heavens that the U.S. Attorney’s Office had the good sense to step in.
O’Riordan is another favorite of the I-A contractors’ Residential Builders Assoc. (RBA), and his appointment completes an almost total coup by them of DBI’s top management and Inspection Div. According to the C.A.’s Memorandum, McCarthy even sits to this day on the Board of the RBA. (Not to disparage the I-A in general – I know of many respectable and admirable people who are Irish-American – but the RBA and their former President, Joe O’Donaghue, are reprehensible and largely responsible for the mess that DBI has become.) And who in their right mind believes that O’Riordan is not beholden to McCarthy and the RBA? Who believes that he will now rid DBI of all the relatives and friends who were unethically hired under the previous management? It would be a stroke of pure luck, if it turned out that he was truly a man of integrity.
He is joined by Joe Duffy, another I-A and newly appointed Deputy Director of Inspection Services, and 4 out of 5 current Senior Inspectors in the Inspection and Code Enforcement Divisions, all of whom are I-A – Sean Birmingham, Kevin McHugh, Matt Greene, and John Hinchion.
See: https://sfdbi.org/sites/default/files/DBI%20Org%20Chart.pdf
Bernie Curran, yet another I-A Senior Inspector until recently, was forced out of the Dept. because of bribery and corruption. Before then, he was the darling of every past and present DBI-connected crook. (McCarthy, himself, called Curran “wonderful” in a conversation of his with former BIC Commissioner Debra Walker, as quoted in the C.A.’s report.) And who was responsible for getting Curran promoted to a senior position in 2013? Was that Lowery’s doing or Hui’s? We’ll probably never know, since it’s clear that DBI management has for many years been able to go into the Permit Tracking System and delete or change entries. Did the C.A. consider that many records may have been sanitized by managers who were covering their own tracks?
O’Riordan rose through the ranks via the same path that these Senior Inspectors did, as well as Sweeney and Lowery. (They, too, are I-As, who were forced out in 2020 for malfeasance.) This path begins with the hiring of management favorites, either with unethical temporary hiring or by way of hiring and promotion tests that are written and administered by corrupt DBI managers. And this same favoritism continues all the way to the top. (At the same time, there is no reason, whatsoever, to think that there are not other, non-I-A applicants and inspectors who have equal or better qualifications.) Currently, the Chief Building Inspector position is vacant, because of O’Riordan’s appointment, but you can be sure that, too, will soon be filled by one of the current I-A Senior Inspectors. None of them, including McCarthy and O’Riordan, possesses any college degree or college certificate required by most other Building Depts.
Furthermore, how is it possible that a city such as S.F., with its numerous high-rise buildings and other large projects, plus a major earthquake fault that runs through it, does not have a Building Dept. that is run by a structural engineer?!!! Former small contractor, Patrick O’Riordan, no matter how honest he may turn out to be, is not the person to be calling the shots for construction code compliance and creation in S.F. The rest of the educated world must see S.F. as a joke! Anyone who thinks this is a sophisticated and savvy city should have their head examined. It is, instead, a city that is used and abused repeatedly by a broadly diverse cast of crooks, and has only been forced to face that fact lately by the FBI. Meanwhile, the RBA must be salivating at their success. Joe O’Donoghue, former RBA President and creator of the current DBI that was foisted on gullible voters in 1994, is no doubt celebrating with glee. Their next annual golf tournament will, no doubt, be a major scene of celebration for them and their allies at DBI and City government.
O’Riordan’s appointment is business as usual at DBI, and could probably have been prevented by the City Attorney’s Office, the Board of Supervisors, and/or the Mayor, by removing or restricting McCarthy from the appointment process. Shame on the other BIC Commissioners, too, for allowing themselves to be arm-twisted into this appointment. It’s no excuse that these novices know nothing about how to run a Building Dept; there was plenty of opportunity for them to read about the malfeasance at DBI in the media, etc. Sadly, the appointment was rushed thru with numerous, closed-door meetings in quick succession, right before the C.A.’s Jan. 18 report could be disseminated and its contents known. Now, it won’t even be necessary for McCarthy to beat a path to O’Riordan’s door, as he did to Hui’s. He can just send his plans with one of his runners. And Sean Keighran, current President of the RBA, can put both McCarthy and O’Riordan on speed dial. Why waste his time passing his revised DBI documents back and forth to McCarthy?
It should also be noted that the Plan Check and Permit Services divisions at DBI are the product of another coup – this one staged by the corrupt Asian-American triumvirate of Tom Hui, former DBI Director Frank Chu (1994 – 2004), and Walter Wong, notorious expediter, criminal mastermind, and close friend of Hui and Chu. (Some would include former Mayor Ed Lee in this group.) It’s too bad that the C.A report did not include a close look at the many years of corruption by this group and others in the Permit Services Div., which includes Plan Check. Maybe the C.A.’s Office can perform an encore? A large majority of employees at the Permit Services Div., are now Asian-Americans, many of them relatives or friends or relatives of friends of Hui and Wong, who were hired originally as “temporary hires” with the help of Hui and Wong. (Here too, I am not disparaging Asian-Americans in general. There are many fine people of Asian descent. Unfortunately, though, most large groups of people have some individuals with little integrity, who will gravitate to any opportunity where there is easy money and influence to be gained.) And, if anyone doubts how close Chu’s relationship with Wong was, Chu became the manager of Wong’s Jaidan Consulting Group, after being forced out of DBI by Mayor Newsom. His Linked-in account, however, has been scrubbed clean of most of that information:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-chu-73b759180/
At Jaidan Consulting, Chu joined several other former DBI plan checkers, who were also former Wong accomplices at DBI.
