View the San Francisco for Thursday, February 20, 2025
Ethics experts said there are clear steps Mayor Daniel Lurie — seen visiting George’s Donuts and Merriment in West Portal in January — can take to avoid creating the appearance of impropriety while in office.
When San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie tells KNBR’s “Murph and Markus” that he wants to know how “we’re going to handle”But it takes a scroll through his legally mandated financial disclosures to know that he puts his money where his fandom lies. Lurie owns a stake valued at more than $1 million in San Francisco 49ers Enterprises, the investment company set up by 49ers owners toin 2023, and he’s personally invested as much as $1 million in the South Bay-based women’s pro soccer club Bay FC.last year to the tune of $9.5 million. His mother, Miriam Haas, married into the family that founded Levi’s, making Lurie an heir to the company fortune. Disclosures filed this month after he took office show Lurie’s various holdings — which he’s now set aside in a blind trust — and where they could present potential conflicts of interest.— as surely some of its fans here wish the club would — Lurie would be at the helm of a city government potentially tasked with negotiating a tax agreement and reviewing site permits. Lurie owns a stake in Bay FC valued between $100,000 and $1 million.at their Santa Clara stadium, an event that will bring so many people to the Bay Area that it will surely require special planning and resources from city government. Lurie previously chaired the committee that hosted the Bay Area’s last Super Bowl and has financial ties to 49ers ownership through his 49ers Enterprises investment. The stadium in which the team plays bears the name of his family’s fortune. The Examiner consulted with government-ethics watchdogs and experts to examine Lurie’s holdings and analyze how he can avoid the appearance of impropriety as he sets out to repair San Francisco’s damaged reputation. “Like other public officials, Lurie will need to demonstrate to the public that he will not use his position as mayor to benefit his financial interests while in office,” John P. Pelissero, director of government ethics at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, wrote in an email to The Examiner. “This may require him to take the ethically-conscious step of recusing himself from acting on any city business with companies or individuals in which he has active investments or personal relationships.” The precise value of Lurie’s assets is impossible to determine based on the disclosures, which require only an estimated range of their worth. In total, they add up to at least $8 million but possibly well above $37 million. Thus far, experts agree that he’s gotten off to the right start by setting up the blind trust, and several said there’s nothing inherent in being wealthy that will lead to corruption. By setting aside his assets in a blind trust, Lurie is effectively allowing someone else to manage his wealth and won’t have a say in how it’s handled. “Most politicians, frankly, don’t do those things,” said Sean McMorris, the transparency, ethics, and accountability program manager for Common Cause California. “I give him kudos for that.” The blind trust was set up according to state law and will be managed by Danielle DeLancey of Wilmot Ventures and Parker Phillips of Argonaut Securities, the mayor’s office told The Examiner. Both have connections to Lurie. DeLancey previously served as the chief of staff for the San Francisco Bay Area Super Bowl 50 Host Committee, which Lurie chaired. Argonaut Securities also provides accounting services for the Mimi and Peter Haas Fund, for which Mayor Lurie is listed as a trustee in its most recent filings with the IRS. Experts also acknowledged the inherent limitations of a blind trust. If it’s managed properly, he won’t be able to sell shares based on insider knowledge of a company he’s gained thanks to his position as mayor, for example. However, Lurie isn’t going to forget where his money is. It’s literally stamped above many of his constituents’ right back pockets. “He can never really completely disconnect himself from his wealth in terms of his decision-making power,” McMorris said. “But if it is done correctly, he has no say in how his assets and his investments are managed while he’s in office, and that should include no tomfoolery like using a middle person to convey with a wink and a nod a decision that’s forthcoming.”Mayor Daniel Lurie greets Belinda Leong , owner of b.patisserie at their last day pop-up in Union Square, San Francisco on Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025. Lurie was swept into City Hall last year after campaigning on the message that “City Hall insiders” had either contributed to or failed to address residents’ concerns about public safety, street conditions and a host of other issues. Voters supported him knowing full well that he was not only seriously wealthy, but was investing in his own campaign to a degree unseen in modern San Francisco politics, vastly outspending his opponents. While experts agreed that Lurie’s wealth naturally presents potential conflicts of interest, they were hesitant to suggest any correlation between deep pockets and duplicity. Three-term former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for example, poured millions of dollars into his campaigns. In office, he avoided the sort of major scandal now, who has but a fraction of Bloomberg’s wealth. The key question is whether constituents have confidence that a politician’s decisions are in the interest of the public and not their own pocket book, according to Kedric Payne, the vice president, general counsel, and senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center.There are multiple guardrails in place for Lurie, according to McMorris, including state and local conflict-of-interest laws by which he must abide. Lurie can be financially affected by decisions he’s legally allowed to make as mayor, but only tangentially. The “public generally” clause of state conflict-of-interest law allows elected officials to act in a way that affects their own bottom lines or interests, as long as the effect is indistinguishable from that of the general public.