If ever a film was made of San Francisco’s rather theatrical forays in municipal corruption, there’s a hell of a part for a suave, middle-aged Latin actor able to project Mephistophelian charm of the sort that induces you to simultaneously smile and check on your wallet.
He’d be playing Rodrigo Santos. Santos is the Stanford University-educated engineer, permit expediter and former president of the Building Inspection Commission who, as if by magic, navigated his clients’ projects through the chaos of the building department he once in part oversaw; the man so in demand that “You’d show up at his office at 5:30 a.m. for a five-minute appointment.”
Santos, in many ways, exemplified the dysfunction and lawlessness of this city’s building department. Because he stayed in great demand, even after the City Attorney filed suit against him alleging he was using forged documents to conduct dangerous, unwarranted excavations — and, notably, that he was purportedly stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars of his clients’ money. But if he could get their projects done, expediently, perhaps it was worth it. Then the feds piggybacked with bank fraud charges, and followed that up by charging Santos and disgraced former senior building inspector Bernie Curran with running a bribery ring. Finally, the feds in September tossed tax evasion charges onto the pile. That appears to have been the charge that broke the permit expediter’s back; Santos moved to alter his plea in December (Curran will potentially alter his this month).
With the Department of Building Inspection now eager to shed its reputation for overt corruption, Santos went from being a deity to a pariah. But he doesn’t seem to care; he still shows up at DBI HQ, frequently. And that’s even after internal measures were taken to peer over his shoulder and alienate him from potential clients.
One of those measures was the Department of Building Inspection’s Internal Quality Control Audit, to “identify violations resulting from public integrity breaches.” This group was, among other jobs, tasked with identifying the many, many projects where “criminally charged engineer Rodrigo Santos or related entities did work.” They were also charged with uncovering all projects where Curran “conducted a same-day inspection.”
That’s a lot of work, and DBI tapped veteran senior inspector Ed Donnelly to lead the group. But this was an intriguing choice. Because Donnelly doesn’t have to look far to find a building where criminally charged engineer Rodrigo Santos did work.
He lives in one.
Going through the permitting history at Donnelly’s Sunnyside home, one finds a single mention of Santos; his engineering firm is listed as an authorized agent for a $1,000 permit from 2008 meant to complete work and obtain final inspection for work already approved under a prior permit.
But the Department of Building Inspection’s public-facing website is to data what Steve DeBerg was to quarterbacking: It’s just good enough to get you beat.
So you don’t see much online. But if you put on your shoes and socks and head into DBI headquarters, at 49 South Van Ness Avenue, and up to the fourth floor, there’s a lot to see. To start with, that’s Rodrigo Santos’ seal on not one, but two, sets of comprehensive engineering plans for the “Donnelly residence remodel,” one approved on Nov. 13, 2006, and one approved on Aug. 13, 2007.
And he is listed as the engineer on not just the single 2008 permit but four: One from 2006, one from 2007, one from 2008 and one from 2011.
Responding to our queries, the Department of Building Inspection said that Donnelly properly reported his remodeling project to his superiors when he started it, decades ago. When tapped to lead the audit in 2021, “Mr. Donnelly disclosed to his supervisor that Mr. Santos had conducted work on his property more than a decade ago. His supervisor determined that Mr. Donnelly could continue to participate in the internal audit of other properties and that [his home address] would be reviewed separately by the Deputy Director for Inspection Services at the appropriate time. Mr. Donnelly will have no role in that review.”
An undetermined period of time later, however, DBI “subsequently determined that Mr. Donnelly would be removed from the Internal Quality Control Audit to avoid any concerns about a potential conflict of interest.”
The department refused to disclose exactly when it opted to move Donnelly out, and who made this call, only stating “recently, and the decision was made by senior management.”
Mission Local put questions about this matter to DBI on Thursday evening. Donnelly was seen on Friday morning at DBI HQ in a lengthy meeting with Deputy Director for Inspection Services Joe Duffy.
So, that’s recently. And Duffy is a senior manager.
If, as DBI claims, Donnelly dutifully reported everything to his supervisors properly, it’s a bit mind-boggling that his supervisors still couldn’t grasp the inherently problematic nature of having a man who hired Rodrigo Santos to do work on his own home running the Rodrigo Santos audit. At the very least, it’s mind-boggling they couldn’t at least detect the terrible optics here.
So, it’s mind-boggling that they still opted to place him into this tenuous position — and, it seems, unceremoniously yank him out of it after being subjected to the first bit of scrutiny.
Meanwhile, the permitting history at Donnelly’s home, over what turned out to be a nearly 15-year remodeling odyssey, is also a bit mind-boggling.
Donnelly, in 2006, took out a permit that was, itself, an addendum of two other permits. In 2011, he took out another permit to complete the 2006 addendum, and then he did this again in 2017. Finally, in 2019, he took out another permit to finish off the work approved 13 years earlier — and, in 2020, a certificate of final completion was awarded for work approved in 2006 and 2007.
