Woman fired after filing complaint opts to sue city

A former paralegal for the San Francisco Board of Appeals has filed a lawsuit against the city, claiming she was fired for blowing the whistle on her boss and a member of the board for allegedly removing evidence from the file of a politically contentious appeal case.

In the lawsuit filed last week, Katy Sullivan states that she learned in late November of 2019 that the exhibit — the print-out of text messages between Board of Appeals President Darryl Honda and former Planning Commissioner Dennis Richards — had gone “missing.” After the discovery Sullivan says she sent an email “to call out the fact that the documents were missing,” according to the lawsuit.

Two weeks later Sullivan, who had worked as a paralegal for 30 years, including six with the city, says she learned that evidence had been “removed from the file by Commissioner Honda ... who had no right to remove it,” according to the lawsuit. Sullivan states the document was removed “with assistance of ” her boss, Board of Appeals Executive Director Julie Rosenberg.

Sullivan then filed a whistleblower complaint with the controller’s office, accusing Honda and Rosenberg of “deleting critical documents from an appeal in violation of the law.” After filing the complaint, Sullivan says she was “subjected to a campaign of exaggerated and false criticism of her work” while some of her job functions were reassigned to other, less senior, paralegals.

After going on medical leave for “depression, anxiety, and cervical nerve disorder, she was fired in December of 2020,” the lawsuit states. Honda and Rosenberg did not return calls seeking comment.

The office of San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera hasn’t had a chance to review the lawsuit yet, according to spokesman John Cote.

“The city is committed to maintaining a workplace free from unlawful retaliation, including protected whistle-blower activity,” Cote said. “Since Ms. Sullivan has apparently brought this matter to court, that is where the city will address it.”

The text messages that Honda and Rosenberg allegedly removed from the public record relate to a high-profile 2019 case in which the city’s Department of Building Inspection revoked nine permits for a renovation at 3426-3432 22nd St., a four-unit historic Italianate building near Guerrero Street.

The project was being redeveloped by then-Planning Commissioner Dennis Richards, who has been a harsh critic of the city’s Department of Building Inspection. Richards and his partners snagged the apartment building for $2.7 million and hoped to sell it for nearly $8 million after buying out the rent control tenants for $350,000 and renovating the units.

Richards claims the Department of Building Inspection singled his project out for retaliation after he had sought to expose corruption in the agency. The city claimed Richards and his real estate partners exceeded the scope of the permits they pulled and also failed to disclose the buyout of rent control tenants.

Richards has since sued the Department of Building Inspection. That case is pending. Richards has resigned from the planning commission.

Sullivan’s lawsuit does not specify the content of the text that was allegedly removed. But sources familiar with the case say the document allegedly removed included a text where Honda states, “hey bro, there’s some not so nice stuff going around about you right now. What’s up.”

Richards has said he perceived Honda’s text as a warning to back off in his criticism of the building department. He said he was “stunned” when he heard of Sullivan’s lawsuit.

“It’s shocking that Commissioner Honda would apparently go to such lengths to hide this information and it raises serious questions about what else has been done out of the public eye,” Richards said. “We are certainly looking into this. And I’ll add that I’m deeply troubled Ms. Sullivan may have faced professional sanctions for speaking out about wrongdoings.”

The lawsuit comes at a time when the Department of Building Inspection has been at the center of a widespread investigation into corruption in San Francisco City Hall, a multi-agency probe that has so far led to charges of fraud for former Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru and bribery charges for former Public Utilities Commission General Manager Harlan Kelly. Last week, the U.S. Attorney’s Office indicted former senior building inspector Bernie Curran for wire fraud.

Board of Appeals Vice Chairman Rick Swig, who has served with Honda for nearly a decade, said he couldn’t comment specifically on the lawsuit. But he said that the members of the Board of Appeals “are sworn to uphold standards set by the Ethics Commission” and that no evidence has been “suppressed” or gone missing in any case that has come before the board in his tenure.

“Transparency, adherence to ethical standards and adherence to sunshine laws is first, second and third in terms of our priorities,” Swig said. “Mr. Honda’s rigor in upholding those standards is aligned with my own rigor and everyone on the board’s rigor. I’ll lay across railroad tracks for that one.”