Since January 2020, San Francisco has had eight department head-level employees forced out of office due to allegations of corruption. A report released today, to the surprise of few, suggests that the city’s systems meant to limit conflicts of interest are lax and ineffective.
In the 178-page report, the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s office underscored key concerns with the city’s existing contracting system, and its procedures — or lack thereof — for addressing conflicts of interest. Among them: A distinct lack of process for reviewing financial disclosure forms, inconsistency across departments in ethics training and failure of city employees to disclose secondary jobs and failure to catch and check them.
The report, prepared at the request of former Supervisor Dean Preston, is timely: On March 20, the Department of the Status of Women head Kimberly Ellis was placed on leave in the wake of San Francisco Chronicle reporting revealing that she had an unpermitted side hustle as a consultant and had directed $500,000 to the African American Art & Culture Complex to host a conference.
The report’s major findings:
- City departments routinely fail to screen panelists for conflicts of interest before seating them on panels that judge bids for contracts — thereby risking a situation wherein panelists have ties to the nonprofits and other groups to which they award contracts. This was the case in 16 of 37 randomly selected contracts.
- The city does not have an established process to review Form 700s, which are financial disclosure statements that city employees are required to file in order to avoid conflicts of interest during decision-making. Mission Local reported last April that some 158 city employees failed to file their Form 700s, according to the Ethics Commission.
Some 90 percent of required Form 700s are filed under a filing officer within the department, instead of the Ethics Commission. However, all filings are filed electronically through the Ethics Commission’s system and the forms can be viewed online here.
- In late 2022, some 300 employees of the Department of Public Health were discovered to have undisclosed secondary jobs.
- The report also shows a lack of consistency in city employees’ ethics training. This caused city employees and officials confusion about their responsibilities under the city’s ethics codes.
The report drops as the city has moved to expedite contracting and free up government officials soliciting funds from private interests.
By a 10-1 vote, the Board of Supervisors on Feb. 4 passed an ordinance that increased the mayor’s ability to expediently enter into contracts addressing “homelessness, drug abuse, mental health needs, and related crises” by limiting oversight from the Board of Supervisors.
The ordinance also created a waiver regarding “behested payments,” enabling Lurie and a handful other members of government to solicit private donations — setting up potentially problematic scenarios in which city officials are asking for money from wealthy groups or individuals that may have current or future business afoot in San Francisco.
The Budget and Legislative audit surveyed 47 city departments between July 2019 and June 2022, randomly selecting and reviewing city contacts, and assessing the city’s approach to minimizing conflicts of interest among officials, department staff, and contractors.
During the three years scrutinized in the audit, a series of corrupt episodes were uncovered: Former Public Workers director Mohammed Nuru was arrested by the FBI in January 2020 and was in August 2022 federally convicted of honest services wire fraud. In the same year, the feds also arrested and later convicted former Public Utilities Commission General Manager Harlan Kelly for fraud and conspiracy.
In 2021, engineer Rodrigo Santos and senior building inspector Bernie Curran were also hit with federal charges on corruption and sentenced to prison.
Last August, during Lurie’s mayoral campaign, the then-candidate held a press conference at his headquarters announcing an “aggressive” anti-corruption agenda.
Among other suggestions, Lurie said the city should integrate artificial intelligence into the city’s ethics enforcement dashboard, which would ferret out problems within city contracts.
The mayor’s office has not immediately replied to a request for comment.
Supervisor Jackie Fielder’s team said Fielder, who also chairs the Government Audit and Oversight Committee, intends to call a hearing at the committee to go over the report — a typical move after the budget analyst releases any audit. The budget analyst and some of the departments referenced in the report will present before the committee before any next steps are taken.
Anyone have any info on the inspector general we voted for? How’s that coming along?
Sadly, Mayor Daniel Lurie’s hiring freeze is leaving the voters’ mandate dead in the water. So it’s not coming along, unless someone takes him to court. Our own local Trump.
Cheers to the Progressives like Dean Preston (this report) and Aaron Peskin (inspector general initiative) for their work to keep SF government honest. Honorable mention to Max Carter-Oberstone, too for uncovering the mayor’s text deletion scandal, etc. SF citizens, SF Moderates: behold the fruit of checks and balances in our city government.
Speaking of conflicts of interest, why isn’t anyone reporting specifically on the fact that Sam Altman is using the City and County of SF as a test for his AI-in-government experiment? Is he being paid? What is going on? What guardrails are in place for data security?
It’s the end of Willie Brown-infested corruption in local Gov. Those women paid reparations scraping their knees on bedroom floors just to be pushed into leadership roles. Lining pockets with taxpayer dollars was sweet while it lasted!
The cities are complete, embarrassment, nonprofits, healthcare, cleanliness building department corruption. The last mayor may have been the worst whatever one of the most beautiful cities in the world and the politicians have destroyed. It can’t get anything done bureaucracy bloated government they should cut back 10 or 20% of the entire city staff Muni broke Bart broke no more Pelosi to bail everybody out. It’s a real shit store ready to hit San Francisco.
City is ineffective at everything … the left is almost as bad and sel-interested as the right …
It’s wrong to “ferritize” AI like that. It’s better than “anthropomorphizing” AI, but still wrong. AI is a tool, not a DNA imbued form of life. It can never surpass the judgement of the human operating it. Conversely, the human wielding it can easily become as stupid and foolish as a lump of mud if they, through laziness and hubris, allow an AI to do their own human of being responsible for every judgement. Worse, in a legal setting, they can make a mockery of justice and themselves, accomplishing less, not more.
In the proposed setting, AI is just an imperfect collater of information. Left to its own devices, it would see many connections where there were none, while missing many obvious warnings flags because its ability to generalize is far more limited than that of a human. That is a real danger when humans become submissive and lazy users of AI, especially when they are supposed to be in charge and responsible.
C.f., the song “Will the computer love the sunset”, by Jesse Welles, for a more detailed theoretical explanation of why AI cannot replace human judgement.
(Wrong of Lurie, I mean).
Has Jackie Fielder taken time out of her busy schedule to stop by and provide feedback? You’d think she would be at the two BART plazas daily to check on how things are going. Has she gone to Wiese Alley to try to convince the users and dealers to stop, or at least go somewhere else?
Fielder has made zero effort to address the deplorable conditions ion the streets around the Bart plazas. It seems she’s only interested in spending more on social programs.
Having worked with the city, I would for sure say many departments are inefficient, and non-profits just take advantage of the city, especially the low-income housing types.
Pretty sure SF could slash workers & non-profits by 50%, lower taxes for everyone ls taxes & get more police out to clean things up.