As the annual tax return deadline looms, another important deadline appears to have passed by unnoticed by some San Francisco officials: A total of 463 government employees have not disclosed their income, gifts and assets, as required by state conflict-of-interest law.
City employees are required to file a “Statement of Economic Interest,” or Form 700, to disclose possible conflicts of interest in government decision-making. Around 5,942 city officials who make decisions, or work to help inform them, have to declare whether they have any financial interests that may influence their work.
A little under eight percent have seemingly failed to file. Appointees and employees at the Department of Public Health make up 35 percent of those who have not filed, with 162 missing filers, followed by the school district and transportation agency.
As of April 9, four board members on the Citizens’ General Obligation Oversight Committee, which has some six members at a time to oversee the allocation of government bonds, have not submitted their conflict-of-interest filings. That means that the commission in charge of auditing government spending has not audited itself.
“Having city officials publicly disclose their financial interests helps ensure that government decisions are made in the best interest of the public, and not for the public gain of city officials,” said Michael Canning, the policy and legislative affairs manager for the San Francisco Ethics Commission.
When they do not file conflict-of-interest paperwork, “this important transparency tool is lost, and the public is denied information it is entitled to receive,” Canning added.
The deadline to do so was April 2, 2024. To provide “another type of transparency in this situation,” said Canning, the ethics commission has listed all those who have not disclosed their assets on its website.
Among the offenders are some high-flying city officials, including 24 commissioners and board members, as well as a number of deputy directors from different departments, such as the assistant medical examiner and the deputy director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.
Commissioners and board members are disqualified from participating in meetings and making any decisions until they have disclosed their financial assets. All delinquent conflict-of-interest filers also face a maximum penalty of up to $5,000 or up to three times the cumulative amount not reported.
There are multiple people (at least 6 across three departments) on the Ethics website who no longer work for the City or the specified departments. One of them has been gone for 2.5 years! I think it’s good that Ethics is posting the list for transparency, but it’s disheartening to see these data flaws.
I took a quick look and recognized the names of several individuals on that list that don’t actually work for the City anymore…makes me think that the Ethics department itself may be to blame for the size of this list.
I love ML, but I think this is an example of not-so-great reporting. Instead of just citing info on the ethics department’s website, would be nice if the reporter actually investigated why certain departments have so many employees on this list, and as others have mentioned, why are there so many errors on this list. I work for the City and every name I recognize on here is of someone that retired or left City employment before the deadline.
Yeah, this is not an updated list of recent staff
It would make sense to align the deadline with tax day April 15, if only to cut back on the potential excuses. FinCEN has done this with the FBAR due date a few years back.