What’s at stake is a voluminous set of reforms that, in short, aim to close a number of loopholes in The City’s ethics policies and to deter the sort of backroom dealing and back-scratching for which San Francisco is infamous.
A proposal to reform San Francisco’s ethics laws has been stalled for months amid prolonged negotiations with the union that represents top city officials. The union says it needs time to study the proposal and its many ramifications, but the city’s Ethics Commission says it’s simply dragging its feet on reform.
The Municipal Executives Association has been exercising its right to weigh in on the proposal for nearly a year despite a push from the Ethics Commission — which authored the reforms — to put it before voters in the form of a ballot measure. Public records reviewed by The Examiner show the union, whose members include dozens of top department heads and their deputies, has been drawing out its concerns with the ethics proposal over a series of 11 meetings. At one point, the union went as far as to file a formal grievance over the process — with its suggested remedy being a continuation of bargaining. What’s at stake is a voluminous set of reforms that, in short, aim to close a number of loopholes in The City’s ethics policies and to deter the sort of backroom dealing and back-scratching for which San Francisco is infamous. The proposal is tied to The City’s ongoing reform efforts in the wake of numerous corruption scandals that have roiled City Hall in recent years, including the acceptance of bribes by former Department of Public Works head Mohammed Nuru. The Ethics Commission’s proposal aims to shore up The City’s current ethics laws in numerous ways, many of which are targeted at preventing the kind of behavior that landed Nuru a prison sentence. For example, the proposal would prohibit a lobbyist from skirting city law by passing a gift to a city official through an intermediary. It would require department heads to report gifts to its department from any non-governmental source every month. “These reforms are crucial in light of the widespread corruption scandal that has unraveled throughout The City in recent years,” Michael Canning, the Ethics Commission’s acting senior policy analyst, told The Examiner.“While The City’s executive leadership could together be championing the strengthening of ethics and accountability in city government through critical and common-sense reforms, the actions of city executives have instead denied San Francisco voters a fresh opportunity to enact important ethics reforms this year,” the commission wrote. “Regrettably, city executives have sidestepped a critical opportunity to improve The City’s ethical climate and practices.” The Ethics Commission, the union and Department of Human Resources — which is facilitating the discussions — have not met since late July. The union, which represents almost every department head and high-level manager in city government, says it supports ethics reform — including several provisions of the proposed ballot measure — but warns that the proposal could impact its members’ ability to do their jobs. “MEA’s duty is to ensure that each of the well-intended revisions are understood, including potential unintended consequences; that they are communicated clearly to the impacted workers who are on the frontlines managing the City every day; and to engage with the Ethics Commission representatives in a process that achieves our shared goal of government accountability and integrity, while representing the rights of our members,” MEA Executive Director Raquel Silva wrote in a statement to The Examiner. Before a proposal like this appears before voters, unions whose members might be impacted by it are entitled to what is known as a “meet and confer” process, which is a fancy term for a negotiation. However, the process that has played out with the ethics proposals calls into question what the limits of that meet and confer process are, and whether it’s being abused. “Throughout that process, the commission was told that the law did not require ultimate agreement between the parties to be successfully concluded, but rather a good faith discussion of issues raised,” the Ethics Commission wrote in an August statement.Details of the objections raised by the union are not subject to public disclosure, but records obtained by The Examiner demonstrate the arduousness of the process. Representatives of the union, human resources department and Ethics Commission have now met to hash out their differences on several occasions. But simply scheduling a meeting between all of the involved parties is painful and has seemed, at times, to be a Sisyphean process. In a March letter to the union, the Department of Human Resources noted that a Feb. 22 meeting was rescheduled due to scheduling conflicts. The department gave the union available times on March 1 and received no response. It offered March 4 and March 8 and was told by the union that those were unavailable. “Subsequently, The City requested that MEA offer alternative dates in which they are available. The City is awaiting a response, and looks forward to meeting with MEA again very soon on this important matter,” the human resources letter states. The back-and-forth forced the Ethics Commission to miss the deadline to place the proposal on the June, and then the November, ballot Depending on the outcome of Proposition H, which would shift all city elections to even years, there may not be another opportunity to place the ethics proposal on the ballot until 2024. “It’s unfortunate that voters weren’t given the opportunity to weigh in on these proposals this year, since ultimately the voters should be the ones setting ethical standards for city officials,” Canning told The Examiner. “But given this reality, we will continue to pursue these reforms through whatever pathways are available, even if that means reforms can’t happen until 2023 or 2024.”The Board of Supervisors, then voters, approved legislation to alter the rules around behested payments, a term for when a city department or official solicits a donation to a favored nonprofit from a person or company doing business with The City. This year, supervisors returned to the issue, fearing that the law as written was too restrictive and could limit The City’s ability to raise funds for key projects. The legislation was tweaked again last month. Though summarized neatly in the Ethics Commission’s statement, the proposed reforms are multitudinous and complex and undoubtedly take time to work through. In its statement to The Examiner, the union noted that it has negotiated ethics training requirements into its past contracts and that when new legislation is proposed, it engages “in the meet and confer process in order to understand and negotiate language changes that address the issues our members might face and to develop a training process so they understand what is expected of them.” “We are fully committed to continue working with the Ethics Commission, the Board of Supervisors and other stakeholders to continue to progress necessary ethics reforms, in which we firmly believe,” Silva said. 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