So far, Mayor Lurie’s fentanyl plan is missing just one thing: A plan

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In the days leading up to Daniel Lurie’s swearing-in, political types about town said that, in order to be a successful mayor, he’d have to lead differently than he campaigned. As Mayor Lurie, rather than candidate Lurie, it would no longer be enough to present broad and vague messaging. A mayor, at some point, has to say not just what they’re going to do but how they’re going to do it. 

Last week saw the introduction of Lurie’s first piece of legislation, which ostensibly aims to combat fentanyl and mental illness on the streets, boost law-enforcement hiring and other laudable goals by speeding up contracting. But, beyond speeding up contracting, there are no specifics about how this plan would actually accomplish its underlying goals. As such, all this plan is missing … is a plan. 

But there’s plenty of stuff in here about stripping away oversights of whatever it is the city chooses to spend money on. It was not until Board President Rafael Mandelman asked for it that the Board of Supervisors was given any say — at all — in the rapid-fire assignment of contracts worth scores of millions of dollars.

What’s that mean? It means that Lurie, who has never before worked in government and, prior to his swearing-in, had never held conventional employment, was calling for no oversight whatsoever for his department heads to enter into an unlimited number of no-bid contracts. You could call Lurie’s ask “audacious,” if you were generously inclined. 

Of note, Mohammed Nuru, Tom Hui, Barbara Garcia, Harlan Kelly and Sheryl Davis were all department heads in San Francisco. And now they aren’t. Nuru and Kelly, of course, have been sentenced to prison. It’s a bit mind-boggling that they’re the only ones.

So, it’s all a bit on the nose, really: It’s exactly like Lurie’s campaign. Not only is it broad and vague, it’s expensive. The contracts he proposed to be ratified sans oversight could extend for up to 10 years and cost up to $50 million; with this kind of money, the city could re-sign Klay Thompson.

As a means of shedding oversight and allowing department heads to expediently enter into good-sized pacts or leases, this legislation is a great plan. It’s ingenious if I understand it correctly. It’s a Swiss watch. But you’d expect it to be: This is what you get when you have an experienced government savant like Ben Rosenfield on your mayoral transition team. 

Rosenfield is great at what he does, but — and this is important — it wasn’t his job to specify where the money should go or, more fundamentally, where it’s going to come from. Yes, there are waivers in here that would allow Lurie et al. to privately fundraise, but that’s not likely to cover more than a sliver of the money needed to rapidly expand shelter beds, treat street-drug users or any of the other goals herein. San Francisco’s deficit is hovering a shade under $1 billion and, guess what? Donald Trump is getting sworn in today and could stiff San Francisco or claw back some $415 million in reimbursements for FEMA money that we’ve already spent.

Government-watchers with long institutional memories have told us that they can’t think of a precedent for a mayor to ask for significant new powers, as Lurie has done, without offering any specifics on what they will be used for. 

But, here’s the thing: They’ll be granted. It’s likely that Lurie will, essentially, get what he wants.

We’ll have to wait and see if the board, or anyone else, asks about the scant details that we do know. Thus far, they’ve brought about more questions than answers. 

Bolstering law-enforcement hiring is a goal of the mayor’s legislation, but it’s not immediately clear what private fundraising or no-bid contracting could do about that. It’s not as if the beaver-fur top hat will be passed among the city’s wealthy elites to supplement cops’ salaries. The more intuitive steps would be outsourcing background checks or the hiring of recruiters, but the city already does this. In recent years, in fact, the city has done an awful lot and put significant resources into recruitment and retention. And yet, here we are: San Francisco has not quite 1,600 sworn officers, and the most recent academy class graduated 11 officers of an initial 45 recruits, an alarming 75 percent attrition rate 

(It warrants mentioning that the city’s crime rates are at near-historic lows. Also, accidental overdose death numbers are at a five-year low. But it seems nobody’s in the mood to hear about this.)

Lurie also wandered off the map when he told reporters last week that San Francisco could “add beds” to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, which left actual medical professionals at General Hospital gobsmacked. In fact, the Department of Public Health has already submitted half a dozen applications to get up to $140 million in state money for behavioral health beds. But adding these 180-odd beds — at half a dozen or more sites citywide, not just at General — would require mounting significant procedural, logistical and political hurdles. And, also, it would require that money from the state. That’s coming on the state’s dime and on the state’s time; that is, not fast. 

These are all major challenges, which is why Lurie’s job is majorly challenging. Yet, barring unforeseen lunacy, his initial legislation will pass. And now, all that remains is saying what he wants to do. And how he intends to do it. 

Following pushback, there is now a provision in here that the board has 45 days to review a potential contract and vote it up or down. Without that, the board had zero input. So the supes have that going for them. Which is nice.

Truth be told, the board, which must approve city contracts of $10 million or more, does not spike all that many of them — or, for that matter, reject all that many mayoral appointments. But the oversight provision, in and of itself, can serve as a deterrent for corruption or ineptitude. Put another way: Does anyone think it’s a grand idea for the city to begin rapidly spending lots and lots of money while specifically telling all parties ahead of time that nobody is going to be doing any front-end oversight? Hopefully nobody who reads the news would say that. 

So, that’s kind of a big deal, and to cast that obligation to the wind would’ve been a wholesale abdication of the board’s responsibilities. Expect more pushback, starting at the Budget Committee. Expect board members to call for reductions in the 10-year and $50-million limits for the no-bid contracts. 

But nobody is going to try to derail this. Nobody wants to open up the board to charges of obstructionism.

That seems wise, at least politically. With 45 days to review a contract, anything egregious ought to be bird-dogged by the supervisors. Concerns about abandoning competitive bidding are somewhat mitigated by the fact that the sorts of outfits that can minister to drug users or oversee shelter beds are not great in number and, more likely than not, are already here and already have city contracts. No one is pushing to bring Halliburton in to do this work.  

The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, meanwhile, already has license from the Board of Supervisors to ignore competitive bidding requirements on contracts regarding homeless services (A cynic would note, “and here we are.”). Lurie’s legislation would expand that ability to other departments. 

When all is said and done, the board will retain one of its core raisons d’être. If time and money limits are reduced, its members can claim they mitigated the potential damage, if and when things go sideways. And Lurie can claim the political win after the board passes what he and his people continue to — unfortunately — refer to as a “state of emergency” ordinance.

But is this going to actually help solve the problems? Will this make things better? Those do seem to be the $50 million questions.