Public Works chief leaving for BART job
The man who oversaw San Francisco’s Public Works department following a corruption scandal involving its former boss is leaving the city’s government for a top post at BART.
Alaric Degrafinried, who was appointed the city’s acting public works director in February 2020, will depart his job with the city of San Francisco on Aug. 20 to become BART’s next assistant general manager of administration. He starts Aug. 23.
Degrafinried worked in San Francisco city government since 2007 and led the city’s Public Works during a period of scandal, tumult and drastic change.
He was appointed the department’s interim leader shortly after federal authorities arrested and charged former Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru and restaurateur Nick Bovis with fraud in a corruption probe that shocked
“Alaric stepped in to run this department at a time when faith in the department had been shaken, and our workers needed a steady hand to guide them.”
San Francisco. Degrafinried also oversaw the department’s restructuring into two separate agencies.
Degrafinried will join BART as it navigates a dire financial outlook brought on by the pandemic. The region’s largest rail system recently restored services to nearnormal levels, but ridership remains a fraction of what it was before the pandemic. The emergence of the highly transmissible delta variant has only added more uncertainty to when BART and other public transit operators will fully recover from crisis.
Both San Francisco and BART officials commended Degrafinried for his work as acting director, lauding his efforts to increase transparency and restore trust in the Public Works department at a time when it had eroded following the corruption scandal.
In a statement Thursday announcing Degrafinried’s departure, Mayor London Breed touted his “tremendous job leading Public Works during an incredibly challenging time in our city.”
“Alaric stepped in to run this department at a time when faith in the department had been shaken, and our workers needed a steady hand to guide them,” Breed said.
Breed and City Administrator Carmen Chu will appoint another acting public works director in the next few days, Breed said, with a search under way for a permanent replacement.
Degrafinried said his time as acting public works director “has been one of the most rewarding experiences in my career.”
“We stepped up to the challenges of the COVID crisis, implemented good government reforms and advanced our organization’s racial equity initiative,” Degrafinried said in a statement. “The men and women of this department day in and day out demonstrate resiliency, hard work and innovation serving the people of San Francisco.”
At BART, Degrafinried will take over as the system’s assistant general manager of administration responsible for overseeing human resources, procurement and labor relations. Degrafinried emerged as BART’s unanimous top pick for the position during the system’s nationwide search, General Manager Bob Powers said.
The assistant general manager post “touches every element within BART,” Powers said, and one of the immediate challenges Degrafinried will face at BART is leading the system’s hiring efforts as it emerges from a pandemic that brought deep financial peril to BART and other public transit operators in the region. About 300 BART employees retired as part of an incentive program meant to help BART cut costs as ridership dropped by more than 90% of pre-COVID levels at the start of the pandemic.
Powers said Degrafinried stood out among the national candidate pool for his background as a seasoned public-sector executive with experience in labor relations and procurement.
“I really think he’s going to be an executive at BART who’s going to be here for a long time and help bring worldclass transit to the Bay Area,” Powers said.