Mayor Daniel Lurie will today announce a plan to merge the Department of Building Inspection, Planning Department and PermitSF into a single agency, Mission Local has learned.
The announcement, which is planned for today’s “State of the City” speech, marks the onset of forming what the mayor’s office described as a new, single entity “that fulfills all duties of the Planning and Building Inspection departments and is responsible for coordination of key citywide permitting functions.” The mayor’s office is aiming to complete this process in 18 months, by mid-2027.
This is not a move that can be accomplished by mayoral fiat: City departments’ structures and duties are enshrined in the city charter. This means that wholly merging multiple departments will require charter reform — and a simple majority vote of the people.
The mayor’s office was already planning for a November ballot measure that would give voters the choice of altering the city’s 30-year-old charter — with today’s proposed departmental mergers, among other outcomes, riding in the balance.
The Department of Building Inspection has spent the past several years working to shed a legacy of corruption and deep inefficiency. Senior building inspector Bernie Curran was in 2023 sentenced to federal prison over a bribery scheme involving corrupt engineer and permit expediter Rodrigo Santos. Santos was also sent to federal prison in that same year.
The mayor described today’s proposed merger as a means of ensuring “better coordination, time and cost savings and a more predictable permitting process.” No layoffs are planned, said Lurie’s office. Any redundancies in the departments’ respective oversight commissions will be addressed by the city’s Commission Streamlining Task Force, according to the mayor’s office.
Among the state’s 10 largest cities, only Los Angeles and San Francisco have wholly separate building and planning departments. But San Jose, San Mateo, San Diego, Oakland and Contra Costa County and others have combined building and planning departments. Elsewhere in the state, Sacramento and Bakersfield operate building and planning as separate divisions under an overarching organization.
San Francisco is definitely unusual, building department veterans say, in its extreme level of separation between the Department of Building Inspection and Planning. The two agencies even use separate and non-compatible software systems. (Planning uses Accela while DBI was unable to integrate Accela and spent years and millions of dollars in failing to do so. It still uses an antiquated Oracle system no longer supported by the developer.)
A merger of the sort being proposed today would do away with that entrenched separation — and, Lurie hopes, accelerate the permitting and building process.
That process could use some speeding up: A Budget and Legislative Analyst report commissioned by Supervisor Bilal Mahmood and due out in the next month or so focuses on San Francisco’s scleroticism in permitting construction projects that are approved — but not yet built. Mahmood says that preliminary analysis done for the report reveals that San Francisco lags behind Seattle, Austin, Miami, San Diego and Sacramento in the time it takes to issue permits that would allow already-approved projects to break ground.
He is hopeful that today’s proposed consolidation could make a dent in building the 50,000-odd units the city has approved that remain unbuilt.
“The devil is in the details in figuring out the implementation, but the objective is sound and worthy of exploration,” he said. “Based on the data and analysis from the Budget and Legislative Analyst, it’s clear we are one of the slowest cities to build in large part because of the way city government is structured.”
Supervisor Myrna Melgar also described the consolidation as much-needed — if done right.
“Merging the Planning and Building Inspection components of the building process makes sense and, if done appropriately, could address the continuing challenges of inefficiency, lack of continuity and transparency, and corruption,” she said. “We have attempted for years to integrate the processes and failed. I hope this effort gets the resources and energy it deserves. Also the oversight.”
How is combining two agencies that have nothing to do with each other going to speed up building housing? All planning does is gum up the works and charge money for zero services. The solution is less regulation and prioritization of larger projects. Right now a bathroom remodel has the same priority as a large residential project because you can’t show any favoritism.
That’s only going to empower the permit expediters even more. They control 90% of all plan submissions already and receive favored treatment since they make a city worker’s job easier. Ahmad with his Bana construction truck parks in the red zone all day never getting ticketed and acts like he owns the place. Back to the Walter Wong era here we come!
And land use attorneys who already call the shots at Planning — just ask lower level staff.
I will add that this certainly will not make the system any less corrupt. Just by merging these departments does nothing in terms of oversight of a department ( DBI) which the city attorney, mayors office or DA could not do themselves.
Planning is not the savior of DBI. Just as Trump is not the savior of Venezuela by removing the head honcho. If you leave all the people who helped facilitate DBI’s downfall in place.
What are you really expecting from this merger….
Often, when I see an organization structured with some kind of bewildering separation of duties like this, I wonder if there was something historically that forced the structure to be implemented that way, like a conflict of interest inherent to the process being overseen.
Does anyone have any history of DBI or Planning that might shed some light on whether this was the case?
It’s really not that complex — SF has a long history of unnecessarily complicating things and adding absurd amounts of “process” — it’s a self-fulfilling tradition of bureaucratic expansion, self-protection and waste.
Currently, there are approx. 35K public employees in SF, far greater than any other jurisdiction in the nation (outside of DC) with equivalent population (approx. 803K).
For comparison purposes, in 1970, there were approx. 26K public employees with a population of approx. 715K.
The population has only increased about 12%, whereas the public sector has increased over 34%.
Out of control, unsustainable and utterly unnecessary.
