A San Francisco planning commissioner is challenging the legality of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s appointment of the city’s new planning director, Sarah Dennis Phillips.
Kathrin Moore, the planning commission’s vice president, emailed the city attorney’s office stating that Lydia So, the president of the commission, has “clearly and unequivocally” violated the law.
Moore recounted that So called her and two other commissioners separately the night before the June 18 vote suggesting that they “act in support of the Mayor’s wish to recommend a particular individual to the Mayor to be the new Planning Director,” according to an email addressed to Deputy City Attorney Austin Yang that was obtained by Mission Local.
The law that So allegedly broke is the Ralph M. Brown Act — known in short as the “Brown Act” — which states that “a majority of the members of a legislative body” cannot “discuss, deliberate, or take action” on official items outside of meetings.
“Deliberation outside of the meeting with the majority of the members — that alone is a violation of the Brown Act. Period,” said attorney Jim Wheaton, founder and counsel for over 30 years at the First Amendment Project. “Even though those conversations would have occurred in a closed meeting.”
The Planning Commission is a legislative body of seven members. So, Moore, and the two other commissioners whom So allegedly called — Gilbert Williams and Theresa Imperial — compose a majority of the Planning Commission.
“We cannot comment on this. Any potential legal advice and analysis on this topic would be privileged attorney-client communication,” city attorney’s spokesperson Alex Barrett-Shorter wrote to Mission Local in a statement.
Moore, who did not provide the email to Mission Local, did not respond to a request for comment. Messages to So for a comment have not been returned.
After publication, Planning Department spokesperson Dan Sider wrote in a statement that “a majority of the Planning Commission” voted for Dennis Phillips and that she was “hard at work supporting the city’s economic recovery” and Lurie’s new upzoning plan.
On June 18, in just one day, the Planning Commission interviewed and recommended Mayor Daniel Lurie’s preferred candidate to be the new planning director. The commissioners had only received Dennis Phillips’ resume the night before. Lurie subsequently approved the choice.
Moore, Williams, and Imperial, who are the three commissioners appointed by the Board of Supervisors, walked out of the June 18 closed session in protest.
Moore, in her email to the city attorney, demanded that So’s action be “cured or corrected,” which could mean that Dennis Philips’ appointment be rescinded and resubmitted, according to Sean McMorris, the program manager at California Common Cause, a non-profit organization that advocates for government transparency and accountability.
If Moore’s allegation were true, McMorris said, So would need to state on the record — perhaps during a Planning Commission hearing — that she violated the Brown Act and specifically which portion was violated. “They would probably have to go back and retake the vote,” McMorris said.
Wheaton called Moore’s move “nearly unheard of” in his decades of experience. “Generally speaking, the members of the board don’t take each other on over Brown Act violations,” Wheaton said. “They let the active, curmudgeonly citizens do that.”
McMorris agreed, saying that “typically a member of the public” files a Brown Act complaint. “I’m sure it happens because you have city councils and stuff where not everyone gets along,” McMorris said. “But it’s certainly not as common as members of the public.”
Wheaton, for his part, said he feels sorry for Dennis Phillips, as she “did nothing wrong, but [her] appointment is now under a cloud.”
Multiple City Hall veterans with varying views on development have told Mission Local that they think Dennis Phillips, who was the director of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development and a former city planner, is “fantastic” and “qualified for the job.”
“The whole purpose of these laws like the Brown Act … is transparency,” Wheaton said. “It’s to try as much as we can to wring the politics out of politics, to try to get people to do things on the merits and to be proud of what they’ve done and not have it be done with secret phone calls.”
The plot thickens.
As reported in the SF Standard on July 3rd, Commissioner Moore has received payments from her former firm, SOM, and has failed to disclose this fact and/or recuse herself when a number of SOM-designed projects have appear before the Planning Commission during her long tenure.
This is a clear violation of the law that could result in her removal from the Commission by either the BOS or the Mayor’s office.
Stay tuned for another edition of “Knife Fight in a Phone Booth”!
Buried in the Standard article was a statement from Commissioner Moore that she was told by the City Attorney that she did not have to recuse herself. So there is probably no clear violation.
Thanks to Kathiyn Moore for filing a complaint. These matters should not be ignored.
Mayor Lurie has to be reined in. He thinks he’s CEO of the city and can do whatever he wants, and the Board of Supervisors keeps rolling over and letting him. Good on Kathrin Moore for standing up and defending honest democratic process.
Commissioners throughout the state are supposed to receive or participate in ethics training when they get on those bodies about the Brown Act; So must have forgotten that training, didn’t understand it or just flat out ignored it.
Question for the Mayor,
Mr. Mayor, are you going to do this with your selection of Police Chief ?
h.