A complaint filed with the San Francisco Ethics Commission accuses a group campaigning against Proposition K, a ballot measure to close the Upper Great Highway to cars, of failing to properly register with the city and disclose its donors.
According to the complaint, which was filed last week by a person named Sophie Pepin, Open the Great Highway began campaigning against Prop. K, and soliciting donations as early as June.
But, as the complaint states, the organization has not, to date, registered as a political action committee with the California Secretary of State, a requirement for any group soliciting significant political donations. Registering would allow the public to see who is donating to the group, and how the group is spending its money.
Any group or individual that receives more than $2,000 for political purposes, or spends more than $1,000 on political campaigning, must register as a committee with the Secretary of State and file disclosures with the San Francisco Ethics Commission. Open the Great Highway had not done so as of Aug. 29, according to state and local records.
Pepin is represented by attorney Thomas Willis, whose law firm is campaign counsel for Gov. Gavin Newsom, and who represents the California Democratic Party.
“I just hope the Ethics Commission will review this and take action, so that the public will be able to see what Open the Great Highway’s activities related to this ballot measure are all about,” Willis said.
It is unclear whether the Open the Great Highway group has crossed the financial thresholds to qualify as a committee, but it did begin soliciting donations on June 26, according to an email from the group cited in the complaint. It has put out emails asking for donations, called for volunteer support and hosted campaign events to oppose Prop. K.
The June email from Open the Great Highway read: “Regardless of size, your donation will directly support our efforts to keep the Great Highway accessible for all,” and carried a donation link to its website. “Financial contributions are essential to sustain our campaign against this measure.”
The group’s affiliated Facebook page, which is called “Open the Great Highway (NO on Prop K),” in June posted that it was looking to hire a campaign consultant/manager.
In July, supporters at an anti-Prop. K rally waved yellow signs that included a disclaimer: “Paid for by an individual who does not qualify as a campaign committee.”
And on Aug. 9, Open the Great Highway sent an email blast stating: “We urgently need additional funds for signage and other campaign materials. Your support is crucial at this stage. If you can contribute or know of groups that might be able to help, please reach out.”
All of that, election law experts said, likely required the group to file as a PAC and disclose its donors and expenditures. The ethics complaint alleges the same.
“Given that the first solicitation was made on June 26, it is very likely that [Open the Great Highway] has received at least $2,000 in contributions and would have been required to register as a recipient committee by filing a Form 410,” reads the Aug. 20 complaint.
Vin Budhai, the founder of “Open the Great Highway,” and agent for LivableSF, a nonprofit accepting the group’s donations, declined to state how much the campaign has raised when reached by phone. At first, he said “we’re not raising any money” for the ballot measure.
Budhai then said the donations his organization has solicited have been for the group’s expenses, not for political action.
But the group’s money does appear to be going directly to fight the measure. Its emails and rallies aside, fundraising from the group is now being sent to another PAC that is fighting Prop. K: “Great Highway for All, a Matt Boschetto Committee,” which is run by District 7 supervisorial candidate Matt Boschetto and has taken in $84,000 so far, the lion’s share of which came from his own family members.
Boschetto confirmed that Open the Great Highway contributions would begin flowing to his registered committee against Prop. K this week, but that he had received no funds from the group prior.
Even in this scenario, where Open the Great Highway is not engaging in politics directly but financing another PAC, it would still be required to register as a recipient committee, according to campaign-finance rules. It has not done so, according to state and local records.
Boschetto chalked up the possible error on the part of the Open the Great Highway leadership to complicated disclosure laws.
“I don’t expect the Open the Great Highway people to have known about financial disclosures and SF ethics.”
Budhai, however, is no political naïf. He was listed as the agent for “Access for All,” a PAC that in 2022 pushed a ballot measure to allow cars back onto John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park. That PAC filed correctly and reported more than $840,000 in 2022 contributions.
The PAC’s sponsors were a group called “Open the Great Highway Alliance,” a tax-exempt nonprofit that is no longer active but shared the same leadership, website, and branding as Budhai’s similarly named Open the Great Highway.
This is a little off topic, but I have to comment on the photo at the top of the article. If you zoom in, you will see three large trucks in the southbound lane of the Great Highway. Should K pass and the Highway close, those trucks and hundreds of others, as well as thousands of commuters in cars, will be driving down our quiet little residential streets out here in the Sunset, where they will pose a great risk to other cars, pedestrians (especially elderly pedestrians of which we have many), children, and pets. The Great Highway is probably the safest stretch of road in the entire city; closing the Highway will divert all that traffic onto high injury networks like Lincoln, Sunset, the ever-terrifying 19th Ave, and all the lower Avenues (all of these streets are in residential areas with lots of cross traffic and lots of pedestrians) and will make the Sunset one of the dangerous places in the city to live and to drive. And all the measure does is mandate the Highway be closed. This measure does not create a park, nor does it create the funding for a park. Should K pass, we out here in the Sunset are going to be looking at an abandoned roadway while dodging motor vehicles of all shapes and sizes. Yep, off topic, I know, but worth mentioning.
Interesting that you know this comment is off topic and yet it rambles on for a good. 300 words or so.
