by XUEER LU MARCH 24, 2025 (MissionLocal.org)
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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.
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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.
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XUEER LU
Xueer is a California Local News Fellow, working on data and covering housing. Xueer is a bilingual multimedia journalist fluent in Chinese and English and is passionate about data, graphics, and innovative ways of storytelling. Xueer graduated from UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism with a Master’s Degree in May 2023. She also loves cooking, photography, and scuba diving.More by Xueer Lu
