The San Francisco public already knew about the not-all-above-board spending practices of disgraced former Human Rights Commission chief and Dream Keeper program head Sheryl Davis, but a new city audit puts an eye-popping pricetag on it: $4.6 million.

It's been over a year now since Sheryl Davis resigned as executive director of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission (HRC), amid a bombshell report about her apparent use of taxpayer dollars for frivolous expenses like a $10,000 house rental on Martha's Vineyard. Davis, who was also appointed by former Mayor London Breed to lead the mayor's Dream Keeper initiative — which was intended to direct more city funds to the city's historically underserved Black population — now may face more scrutiny after the release of a city audit report detailing the full extent of that unethical spending.

According to the report, prepared by the City Services Auditor within the Office of the Controller, the HRC under Davis's leadership "demonstrated a pattern and practice of evading existing controls and avoiding scrutiny from city oversight agencies, raising serious concerns about transparency, accountability, and financial integrity."

"This created a workplace where misconduct went unchallenged and ethical norms were disregarded, even as the department worked to improve oversight," auditor Mark de la Rosa writes.

Among the questionable and demonstrably frivolous expenses found in the audit, totaling around $4.6 million, are:

• $1.1 million in professional services and purchases made by HRC outside of standard city purchasing practices, using so-called "Prop Q" rules for purchases under $10,000. This includes almost $200,000 on sponsorships, tickets to gala events, and other ineligible purchases; and $151,000 paid to a former employee for ineligible consulting services.
• $8,000 paid in 2023 for a local non-profit, Total Women Empowerment Inc., to have a "Queen's Weekend Retreat" including spa services, to "take time to exclusively serve themselves to continue to service their community."
• $353,000 on likely ineligible food expenses, including catering, full restaurant buyouts, and food deliveries for staff
• $19,000 in tuition expenses for Davis's son, a graduate student at UCLA
• $6,800 to cover a four-week stay by guest lecturer and former fashion executive Antoine Phillips at the Intercontinental Hotel, for his stint speaking at the HRC's Black 2 San Francisco initiative last summer
• $9,995 — an amount flagged for being just under the $10K thresshold — to sponsor a "Senior Prom" for people over age 50 at The Village Project, paid as a donation through a different nonprofit. Incidentally, Davis was an honoree at the event.
• $92,000 in "Prop Q" expenses with bare-bones invoices that make the purposes of the expenses unclear — including $4,000 paid to UPS for shipping clothing and books to Davis at two hotels in New Orleans during the Essence Festival last year.
• $75,000 in expenses the audit determined to be "self-dealing" for Davis's own personal use, including expenses associated with a podcast she hosted
• $50,000 in invoices billed to "Health, Wellness & Community Engagement," all with little documentation or explanation, all priced at or around $9,000

The aforementioned Martha's Vineyard house rental was allegedly intended for some HRC interns who never ended up using it in August 2024 — perhaps because of the scrutiny the agency was beginning to face at the time. The story behind this seems to relate to a "philanthropic conference" Davis herself was attending. But the $9,000 amount for the interns' house, which was paid by the nonprofit Westside Community Services, was nonetheless reimbursed to that nonprofit, even though a receipt proving that the nonprofit had made the expenditure was never provided.

Additionally, as we learned last year, Western Addition-based nonprofit Collective Impact received $27 million in city grants since 2021 ($1.5 million from HRC), the year when Davis took charge of the Dream Keeper Initiative. It was later reported that this was a clear conflict of interest, as Davis has lived with the nonprofit's director, James Spingola, since 2015, and she was previously the director of the organization. (Davis signed a conflict of interest form only about her past association with the group, not about her relationship with Spingola.)

In a release, City Attorney David Chiu says that Davis created "an unethical culture at HRC," and "By taking these resources away from the community and spending them on herself and her friends, Davis harmed the community that was counting on her."

Davis said in a recent interview with Mission Local that she was a "failed bureaucrat," that the allegations against her were "mostly false," and that she was simply guilty of unknowingly ignoring arcane city rules.

"I was too focused on the people, but not on the rules," Davis said.

Jen Kwart, a spokesperson for the City Attorney's Office, tells Mission Local, "She was well aware of her ethical and legal obligations."

Davis further told Mission Local that she now regrets resigning, though she did it in part for her friend, London Breed, whose re-election was on the line. "I thought if I resigned, then they would just move on, and the program would move forward. Instead, they used my resignation to dismantle everything." Davis was referring to the gutting of funding for the Dream Keeper Initiative in her wake.

Davis remains under a criminal investigation by the SF District Attorney's Office.

Related: Fired City Hall Director Back In Hot Water Over $19K In City Funds Used for Her Son’s UCLA Tuition