The San Francisco Ethics Commission has now formally accused former Human Rights Commission Executive Director Sheryl Davis of a range of ethics violations that may also amount to illegal acts involving improper gifts and conflicts of interest.

Embattled former city commissioner Sheryl Davis, whom former Mayor London Breed also tapped to lead her Dream Keeper Initiative, has been slapped with a 31-page charging document from the city's Ethics Commission. As the Chronicle reports, Davis has yet to respond to the commission, which presented her with its evidence against her on September 9, giving her a chance to settle the violations behind closed doors. That means that a mini-trial may now take place to make a determination of wrongdoing, and the amount of the fine owed to the city, which could be hefty.

Davis stands accused of three sets of ethics violations, as the Chronicle explains, the majority of which pertain to gifts she received from two nonprofits that she awarded city contracts and grants to, Collective Impact and Urban Ed Academy.

Davis herself was previously the executive director of Collective Impact, which runs a community center in the Western Addition, and her romantic partner, James Spingola, whom she has lived with since 2015, runs the organization now. A city audit released in September found this to be a clear conflict of interest, with Davis giving $1.5 million in city grants to Collective Impact as HRC director.

(It should be noted that an administrative hearing officer last month found Collective Impact was not culpable for "willful misconduct," in a case brought by the city to debar the organization from bidding on city contracts. The city intends to appeal the decision.)

The Ethics Commission found that Davis accepted or solicited around $39,000 in improper gifts from Collective Impact alone, including flight upgrades, and expenses relating to an August 2024 Martha's Vineyard trip that also figured largely in the city audit.

Additionally, Davis is charged with accepting a portrait of herself, valued at $5,000, from Urban Ed Academy, right before she awarded the organization a $270,000 grant from the city.

Under city rules, city commissioners and officials are barred from awarding city funds or contracts to organizations or businesses that have given them gifts over a certain dollar amount in the prior 12 months.

Another set of ethics charges pertains to conflicts of interest in the awarding of city payments to both of the nonprofits, as well the University of San Francisco, where Davis had a second job as a professor.

Davis stands to potentially face a fine in the tens of thousands of dollars, if not even six figures — the total amount is unclear. Each conflict of interest or gift violation comes with a potential $5,000 fine, and if she is not cleared of wrongdoing in the receiving of the gifts, she could be asked to pay back three times the amount of each gift received.

The SF District Attorney's Office is also investigating possible criminal charges against Davis, but has not yet filed any. The city audit earlier found that the misuse of city funds under Davis's watch for often frivolous expenses amounted to approximately $4.6 million.

Davis has called herself merely a "failed bureaucrat," and has said that while serving the city, "I was too focused on the people, but not on the rules."

Her attorney, Tony Brass, who also briefly represented former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao in her bribery case, gave a statement to the Chronicle saying that his client "never made any decisions to personally enrich herself and others at the expense of public resources."

Previously: City Audit Further Details $4.6M In Misspent Dollars By Former SF Human Rights Commission Chief

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SF’s November 5 measure Prop D has raised more than $9 million in hopes of passing a law to slash the number of City Hall commissions in half, though some allege the money is largely just going to help pay the Mark Farrell for Mayor campaign’s bills.

The San Francisco ballot measure that has made perhaps the most news in the lead-up to next week’s election is Prop D, which proposes to slash the number of SF City Hall commissions from currently more than 130 to only 65. The idea of reducing the number of commissions has broad bipartisan support, and many at City Hall have already called for this.

Yet Prop D has brought enormous controversy. As of press time for this post, two separate political action committees (PACs) in support of Prop D have raised a combined $9.2 million. (PACs can take unlimited contributions, individual candidate contributions are capped at $500.) And there have been accusations for months that Prop D is just a source to clandestinely funnel money into the Mark Farrell for Mayor campaign, so much so that three former SF mayors have called for a criminal investigation into the Farrell campaign for such blatant use of PAC money by a mayoral campaign.

After all, take a look at the supposed Prop D mailers seen below, and ask yourself if these look more like Prop D ads, or Mark Farrell for Mayor ads.