“Closing the Highway will divert all that traffic onto high injury networks like Lincoln, Sunset, the ever-terrifying 19th Ave, and all the lower Avenues (all of these streets are in residential areas with lots of cross traffic and lots of pedestrians) and will make the Sunset one of the dangerous places in the city to live and to drive.”
Remember the 16 months between April 2020 and August 2021? Did any of that actually happen when Upper Great Highway was closed to traffic?
to be fair, there was a covid shut down which is why the upper great highway was closed. This was when people were asked to keep from socializing to slow the spread of covid and to only go to work if it was an essential job.
Nobody was ALLOWED to commute to work during that period, Einstein!
You Bicycle Coalition lackeys sure need to get your talking points in order, pretending Prop K was legitimately founded is a total farce.
Alyse – vehicles over 3 tons are already banned from the Upper Great Highway. There are scofflaw drivers, of course, but those trucks are not allowed to use the road as it is today. You can see the map of the restrictions on SFMTA’s website: https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/pdf_map/2017/12/streetrestrictions.pdf
Surprise! A tech bro opposed to closing the Great Highway to his Cybertruck joy rides isn’t following the rules.
Yes, he actually has a full time job and a family in addition to fighting for a cause that affects the lives of people in his community so any joy riding takes place during the work day commute on the Great Highway. There is no joy being stuck in traffic on an alternate route.
Actually Sophie Pepin and Lucas Lux are the “techbros” in the situation, if you pay any actual attention, and the dark money behind the Prop K campaign (sprung at the last minute as a city-wide vote despite impacting only 2 districts) comes directly from real-estate and tech Billionaires, funneled through BS “non-profits” like the Bicycle Coalition and “Walk SF” etc.
These carpetbaggers didn’t waste a second trying to capitalize on the death of a family of 4 at a West Portal bus stop, insisting the only way to prevent it was more bike lanes and painted curbs, etc.
They lie as freely as they breathe. Pretending closing the UGH will lead to “green urban spaces that will cool global warming” and other total BS.
If you’re naive enough to fall for it, Billionaires want what you want, children. Be sure to donate your allowance to London Breed, mothership of corruption.
My concern about closing HighWay #1 (Great Highway) is what it does to residents on the neighboring streets. I would think the traffic would adversely affect them.
I do not use the Highway personally for commuting but am concerned for the residents close by. It would be helpful to get their reaction. Thank you.
Dawn, lifetime SF Resident, Glen Park
A majority of residents of the Sunset voted against Prop I in 2022, which would have put cars back on the Great Highway. That includes a majority in every precinct adjacent to the Great Highway. People have different opinions of course, and not everyone is for it, but a lot of people in the Sunset really enjoy being able to walk there on the weekends and want this for their neighborhood (the folks running the Prop K campaign all live on neighboring streets themselves). My personal feeling is that the speed bumps they added on Lower Great Highway did a good job (traffic speeds are now lower than they were pre-pandemic) and the city can do more of that if there are specific traffic problems that need to be addressed. Traffic patterns are going to need to shift inland anyway because of the sewage treatment plant work south of Sloat, so we’re going to have to make that kind of adjustment one way or another.
(Note for reference that the Great Highway isn’t Highway 1. Highway 1 follows 19th Ave. Great Highway isn’t a state highway of any kind, it’s just a city street.)
Actually BOTH Sunset and Richmond voted to end the closure of JFK and allow cars to travel the GH on weekends.
The only 2 impacted districts voted AGAINST Prop K, already.
And the GH connects to 37/1 via Sloat, which has exactly 1 traffic light in between and is much, much, much faster and safer for all involved than any other route in the Sunset.
Nice try though.
Obviously that first photo wasn’t taken during rush hour. That’s when the UGH is needed to be open the most, so that the entire outer Sunset doesn’t get flooded with gridlock, thank you.
Nice job Mission Local doing the dirty work for the SF Bike Coalition by trying to silence a group working class folk in the Outer Sunset & Richmond who need the Great Highway to commute to work/ school M-F. The current compromise is working but the Yes on K people don’t believe in compromise & don’t care about the needs of their community.
I have yet to see a single Open the Great Highway person mention Muni. Basically this is all anyone needs to know—people like this think that more roads and more lanes mean ‘accessible.’ Who cares about those people who can’t or don’t want to drive? It’s so interesting how much overlap there is between people who oppose Ocean Beach Park and those who oppose any low-income or dense housing from being built near there.
We no longer live in a city where people can share space, as we did on the Great Highway for decades. Now San Francisco is made up of groups like the Bicycle Coalition and narcissistic tech executives who spend their money working to dictate how we all should live in order to push their own personal agendas. This is just more of the death of San Francisco that we’re witnessing daily. Tolerance is a dirty word to many of the people who live here now.
Stupid that this has become an “all or nothing ” issue. Compromise should be easy.
Close the great highway to people who drive from 6am Saturday through 6am Monday morning.
More people use this Highway as a road than use it and the already adjacent walk and bike path combined- especially when its cold, gray and windy.
seems a little suspicious not following disclosure laws around where the money for the campaign is coming from. It would be interesting to know if there are any consequences for flouting election rules after all the election interference that has been in the news with presidential elections.
Just OPEN THE GREAT HIGHWAY! Vote NO on K!!