San Francisco mayor London Breed fined for ‘significant’ ethics breaches
San Francisco’s mayor agreed to pay a nearly $23,000 fine to the city for a series of “significant” ethics violations while in office.
The city’s ethics commission had found that London Breed committed multiple violations involving the misuse of her title as mayor for personal gain and the abuse of San Francisco’s laws on accepting gifts from subordinates and campaign contributions.
Breed had asked a former governor to release her brother from prison and allowed a former head of public works embroiled in a corruption scandal to pay her car repair bill.
The proposed agreement from the city’s ethics commission also fines Breed for failing to properly report a 2015 campaign contribution while running for re-election to the board of supervisors. If approved by the commission at its next meeting on 13 August, the mayor will personally pay the fine, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday.
In a statement Tuesday, Breed said that the fines were “fair” and that she took responsibility for her conduct. Breed appears to be the first San Francisco mayor to settle such a case, the Chronicle reported, and the fine is among the largest imposed by the commission in recent history.
“I’ve learned a lot over the last two years since the most recent of these events took place, and I’ve learned from this process,” she said.
Breed agreed to pay $8,292 for accepting a gift in 2019 from Mohammed Nuru, the former public works director whom federal officials charged with fraud. A few weeks after Nuru was charged by the FBI, Breed acknowledged in a statement that Nuru paid for repairs to her car in 2019.
In 2018, Breed joined other members of her family in a letter to the outgoing governor, Jerry Brown, requesting an early release from prison for an older brother who has served nearly two decades of a 44-year sentence on an involuntary manslaughter and armed robbery conviction. She used her office’s stationery and referred to her role as the mayor in the letter. The governor ultimately did not pardon Breed’s brother, who remains in prison.
She will be fined $2,500 for the letter.
In 2015, when Breed was a member of the San Francisco board of supervisors running for re-election, she wanted to have a float created to ride in during the annual San Francisco Pride parade. According to the stipulation, Breed asked two restaurateurs to each pay $1,250 directly to the float manufacturer.
According to the stipulation, the contributions were not properly recorded in campaign finance disclosures and also exceeded the $500 per person contribution limit established for city candidates.
The mayor will be fined $7,500 for failing to disclose the contributions and $4,500 for accepting contributions over the legal limit.