Corporate cash flows to mayor’s pet projects

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has long been painted as a no-frills kind of guy who drove a 10-year-old Toyota Camry as city administrator and whose favorite food is spaghetti mixed with frozen peas and ketchup.

But this Average Joe (Everyday Ed?) sure can rake in the big bucks from the city’s swells, foundations and major corporations. (We’re betting he doesn’t make his pitches over that odd spaghetti dish.)

It seems that despite ap- pearances, Lee’s got swagger when it comes to “behested payments” — charitable donations requested by politicians for their pet projects and causes.

Since taking office, Lee has asked for and received more than $10 million in behested payments. By far, the largest chunk was $6.8 million from Google in June 2014 to pay for free Muni rides for low-income youth.

Lee’s supporters say behested payments are a smart way to get money out of the wealthy for the public good during the economic boom and resulting affordability crisis. The funding mechanism certainly isn’t used only by Lee — several supervisors and District Attorney George Gascón have also used it, though they’ve raised much smaller amounts.

Critics say behested payments are a way to skirt campaign finance rules and often come with strings attached. Like, say, what critics argue was an overly sweet deal for Google and other tech compa-

nies to use Muni stops for their private shuttle buses around the same time Google paid for the Muni rides for kids.

Officials with Common Cause, the nonprofit goodgovernment group, have called behested payments “an ugly loophole” that allow politicians to collect unlimited amounts of money while getting around much more stringent campaign finance limits.

The latest example of Lee’s behested payments? The $580,000 he has raised to throw a party next month marking the centennial of City Hall. Of that, $430,000 came in behested payments from donors including AT&T, Genentech and CH2M Hill, an engineering company that has done a lot of work for the city.

Another $150,000 came from Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to a special fund established for the centennial celebration and approved by the Board of Supervisors.

The mayor has been accused by critics of putting PG&E’s interests ahead of the common good — including delaying a renewable energy program that would have jeopardized the company’s monopoly over the city’s con- sumer power market.

The birthday party for City Hall — which, we must say, looks great at age 100 — will take place the night of June 19 at Civic Center Plaza. The city administrator’s office, which is organizing the event, reports it will include live entertainment, food trucks and a “lighting and projection experience” on the building’s exterior.

The PG&E money specifically will pay for an improved lighting system at City Hall to make it much easier to turn the building different colors, such as orange when the Giants win the World Series in 2016.

Other behested payments to Lee have helped defray the costs of the America’s Cup sailing races in 2013 and paid for a charity golf tournament last year.

Sometimes, the timing of gifts can look a little fishy, though. Lee asked for and received a $10,000 gift from Coca-Cola to fund the city’s summer jobs program for youth last year at the same time the soda industry was fighting the proposed soda tax. Lee stayed out of the soda tax debate despite pressure from health groups to take a stand, and the proposal was defeated.

Lee has also hit up private companies to fund his travel — such as Uber and Airbnb helping to pay for a trip to China and South Korea in 2013 while debates over the city’s regulation of so-called sharing economy companies began to rage. Recology, which holds the city’s garbage-collection contract, helped to fund Lee’s trip to India the same year.

Isn’t it better, you ask, that these rich companies pay the tab for these sorts of things than to rely on taxpayer money? Like with most City Hall happenings, it depends on whom you ask.

Not surprisingly, the mayor’s spokeswoman, Christine Falvey, thinks the monetary gifts are a great thing.

“The mayor has said ever since the economy really bounced back that companies are making more and they should give back more,” she said. “It’s something he’s dubbed 21st century philanthropy. ... He expects philanthropy to be thriving in San Francisco, and he’s grateful that it is.”

So when the mayor asks Google or PG&E or Coca-Cola to give money for something he supports, is there an expectation he’ll pay them back with political favors?

“Absolutely not,” Falvey said.

Larry Bush, a member of the good-government group Friends of Ethics and a frequent critic of the mayor, doesn’t buy it.

“The people who are making those contributions are also seeking his approval for benefits that they want,” Bush said. “It’s virtually pay-toplay.”

He pointed out that donors of behested payments can even get a tax write-off since they’re considered charitable donations, whereas regular campaign contributions don’t qualify.

Bush even paid for his own study of behested payments, since the Ethics Commission doesn’t make them easy to search in any meaningful way. According to Bush, Lee’s $10 million far surpasses what previous mayors have raised. (A Chronicle article in 2009 found that former Mayor Gavin Newsom had raised $1.2 million in behested payments in the previous 51⁄ years.) 2

So what does the massive fundraising mean?

“It says he has a very cozy relationship with very wealthy people and corporations,” Bush said.

That old Toyota Camry be damned. Caught in the act: The city’s Homeless Outreach Team was beckoned late last month to Justin Herman Plaza on the Embarcadero to deal with a new homeless encampment. But when they got there, they were miffed to learn the en- campment was fake and the homeless people were actors.

It turns out the city’s Recreation and Park Department had granted a filming permit to Caruso Co. of San Raphael to make a “hidden camera” commercial in the adjacent Sue Bierman Park in exchange for $1,613. The commercial was for a client called U-Cool gaming and was going to film people’s reactions to characters in one of U-Cool’s games.

But the permit said nothing about where that hidden camera would be, well, hidden. Caruso Co. apparently had actors play homeless people to hide the camera in an encampment.

A request for comment from Caruso has not been answered. The park department provided a copy of the permit; a spokeswoman said Caruso was allowed to finish filming its commercial but won’t be allowed to film anything else on park property for a year.

As if dealing with the city’s entrenched homeless problem wasn’t hard enough, now outreach workers have to guess who’s really a homeless person and who just plays one on TV.