Nonprofit chief ’s return to work may be too soon
Family Service Agency head Robert Bennett, who was on the hot seat for some very graphic and controversial website postings that he invited his employees to eyeball, is back on the job — a move that is not sitting well with city officials who wanted a full investigation.
The Felton Institute Board of Directors, which oversees the social services agency, posted a statement on its website last week saying that “after assessment,” Bennett had been reinstated from paid-leave limbo.
City officials — who had called for an independent probe into Bennett’s actions — were informed by Family Service on Friday that Bennett was back on the job before the outside
investigator had even been brought in.
“The board conducted a thorough investigation of its own before deciding to reinstate Mr. Bennett,” Felton board member Eric Severson said in an e-mail. “We respect and are cooperating with the city’s recent request that we additionally hire an independent investigator to confirm our findings. The city made this request two days after the board’s vote on Oct. 6 to reinstate Mr. Bennett.”
City officials, however, said putting Bennett back on the job before completing the probe appeared to be placing the cart in front of the horse.
“It does not appear that they would have had the time for an investigation,” said Trent Rhorer, executive director of the Human Services Agency. “We are going to have to discuss what to do next to make sure they are in compliance, as per their contract with the city.”
The Family Service Agency, one of San Francisco’s premier nonprofits, received $8.8 million from the city last year to deliver social services and treatment programs to low-income families, children and the elderly.
Attention focused on Bennett when an anonymous letter was sent to city officials and media outlets complaining about an e-mail he had sent to agency staffers in August while on a walking tour of northern Spain.
The e-mail invited employees to visit his personal website, which contained a number of intellectual dissertations — including one on evolution, with photos comparing a vagina to a woman’s lips. Another post was on demonic nuns, and a third pondered the notion that Jesus was the ultimate example of an Oedipus complex.
“While Mr. Bennett’s intent was to share travel photos, his blog contained non-pornographic images and writings from a historical and philosophical perspective that some deemed offensive,” the Family Service Agency’s website statement said.
Bennett’s invitation for staffers to view the site, which he sent out on the agency’s e-mail, carried “the best of intentions” but “demonstrated poor judgment,” the statement said.
“It is unacceptable that such a message was sent that clearly offended some members of the community,” the agency said. It said “appropriate remediation” steps and “a number of disciplinary actions” had been taken to “ensure that this kind of incident does not happen again, including requirements for training and coaching.”
Felton board member Severson said, “Bob is a man of utmost character and integrity,” who took a financially troubled agency and “more than doubled its budget.”
Bennett did not return calls for comment, but the nonprofit’s statement quoted him as saying, “I am deeply and truly sorry for any hurt, pain or offense I may have caused.” Pouring it on: State Attorney General Kamala Harris isn’t taking any chances this time out.
Despite outpacing her opponent both in poll numbers and money, Harris has just bought time in Southern California for TV ads touting the former San Francisco district attorney as a “prosecutor with convictions.”
Not that Harris has too much to sweat about, given that the latest Field Poll had her 12 points ahead of her Republican rival in the Nov. 4 election, Ron Gold.
As for money, Gold has only about $18,000 in the bank, compared with Harris’ $3.6 million. So why the ads? “She’s got a great story to tell, making her case, and she’s not taking anything for granted,” said campaign spokesman Brian Brokaw.
Off the record, insiders give three reasons:
One: Harris is already well-known in the Bay Area, but still lacks an identity down south.
Two: She does not want a repeat of four years ago, when it took nearly a month to confirm she had narrowly defeated Los Angeles County D.A. Steve Cooley to become attorney general.
And three: Harris may well be running soon for governor or even U.S. senator, so why not get a head start by finishing
this race strong? Air bed fellows: Not only are Airbnb backers pouring money into an independent fund to help David Chiu win his Assembly race, but the supervisor’s campaign manager turns out to have interesting connections to the short-termrental powerhouse.
Last week, we told you that Airbnb investors Reid Hoffman and Ron Conway had pumped more than $500,000 into a committee hammering Chiu’s opponent, fellow Supervisor David Campos. Hoffman insisted the help had nothing to do with the fact that Chiu is the author of a bill to legalize Air-bnbstyle rentals in the city.
Now we’ve learned that Chiu’s campaign manager, Nicole Derse, is a partner in the consulting firm 50 + 1 Strategies. The firm was hired by Airbnb to recruit people who rent out their homes to lobby supervisors to support a bill friendly to the company.
Derse tells us she’s never discussed Airbnb with Chiu and didn’t work on the lobbying effort.
“We have a firewall between the two operations,” she said.
For his part, Chiu said that “50 + 1 are not lobbyists. Early on, we sat down and set up a firewall to make sure that no one on the campaign was involved in whatever (50 +1) was doing, and that they were not involved with my campaign in any way.”
Political purists will raise their eyebrows at the relationship, but cozy fits like this are common at City Hall.
It’s kind of like gambling in Casablanca.