On the day that certificate was issued in 2020, DBI expired four other permits that had been hanging around since 2006, 2008, 2011 and 2017.
In addition to hiring Santos as his engineer, Donnelly also brought in Henry Karnilowicz as a contractor, and special inspections on the project were performed by engineer Harold Howell. Karnilowicz was subsequently sued by the city for exposing residents and workers to asbestos; he paid $125,000 in a stipulated judgment. Howell later had his engineering license revoked and was placed on probation after being charged with negligence and incompetence by the state Board for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, and Geologists.
Throughout this extended construction adventure, Donnelly’s house was hit with seven different complaints. These were all quickly dismissed; four were closed by Dan Lowrey, a senior inspector and, later, the chief building inspector. Lowrey is one of the echelon of former DBI leaders who expediently left the department after former director Tom Hui was frog-marched out of the building at legal bayonet-point in 2020.
On the public-facing Steve DeBerg DBI data system, the many inspections on Donnelly’s house are recorded as being done by a bevy of inspectors. But the internal system, to which the public is not privy, notes that most all of them were, in fact, signed off by Lowrey.
On the one hand this is proper: DBI required a higher-ranking inspector to check off on Donnelly’s home. On the other hand, you’d never know what transpired by accessing the public-facing resources. There are an awful lot of eggs in Lowrey’s basket here. Hopefully he did good work.
An April update on the Internal Quality Control Audit’s progress noted that it had uncovered 119 addresses in the Venn Diagram associated with both Santos and Curran, and 158 more associated with either Santos or Curran — and in a slope protection area (a troubling prospect for those living downhill, as neighbors of 125 Crown Terrace could tell you).
That’s all for the good, but DBI’s belated steps acknowledging the appearance of a potential conflict of interest have raised questions about the thoroughness and quality of this Quality Control process. A process meant to provide reassurance is now providing less than that; one can now question not only the work product of this audit, but the very purpose of this undertaking. “This really feels like putting the fox in charge of counting the eggs in the henhouse,” explained one frustrated DBI veteran.
Or, as Juvenal put it, who watches the watchmen? It’s been 2,000-odd years since he wrote that. Someone let us know when you find out.
People lined up at 5:30 AM for 5 minutes of Mr Santos’ time because most were actively working on projects and had questions before beginning their workday. Contractors do start work early? It is a sign of the generosity of Mr Santos that he would accommodate their hours. And a stab at aftershave? Please leave out the bias and report the facts. There is a story to report but does Mr Eskenazi have a personal prejudice in this yellow journalism?
Sir or madam —
The weather is fine back here on Planet Earth whenever you’re ready to join us.
Best,
JE
Great article!
I don’t agree with everything you said, and having one of the lowest members of the totem pole kind of be a bit of scapegoat, I admire the article pointing out all the hypocrisy DBI is.
The ol’ $1,000 permit – that one is my favorite. “Just a couple cover plates to install, ma’am.”
Okay geniuses. Before you break out the guillotine. What crime has been committed? What breach of ethics has been committed? Nothing. If Donnelly worked for the Office of the Environment would you’d be outraged at this hyperbole? Where’s the outrage at the real corruption in that department? Donnelly has done nothing wrong. Yellow journalism at its best.
You sleep with the dogs, you get the flees. Graciously applying benefit of the doubt, “do nothing wrong” is a rather low bar to clear. Donnelly could have cut his losses and GTFO a long time ago? I guess the problem being how in other cities’ departments, he’d get hired as a receptionist at best.
I just hope I’m not in town when that Pisa-like building downtown finally topples, and that it doesn’t take any folks with it when it goes.
The city “Family” of San Francisco is so thoroughly corrupt that they should be terminated in mass and replaced, like they have to do in Mexico, when the corruption is just too endemic to solve any other way.
The entire department should be terminated for incompetence at a minimum. Most/all should likely be jailed for corruption. Let then plea to lesser time and then follow the corruption all the way to the top. There is no way the city spends as much as it does and gets so little without a massive amount of it disappearing to corruption
Isn’t Harold Howell the engineer for John Pollard, another notorious SF contractor with ties to DBI current and former management ( specifically former Deputy Director Ed Sweeney) who also quickly left the Department when former Director Tom Hui got busted. This shows same characters doing the same things and this is why DBI refuses to have an external group do the audit for obvious reasons. They, like everyone else, would see the hypocrisy of DBI claiming it’s a “New Day at DBI” ….what a joke
At the very least, completely brain dead people are still in charge of the department. Of course, it’s deeper than that. Corruption still, and likely will always, reign at DBI because everyone above them is getting their cut as well.
Fantastic investigative reporting Joe. While I don’t always agree with your positions on issues, the people in this city are well served by your journalism.
Lastly, I remember the DeBerg quote from Bill Walsh very well. I was a little surprised that his first TD wasn’t actually an interception run back for a TD.