But on the merits of it, Prop D would take the more than 130 City Hall commissions and reduce them by half. Prop D would retain commissions for Police, Fire, Recreation and Park, Municipal Transportation Agency, Public Utilities and Ethics, while it would definitely eliminate the commissions for Public Health, Library, Human Rights, Human Services, Arts, Environment, Small Business, and Juvenile Probation.

The text of Prop D adds that it would also “Establish a five-member task force that would recommend within nine months which commissions should be reauthorized or restructured or dissolved to stay within the 65-commission limit.”

How would this process take place and would there be public input? Not clear.

Honestly, sure, some of these commissions have little use. The Redistricting Task Force, for instance, only has meetings every ten years. There’s also a commission to oversee the Matt Haney-created Sanitation and Streets Department, a department which never really existed.

And notably, Prop D makes these commissions “advisory,” meaning they wouldn't actually decide anything. Department heads would make all decisions, and Prop D would also give the mayor the sole power to hire and fire department heads. In other words, Prop D significantly expands the power of the mayor’s office.

Though, as Joe Eskenazi reports in a Mission Local profile of Prop D and Mark Farrell backer Michael Moritz today, no one at City Hall including the mayor asked for Prop D, it was drafted independently by Moritz's political group and dropped on them, and many including former Mayor Art Agnos argue that the process of culling commisssions should be done in public, with public input.

And yet, original Prop D supporter Breed yanked her support of the measure in August, over her concerns that it was just a front for a piggy bank for Farrell and the billionaire-funded PAC Together SF Action. (You’ll recall Together SF Actionas the group behind the “That’s Fenatife” ads, and for falsely claiming the Civic Center farmers’ market was closing down because of drugs.)

SFist also broke the news earlier this month that the PAC called Mayor Mark Farrell for Yes on Prop D PAC was responsible for a set of anonymously placed anti-Daniel Lurie ads from a seemingly made-up commission called Citizens for Campaign Finance Transparency. So ironically, the PAC for a ballot measure to reduce San Francisco commissions is also busy inventing new commissions out of whole cloth, just to run advertisements claiming to be from that commision.  

There is also a competing measure called Prop E to reduce commissions at a slower and more deliberate pace, authored by Supervisor Aaron Peskin. “My measure is commission reform done in the light of day with voter participation and voter input, as opposed to this ill-conceived meat-axe approach of TogetherSF and their non-expert political hacks,” Peskin told the Chronicle last week.

If both Prop D and Prop E pass, whichever one gets the most votes will become law.

But Prop D has a financial advantage of $9.2 million raised, compared to just about $40,000 raised for Prop E, plus the mountains of ads and mailers you see in this article. So odds sure seem strong that Prop D is likely to get more votes.

But a Chronicle poll last week showed Mark Farrell having dropped to fourth place in the mayor's race, behind Lurie, Breed and Peskin.

So if Farrell donors get Prop D passed, but in doing so ends up giving more power to one of Farrell’s political enemies in the mayor’s office, well, that would just be kind of hilarious.

Related: Mayor Breed Yanks Her Support From Commission Reform Measure, Alleging It’s Just a Slush Fund for Mark Farrell [SFist]

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

Earlier, the cab commission did a study and discovered that -- get this -- it's really hard to find a cab in the city. Really. Who knew? In fact, the study showed that 50% who called for a cab during the week couldn't get one, and on Friday evenings, 95% of the people who call for one never see any. See, whiny taxi drivers, we told you so. Just saying is all.

Anyway, the commission decided to add 50 more cabs, but some staff members (including Mayor Newsom) asked for delightful 100 newly circulating cabs in total. 69 was the compromise. The number was opposed by cab drivers (of course) who felt that less cabs on the streets will create more opportunities to not go to the Sunset or pick people up when the cab is empty. But thankfully, we have a few more cabs on the streets, which is all anyone ever wanted. So, now instead of never being able to catch a cab, you can tell your people that you almost caught one. Yay!


Image credit: SFCovers