Salesforce rescinds donation to candidate

Salesforce contributed $50,000 this week to a committee supporting Jessica Ho’s run for District Four supervisor. But now it’s asking for that money back, the company said Friday.

Salesforce’s contribution to the committee — called Safe & Clean Sunset Coalition, Supporting Ho for D4 Supervisor 2018 — was notable because Ho opposes Proposition C, which would tax large businesses to raise money for homeless services. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, on the other hand, has been the loudest proponent of the measure, spending millions of dollars of his own and his company’s money supporting it.

“Salesforce has supported San Francisco candidates and ballot measures,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “We made the decision to contribute to the Safe and Clean Sunset Coalition some time ago. We are focusing our efforts on Prop. C, and have requested a return of our contribution.”

Edward Wright, campaign manager for Ho’s opponent, Gordon Mar, said he pointed out the contribution to the committee supporting Prop. C, called Our City, Our Home, Yes on C, Thursday.

Derek Jansen, a principal officer for the Safe & Clean Sunset Coalition — which is not affiliated with the Yes on C campaign — said they received a request from Salesforce to return the contribution Friday morning.

“We will honor their request,” Jansen said in a statement.

The Safe & Clean Sunset Coalition is sponsored by Progress San Francisco, a super PAC that typically supports moderate candidates in local races. Third-party money spent supporting Ho’s campaign has reached well over $600,000, by far the most of any candidate in any of the races for the Board of Supervisors. By law, candidates cannot coordinate with independent committees, and cannot control where the money comes from and where it is spent.

Ho’s main competitor is Mar, whose run for supervisor has attracted $132,000 in third-party spending, largely from the San Francisco Labor Council Labor & Neighbor Independent Expenditure Political Action Committee, whose donors include Dignity CA SEIU Local 2015 and the United Educators of San Francisco PAC. Mar said he supports Prop. C.

Benioff also personally donated $500 to District 10 candidate Theo Ellington.

— Trisha Thadani Trash talk: A number of last-minute amendments to complicated waste management legislation held up the Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Finance Committee for about three hours Thursday as the members tried to understand what was before them.

The ordinance, sponsored by Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, would audit properties in the city that generate a large amount of waste and determine if they are properly separating trash under San Francisco law. If the properties — which range from restaurants to city buildings like San Francisco City Hall — fail the audit, they would be forced to hire a full-time trash sorter at about $20 an hour, plus benefits.

At issue Thursday was the number of amendments that committee members Malia Cohen, Sandra Lee Fewer and Catherine Stefani said they received only shortly before the meeting. The most notable change raised the threshold for how much waste a property needs to generate to fall under the ordinance, from 30 cubic yards to 40 cubic yards or more.

“I had not seen the amendments until this morning,” Fewer said, adding that receiving last-minute amendments is not completely unusual. But the “complex legislation and the extensive amendments made it harder to digest.”

The city identified more than 100 buildings in San Francisco — 15 of which are city owned — that would fall under the ordinance. But just because the properties are on the list doesn’t mean they do not meet the law.

The city’s budget and legislative analyst’s office estimated San Francisco would spend an additional $416,000 to $832,000 per year paying fulltime employees to sort through the trash at its 15 sites.

Cohen, chair of the committee, said the ordinance was well-intentioned, but she was concerned about the extra costs public housing sites — such as Sunnydale — would incur. Fewer worried about the public schools that would fall under the audit.

“It’s not an easy concept to grasp,” Safaí said after the meeting. “There was a significant amount of education going on” during the meeting.

The ordinance will be heard again at the next committee meeting on Nov. 15.

— Trisha Thadani