San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Air out the stink of corruption
In 2020, San Francisco Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru was charged with fraud for, among other things, funneling donations from city contractors like Recology into the Parks Alliance. Those donations then landed into an account that Nuru used to pay for staff holiday parties.
That same year, former Department of Building Inspection Commissioner and structural engineer Rodrigo Santos was charged with fraud for soliciting donations to nonprofits favored by Senior Building Inspector Bernard Curran, in exchange for his sign-off on projects that may not have passed inspection otherwise.
The scandals don’t end there. Just a few months ago, the head of the Department of the Environment, Debbie Raphael, resigned after the city controller’s office discovered she and her staff had solicited and accepted donations from Recology before awarding the company city contracts.
All three of these instances have one thing in common: they involve so-called “behested payments,” or charitable gifts made at a public official’s request.
Good governance watchdogs across California have been screaming about the murky ethics of behested payments for years. And state lawmakers passed new transparency measures last October to help rein in the practice. With good reason.
Now, in San Francisco, with so many city officials and employees facing federal charges — including corruption, wire fraud, perjury and bribery — this system of solicitation is finally coming under fire. Proposition E, which would regulate and limit these types of donations, is an overdue tool to curb this type of corruption.
The June 7 ballot measure, which is based on a 50-page report on public integrity released by the city controller’s office, prohibits elected officials and city department heads from requesting donations to charities from “interested parties,” including lobbyists and those seeking contracts and permits from the city. It went through half-a-dozen hearings in City Hall before earning unanimous support of the Board of Supervisors in December. In the months since, several have backtracked on that decision, saying the measure is too complex and would inhibit their ability to fund nonprofits they care about. Other opponents of the measure claim that Prop. E would bring a “sledgehammer” to philanthropic donations. But these fears are overstated. The measure includes specific language to ensure that many of the more hyperbolic fears surrounding the potential role Prop E. could play in the death of philanthropic giving in San Francisco are unfounded. For example, organizations that secure small city contracts, such as ministerial-level permits that one can acquire online, say, to reserve a barbecue or athletic field in Golden Gate Park, would be exempt.
Instead, behested donations would be limited only for those directly approving an organization’s contracts.
If, for example, health care provider Kaiser were somehow awarded a city contract through the Recreation and Park Department, its director could not then solicit donations from Kaiser to the Parks Alliance. But if Kaiser only has a contract with the Department of Public Health, the Recreation and Park Department head could absolutely request a donation to the Parks Alliance.
Members of the Board of Supervisors, meanwhile, would be prohibited from soliciting funds for contractors whose permits they voted on within the past year. However, given that very few permits with contracts that are under 10 years in duration or for less than $10 million in costs go to the board for approval, this means supervisors would still be able to solicit donations to many small, neighborhood-level nonprofits in need.
Ethics laws are constantly evolving.
And while Prop. E has provisions that make it difficult to amend should its regulations prove too onerous, the measure still has some flexibility built into it. A supermajority of eight of 11 members of the Board of Supervisors can make changes to the law, with the support of the Ethics Commission, without a return to the ballot.
Voters should be wary of any measure that kneecaps San Franciscans’ deep commitment to philanthropic giving. But we do not believe Prop. E will have that effect. Instead, it will create clear and reasonable limitations on the solicitation of gifts from city officials to organizations whose contracts they approve. This may require a cultural shift in how philanthropy is done in San Francisco. But that’s a small price to pay to help eliminate the stink of corruption wafting through City Hall.
Vote yes on Prop. E.