“Because he does have so many assets and investments, it’s going to be hard for him to keep track of them all on any given matter — so it would behoove him to consult liberally with the city attorney on these things,” McMorris said.Pedestrian-safety advocate Jenny Yu, who said her mother was severely injured by a driver 14 years ago, said she believes speed-enforcement cameras will correct motorists’ behavior. The first of nearly three dozen speed-enforcement cameras is up in San Francisco, with less than a month until the pilot program is fully online.in the Richmond as a the first step in improving San Francisco road conditions and curbing dangerous driving. They said the camera placed at the intersection of Geary Boulevard and 7th Avenue that morning was among the first installed statewide following the passage of California law enabling their deployment in six cities as part of a five-year initiative. Civil-rights groups opposing the program have contended the technology is another method of surveillance for residents — primarily people of color and those living in economically disadvantaged areas — who are already over-policed. A motorists’ advocacy group, meanwhile, argues the pilot is solely intended to raise money for municipalities.in October 2023. The legislation cleared the way for Los Angeles, San Jose, Oakland, Glendale, Long Beach and The City to install between nine and 125 “speed safety systems,” depending upon each city’s size. The City’s 33 cameras will be online March 13, Walk San Francisco executive director Jodie Medeiros said Wednesday. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency said that the cameras will be triggered by speeding vehicles going 11 miles per hour or more over posted speed limits. The cameras will take pictures of the vehicles’ rear license plates, after which the agency will issue citations to the vehicles’ registered owners. Transportation officials said that fee amounts vary based on the violations. Once the cameras are online in mid-March, speeding vehicles will receive warnings during the first two months of operation. After that, fines will be issue. The SFMTA and pedestrian-safety advocates claim the cameras are a vital step toward San Francisco meeting its Vision Zero goal of ending all roadway deaths.“We are all at risk when people drive too fast, and it is time for that to change,” said Marta Lindsey, Walk San Francisco’s communications director. Transportation officials have said the camera locations are based on multiple factors, including where severe traffic accidents and deaths have occurred, as well as the concentrations of schools, parks and other gathering spaces. Lindsey said Wednesday’s installation marked the culmination of six years of advocacy work and “could not be happening a minute too soon.” She said she feels “increasingly scared on our streets, in part because vehicles are bigger.”Jenny Yu, a member of San Francisco Bay Area Families for Safe Streets, said she believed the program would correct motorists’ behavior, pointing to what she characterized as successful efforts in other states. Yu said Saturday marks 14 years since a speeding SUV hit her mother at the intersection of Park Presidio Boulevard and Anza Street. She said her mother sustained a traumatic brain injury, as well as severe post-traumatic stress disorder, among other effects.The speed-enforcement camera installed at the intersection of Geary Boulevard and 7th Avenue is slated to be the first of 33 installed across The City as part of a pilot program. “By having these cameras up, less families will be impacted,” Yu said. “Less lives will be ruined so no one has to go through what my siblings and my mother have been going through the past 14 years.” Prior to the bill’s passage, the American Civil Liberties Union’s Northern California chapter and Human Rights Watch raised concerns over the cameras’ potential for disproportionate enforcement. In September 2023, the former group told The Examiner that the legislation’s “surveil-and-fine approach” is likely to primarily affect residents of color. A 2022 ProPublica report found red-light cameras in Chicago between 2015 and 2019 had, arguing the legislation “would impose a serious burden on California taxpayers” and the state’s superior-court system while also creating “fundamental privacy, due process, equal protection, and equity concerns.” Jay Beeber, the executive director of policy for the National Motorists Association, told The Examiner in a statement that the pilot program “is nothing more than a revenue-generation scheme disguised as a safety initiative.” “The vast majority of tickets will be issued to drivers on roads with unreasonably low speed limits that do not align with the roadway’s design,” he said. Beeber said that The City’s transportation