The main hope now for supporters of a competent, professional, and ethical DBI is the proposed Charter Amendment being considered by the Board of Supervisors. This amendment, if passed by the voters in July, will abolish the Building Inspection Commission as it now exists and replace it with a Commission that is directly accountable to the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor. Not only will McCarthy be gone, but the new Commission may choose to replace O’Riordan as well.
In addition, as this observer sees it, San Francisco would be much better served by a centralized, City Manager type government, similar to San Jose’s, rather than the Strong Mayor type it has now. This City Manager would need to be a highly qualified and experienced professional. In contrast, the “City Administrator” that S.F. has now is only responsible for the management of a few less-important departments, and not DBI ☹. See:
https://icma.org/sites/default/files/302618_Council-Manager%20or%20Strong%20Mayor%20-%20The%20Choice%20is%20Clear.pdf
Joe you gotta write a book about this crap! I’d buy it in a second!
Great report to all San Franciscans Joe. There’s no college degree mentioned for the DBI director. Do you find out what college degree the current DBI director has? This is interesting to know. Thank you Joe
Campers,
He won’t listen to me and I understand why.
He’s happy where he is.
Doing all the things he loves.
He should put it all on hold and y’all should help convince him.
To run against Chiu for City Attorney.
Matt Gonzalez.
Go Niners!
h.
Other cities demand qualifications, expertise and competence from public servants. San Francisco requires a pulse and connection to the correct insiders. I am tired of paying tax to funds these incompetents’ pensions while enduring inferior services. Thanks for your scrutiny of this appointment.
David Chiu, the new City Attorney is an enabler of racism and corruption.
That’s a bottom line you’re all going to come to understand.
Since he co-founded ‘Grassroots Enterprise’ outta Harvard and helped George w. Bush get elected for 350 k to his work in getting 2,000 rent-controlled units destroyed in Park Merced, most of David’s past work is buried unless you have Google.
Ask him about his relationship with Randy Tate.
Next to Boudin, Chiu is now second top cop inside City and County limits and I think he’s been for sale is and will continue to be for sale no fake public conscience left unfaked.
RBA says the guy is a Saint?
That’s enuff for your new City Attorney.
Dontcha love this town?
Go Niners!
h.
Why do some of these few people have so many positions? Maybe the best policy would be to limit them to one at time so they can’t get into trouble overlapping their contradictory authorities. If they had a single job to do they might do a better job and stay out of trouble.
Joe, you are wasting your talent here. You should be working on a novel or a sitcom. I am laughing so hard I can barely see straight. That is a compliment.
Great article Joe 👏 . O’Riordan becoming director shows that DBI does not want to change. The corruption and favortism will continue because the people in power still need to profit from SF construction.
So what do you believe the DA investigation or all the evidence of corruption in DBI. Remember that the FBI has investigated DBI multiple times. An DBI is the same today. Good old DBI.
You should know Angus is not the sharpest knife in the kitchen drawer, He is told by other RBA members what to say and what to do, This man is dangerous, He was a shoe salesman,
Angus has been seen repeatedly seen going into HUI’s office with a roll of plans for years, on the 6th floor of the old building. Favoritism is good when it works for you
Wait, what happened to Micki Callahan?
From the City Attorney’s interview with Vivian Day on December 29, 2021, “Day said that within a month of that meeting with Mel Murphy, she was called to a meeting with
BIC President Angus McCarthy and Micki Callahan, then the City’s Human Resources Director.
They told Day that the BIC would remove her if she did not resign. They offered her a choice; if she resigned, she could stay on at her current salary until she reached five years of employment and her pension vested.”
It would help some interested parties to know the date of the first draft, as to how much former C.A. Herrera oversaw and how much new C.A. David Chiu oversaw & approved.Which oversaw this cover-up?
Wow. I still think that Chiu was offered the job of City Attorney as he was a known SF insider who would protect the “City Family”.
They did what they were going to do all along. Regardless though who ended up filling the seat, the expectations are clear as day: Will there be inspectors that are qualified to standards that are in place elsewhere, i.e. with engineering degrees from accredited schools? Will there be a system put in place that tracks the work, that enforces process and keeps records of each step along the way?
O’Riordan:
Inspector didn’t have a knack for customer service.
Translation:
Inspector refused to take bribes (excuse me, loans!) or appease dishonest, O’Riordan connected contractors.
Amazing article! Flabbergasted that through it all Angus McCarthy still chairs the oversight committee. And seems like the City Attorney might as well grab a seat on the committee as well given their inability to objectively suss out the situation.
Excellent job Mr Eskinazi. Ditto Toney Robert PlantHold, Ellen,