Lurie and Mahmood: human wrecking balls for the cause of market-rate housing. The fewer obstacles in the way—legal, environmental, local resistance—the sooner they can start swinging.
Interesting how everybody but Melgar wrap this in bureaucrat-speak, while we all know that the “inefficiency, lack of continuity and transparency, and corruption” isn’t about “the X’s and O’s, it’s about the Jimmies and Joes”. As an example, DBI really was more unwilling, rather than unable, to integrate Accela, because Accela wouldn’t allow changing or deleting inspection records after the fact, IIRC. Also, DBI has a tendency of filling engineering positions with cousin Vinnies’. So, while at it, the City hopefully will set in stone how such positions positively require an engineering degree from an accredited institute of higher learning.
Thanks Joe for all the reporting over the years, the folks at DBI might still be allowed to muddle along without it.
Perhaps I am wrong, but I recall a time when both departments were, in fact, one. My recollection is that advocates for building contractors successfully lobbied for the creation of DBI as a separate department.
A good, sensible idea — and a long time coming.
The entire process should become less unpredictable and subjective and more predictable, ministerial and matter-of-fact — the essence of good governance.
Next up — abolish the Planning Commission.
In addition to Planning the Building Inspection, the Fire Dept, Public Works, and the Public Utilities Commission can play a permitting role, too. However the process(es) evolve, I’ll keep my fingers crossed for positive outcomes.
This makes about as much sense as the medical profession merging podiatry with optometry. They are separate entities for a reason.
SF Planning is responsible for local codes – some of which are affected by state bills but largely – our zoning policies are unique to SF b/c SF is unique to the state.
DBI is responsible for enforcing state codes which are based on universal / international standards. They are allowed to make local amendments that are stricter (since in SF our buildings touch & in most of the state buildings have side setbacks) but for the most part – the codes are just regular state codes.
If you want to increase the number of permits being approved & paid for – you need to lower SF Planning fees – which for many years have been > 60% higher than the fees for all other departments combined (Building / Fire / BSM / PUC – just on a regular residential project).
An over-the-counter plan review by SF Planning is billed at $700-1200 / hour. Many permits that are taken in (reviewed back of house) take the same amount of time to actually review as an OTC permit & are billed even more.
That is completely unreasonable.
SF Planning has used the money to create a lot of really amazing resources available through their PIM system & I’m sure the money also goes toward keeping up with constantly changing laws / codes around housing projects.
But regular people who are just trying to do a basic residential remodel can’t afford to shoulder the cost of all of that.
Another thing that should be fixed state-wide is language written into the building code that allows DBI to abandon their own Cost Schedule (the table that helps you set your project valuation – which is used to calculate your permit fees – so you know what you’re getting into before even applying for a permit).
The building (architectural & structural) plan checkers can literally make up the valuation during plan review. This is easily exploited to either discount permit fees or to make the fees far more expensive than they should be on a one by one customer basis. Their salaries are literally dependent on this shell game.
There is no way to even know what you will pay for a permit until the cashier gives you a receipt to sign.
Because of these glaring issues – a LOT of permit applications get through plan check & never get paid for (post review time spent by city employees) b/c the building owners are flabbergasted by the fees they will have to pay just to get their job card.
So all departments end up working for free when that happens. They make it up on the back end by jacking fees up even higher for everyone.
Alas, most of the creatively formidable and veteran staff who spearheaded PIM are no longer at Planning — who is left behind in power is a symphony of synphocants who have taken credit for this achievement and others.
Clever tactic from Lurie, et al. Tying a very unpopular charter reform proposition that is very transparently being steered by the oligarchy and business community, to DBI/Planning reforms that could speed up permitting.
There are ways to accomplish the latter without permanent, structural giveaways to the oligarchy that their charter reform would bring. But Lurie and his rich friends don’t want to give the people something unless they can gain something FAR greater in return.
Correct on all counts. So what about that call between Trump and Lurie — and were Steve and Jared listening?
Mr. Mayor,
While you’re making Charter changes how about giving us the opportunity to return to our Elected Police Chief office complete with the power to hire and fire and suspend without pay like we did for our first 85 years ??
It’s the only way we’ll get permanent Kobans at our BART stops and in Chinatown and Permanent Foot Patrols all over the City.
NFC West definitely the best conference ?
On your subject today let me just say that over 60 plus years I worked for about a dozen governments and departments over a half dozen states and upon arrival you learned the rules of the game and all but firefighting had some scam going on.
h.
Exactly. There are still people in positions of power in Planning who have padded their careers by granting favors to connected individuals and PR firms. Of course they are shielded by the Oligarchy who likewise is entrenched in this play.
Snap crackle pop!
Sounds very sensible. And from your article there is nobody quoted as opposing the idea, which is refreshing.
Is the lag time between when projects are “approved” and the permits “issued” due to the fact that a permit is not considered “issued” until the developer comes and picks up the approved permit from the Central Permit Bureau…and has to pay for it? Is this the City’s fault or the developer’s choice?
Sadly this is going to slow things down in the short term while employees work on merging rather than permitting.