Public Works’ agency split inches toward Nov. 3 ballot
A proposal to create a new department dedicated to cleaning up San Francisco’s notoriously filthy streets while also clearing the cloud of scandal hanging over the city’s Public Works Department is moving toward the November ballot.
Spearheaded by Supervisor Matt Haney, the measure would amend the City Charter to split off Public Works’ street cleaning, sidewalk maintenance and sanitation duties into a new agency, leaving the remaining department to handle engineering, design, project management and other work tied to San Francisco’s public infrastructure.
Each department would be overseen by a fivemember commission that would approve contracts, set standards, hold public meetings and oversee each agency’s overall performance. The Public Works commission, in particular, would provide a level of transparency the department sorely needs, Haney said.
His initiative was conceived long before the fraud allegations against former Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru arose in January and pitched City Hall into a widening public corruption investigation. The supervisor sparred frequently with Nuru and Public Works staff over the department’s handling of city trash cans, public restrooms and the miserable state of the streets in neighborhoods he represents, including the Tenderloin and South of Market.
The combined outrage over street conditions and the allegations against Nuru coalesced to give Haney a potent platform for his ballot measure.
“I believe this should be done to clean up our streets and to address what has become an international embarrassment for San Francisco — streets covered in feces, trash and urine,” Haney said. Splitting the department up would allow a singular agency to focus on street cleaning, street trees, graffiti abatement, sidewalks and public restrooms.
Breaking up the department, Haney said, would also dilute the power currently vested in the Public Works director — a level of authority that Nuru wielded deftly in his time as director.
But with San Francisco officials confronting a nearly $2 billion budget deficit resulting from the economic collapse brought on by the COVID19 pandemic, Haney must also convince voters that, while departments across the city slash budgets and institute hiring freezes, his proposal is worth the price.
The charter amendment may change before voters see it in November, but in an analysis of the current version, the City Controller’s Office estimated that the measure “would have a significant impact on the cost of government, ranging from $4 million to $10 million annually.”
Haney’s proposed Sanitation and Streets Department would shift about 835 of 1,700 fulltime employees from Public Works. But the new department would need a new set of administrative employees — managers and staff handling finance, budget, human resources, safety, training, IT and communications, in addition to the new department head and that person’s support staff.
“These types of estimates — very rarely do they wind up on the low end,” said Acting Public Works Director Alaric Degrafinried, who has problems with the proposal in its current form.
The measure, Degrafinried said, “is great if you’re a financial person or an HR person, but it’s not going to get you what you’re trying to get at, which is cleaner and safer streets.”
Citing concerns over the potential costs of Haney’s proposal, Supervisor Catherine Stefani introduced an amendment Monday that would have jettisoned some of the charter amendment, keeping only the proposal to create the Public Works commission in an effort to improve oversight.
Her amendments were voted down, however.
“We cannot afford to spend tens of millions on new administrative costs when we’re facing a $2 billion budget deficit,” Stefani said in a statement after the vote. “This measure doesn’t invest in clean streets. It invests in new bureaucrats.”
After the controller’s report was released, Haney introduced amendments to push out the date of the department split until July 2022 to give the city enough time to recover economically before phasing in the measure’s mandates.
Haney is adamant that, given his perception of Public Works’ shortcomings, the prospect of finally getting the city’s streets clean is worth the investment. He also said the two commissions would be tasked with rooting out inefficiencies and waste, which would also help save money.
City commissions are intended in large part to serve as a publicfacing decisionmaking body for departments and can be an important check against departmental staff who may otherwise perform their duties in the vacuum of City Hall. Haney envisions the two commissions as windows of transparency — no commission now oversees Public Works, making it unique among departments that issue construction contracts.
Commissions in San Francisco, however, have not proved to be impermeable buffers against corruption. Several heads of departments overseen by commissions — including former Health Director Barbara Garcia and Department of Building Inspection Director Tom Hui, both resigned after investigations into alleged corruption. Neither was charged with a crime.
Degrafinried, Public Works’ acting director, said he remains committed to working with the Board of Supervisors, the mayor and the public to improve street cleaning, along with the department’s accountability and transparency. He made several policy changes related to contracting after Nuru’s arrest that the controller’s office suggested should be adopted citywide.
“I’m always willing to sit down with the supervisors and the mayor’s office and the community to develop new strategies and greater accountability and to develop standards,” he said. “Measure me against that. If we’re not doing our job, call us on it.”
Dividing the department, he said, would not provide a “silver bullet” to rooting out the kind of corruption and selfdealing that led the city to this current moment.
“The events that led me to being here, they need to be investigated and rooted out. But splitting the department doesn’t necessarily get to that. A lot of the things director Nuru did, they look like they were done outside of his role as director. I don’t agree that the notion of dividing the department is going to solve all these problems.”