officials are creating artificial speed traps by penalizing drivers for moving at speeds that he said the roadways are built to accommodate in their current conditions., which is expected to cost up to $3 million annually. The agency is currently conducting a public-education program to notify motorists of speed enforcement ahead of next month’s launch. Lindsey San Francisco said the 33 cameras would not provide an immediate solution to improving road safety, but that their installation would help get drivers to slow down. “This program needs to get going,” Lindsey said. “It needs to show incredible success and then we need to go win more legislation to expand it.”An Urban Alchemy team tends to an unconscious homeless man on Market Street between the Tenderloin Center and the Orpheum Theater in June 2022. The man was later revived by San Francisco firefighters. San Francisco drug-overdose deaths increased for the third consecutive month in January, according to preliminary data released Wednesday by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. The 59 deaths San Francisco recorded in January marked a 17% decrease from the same month in 2024 . January 2025 marked the 10th consecutive month in which The City recorded fewer deaths than the same month the previous year, although deaths haven’t fallen from one month to the next since October 2024. The City recorded fewer fatal overdoses in 2024 than in any year since it began tracking them in 2020, with total deaths fallingJanuary also marked the first month of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s administration, during which former Department of Public Health Directorpreviously marketed a painkilling opioid Dr. Naveena Bobba, the department’s acting director, said Wednesday that public-health officials “continue to see a disproportionate number of Black dying of overdose” and that eliminating racial disparities remains a focus. Eighteen African Americans died of overdoses last month, according to the medical examiner, accounting for 31% of January’s recorded fatalities. Black residents accounted for 25% of overdose deaths in 2020 and 28% last year, despite comprising around “We need more investments, more partnerships and more reach to make a difference,” said Antwan Matthews, director of youth services at the local nonprofit Code Tenderloin, during Wednesday’s press conference. “Most importantly, we need to address the underlying issues of substance usage — racism, poverty, housing, mental health and trauma.”— which connects Tenderloin and SoMa residents with doctors who can prescribe opioid-treatment medication over the phone, as well as other services — will expand into Bayview this spring. Dr. Hillary Kunins, the department’s director of behavioral health, said other efforts include a substance-use public-awareness campaign alongside the Homeless Children’s Network that is aimed at Black youth; a Tenderloin site connecting older African American men with services; and the expansion of a Bayview treatment program offering peer navigation, or support from people who have experienced substance-use disorder. “Closing the gap on overdose disparities and other health disparities is a major public-health challenge, but one we must continue to address with vigor and relentlessness,” Kunins said. Matthews said “overdose disparities are not an issue that we are going to solve in one year,” calling on “city leaders and our community to work together to not give up on people.” The nonprofit staffer spoke at The City’sAllen, who is also a participant in the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s Living Proof advertising campaign highlighting the stories of residents recovering from drug addiction, said Black residents have “been neglected for far too long.” “It is critical that people in addiction should be offered treatment and support at every touch point with healthcare professionals and first care responders,” she said. City officials in March will release death totals from this month, during which two of Lurie’s early opioid-crisis initiatives took hold.ordinance,” which allows Lurie’s administration to more easily sign leases for new treatment facilities and major contracts with service providers as part of The City’s fight against its opioid-addiction, homelessness and behavioral-health crises.in SoMa where people arrested for using or selling drugs are taken to accept treatment, leave The City on a bus, or go to jail. The center is a pilot intended to last 30 days and is staffed by various city departments, including the Department of Public Health. Community ambassadors from Code Tenderloin are also working at the site. Steven Rice, a program manager with the organization, told The Examiner on the center’s first day of operation earlier this month that the police were taking a more “hands-off” approach as people had been “leery” of their presence.Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. You can click and drag the clipping box to move it or click and drag in the bottom right corner to resize it. When you're happy with your selection, click the checkmark icon next to the clipping area to continue.This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. Choose wisely!Create a password that only you will remember. If you forget it, you'll be able to recover it using your email address.Forgot Password An email message containing instructions on how to reset your password has been sent to the email address listed on your account.
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