SF’s new Planning Department director is not off to a good start with the Planning Commission that she’ll work with, as half the commission stormed out of Wednesday morning’s vote to approve Sarah Dennis Phillips as that director.

SF City Hall governance nerds are well aware that SF Planning Department director Rich Hillis resigned last month, and today, Mayor Daniel Lurie got around to naming Hillis’s replacement. And according to Lurie’s official announcement, the whole thing sounds like a typical game of City Hall political-insider musical chairs.

Current Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) executive director Sarah Dennis Phillips gets Hillis’s old job, director of the Planning Department; OEWD staffer Anne Taupier moves up in the department to take Dennis Phillips’s position; and well-respected Planning Department official Liz Watty takes over Lurie's newly created PermitSF initiative. Let’s be honest, these are people and positions that 95% of San Franciscans have never heard of.

Yet things certainly got interesting at Sarah Dennis Phillips’s closed-door interview to become Planning Department director! Mission Local reports that it was a vote by the seven-member Planning Commission, which votes on department matters. And according to Mission Local, three of the commissioners stormed out of the meeting before that closed-door discussion and vote.

When asked for comment, commissioner Gilbert Williams told Mission Local, “We just walked out of the hearing so that will let you know how we feel about it.”

Some additional follow-up reporting by Mission Local says that the commissioners were only given Sarah Dennis Phillips’s resume last night, and that top Lurie aide Ned Segal had phoned several commissioners to make it clear that she was Luie’s preference. And notably, Dennis Phillips got the job on only one interview, with apparently no other candidates even being submitted.

Mission Local adds that it’s required by the city charter that there be at least three candidates. It appears there was only one, and that the fix was in.

We’ve seen Sarah Dennis Phillips speak at a few City Hall meetings, and she seems remarkably smart and capable. The SF Business Times has a bio of Dennis Phillips that notes she's been at SF City Hall for the last 20 years, though took some time away to work for developer Tishman Speyer just before the pandemic. So there’s no argument with qualifications here.

But there is an appearance of a rigged hiring process that perhaps even excluded any other candidates whatsoever.  And a suspicion that allegiance to Daniel Lurie is the main skill that matters for top-level positions in this administration.

Related: SF Planning Department Director Rich Hillis Resigns, May Have Been Nudged Out by Lurie [SFist]

Image: SF.gov