Farrell wants to prepare for next economic downturn

San Francisco Mayor Mark Farrell is expected to issue an executive order Tuesday aimed at organizing and accelerating the city’s ability to respond to an economic recession.

“Our task is clear: prepare now, while times are relatively good, so that we can be resilient when times are tougher,” Farrell said in his directive.

Taking the hard lessons learned after the national economic downturn of 2008, which resulted in painful cuts to city services and the loss of some 40,000 local jobs, Farrell’s directive calls for the formation of an economic oversight board that will closely monitor economic conditions at the local, state and national levels.

That board will consist of the city controller, the city’s chief economist, the city administrator, the mayor’s budget director and the director of the Office of Economic and Work-

force Development.

If warning signs of a recession begin to surface — like rising levels of mortgage defaults, spikes in unemployment insurance claims or a slumping stock market — the board will provide notice to the mayor’s office and city lawmakers describing any policies or programs that could help counteract an economic downturn.

“No one is saying that the city of San Francisco, acting by itself, can stop a recession from happening,” said Ted Egan, the city’s chief economist. “It’s about using the resources we have in the most thoughtful way possible to minimize the impacts on people.”

In September, the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development will present its first round of plans to combat the effects of a recession. Todd Rufo, the office’s director, said one of the most important things the city can do is to line up a number of “shovel-ready” public works and infrastructure projects that the city can use to take advantage of state or federal economic stimulus money while putting San Franciscans to work.

Farrell’s order is guided largely by the results of a “economic resiliency” study commissioned by former Mayor Ed Lee in 2016. The study sought to model what could happen in the event of a national economic downturn, as well as a more localized recession catalyzed by a downturn in the tech industry, which has been directly or indirectly responsible for 80 percent of the city’s job growth over the past 10 years. — Dominick Fracassa

Last chance: San Francisco mayoral candidate Angela Alioto said Monday she’s planning to take the city to court after the Ethics Commission voted to block her from participating in the city’s public financing program, which provides mayoral candidates with up to $975,000 to offset the costs of campaigning.

Last week, Alioto’s campaign failed to qualify for public financing money for the fourth time. In April, the Ethics Commission granted Alioto another chance to apply for the program, but with the condition that it would be her campaign’s final opportunity.

To qualify for public financing money, mayoral candidates have to prove they’ve raised $50,000 in campaign contributions from at least 500 city residents in amounts of between $10 and $100. A letter sent to Alioto’s campaign from the commission’s director, LeeAnn Pelham indicated that 8 percent of the contributions Alioto submitted were ineligible to count toward her qualification, mostly because of insufficient documentation verifying that they came from San Francisco residents.

On Monday, Alioto requested one more day to provide the commission with the necessary documents and qualify for the public financing program. Commissioners Quentin Kopp and Paul Renne voted to grant her the extension, but they were defeated by commissioners Daina Chiu, Yvonne Lee and Noreen Ambrose.

All of the other leading candidates in the mayor’s race — London Breed, Jane Kim and Mark Leno — have qualified for the public financing program.

Alioto also blamed her previous problems on a glitch in the thirdparty software program called Netfile that the Ethics Commission uses to process campaign finance filings. The program, the campaign claims, was omitting information from Alioto’s filings when the campaign submitted them. Alioto said the glitch forced her staff to waste precious time verifying contribution information and that Pelham had knowingly withheld information about the problem.

Alioto went as far as to accuse Pelham and her staff of fraud, a claim that she said will be an important part of arguments in court.

“If you would like to go to court on these causes of action, I don’t back away from anything,” Alioto told the commission. She said she plans to file a writ that would order the city to disburse the public financing money she believes she’s owed.

“OK, everybody, off to the next fight,” Alioto told a small gathering of supporters after the commission’s vote. — Dominic Fracassa Short tenure: Less than a month after his appointment to the San Francisco Ethics Commission, former judge and federal prosecutor Kevin Ryan has stepped down, citing private family reasons.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera appointed Noreen Ambrose ,a longtime deputy city attorney who retired last year, to take Ryan’s place. Ambrose started on the Ethics Commission at its scheduled hearing on Monday.

Ambrose spent 35 years with the city attorney’s office, where she served in a variety of capacities, including as the general counsel of the Port Commission and later for the Public Utilities Commission.

Last year, the Board of Supervisors commemorated her contributions to the city by naming June 16 as Noreen Ambrose Day in San Francisco. — Dominick Fracassa