After reports broke late Thursday that new SF District 4 Supervisor Beya Alcaraz had paid employees under the table and misrepresented expenses on her taxes, Alcaraz resigned from her supervisor seat about four hours later.

Somewhere, freshly booted supervisor Joel Engardio may be sitting with a warm brandy and chuckling to himself. Or he may have been between the hours of 5:30 pm and 9:30 pm Thursday night, when the effort to replace him turned into a full-blown, unmitigated political disaster.

At 5:30 pm Thursday, a bombshell media report dropped with damning text messages that Daniel Lurie’s handpicked appointed replacement Beya Alcaraz may have committed numerous forms of tax fraud. And by 9:30 pm Thursday night, the Chronicle reported that Alcaraz had resigned as District 4 supervisor.

“When I raised my hand to serve as supervisor, I told the mayor that it was time for someone who is from the Sunset to represent the Sunset. I believe that my community deserves someone who will work 24/7 to advocate for us,” Alcaraz said in a statement. “I understand that today’s news stories would distract me from doing that.”

The trouble came to a boil when Mission Local dropped a 5:30 pm Thursday report that Alcaraz admitted to submitting false information on her taxes. That report cited a series of text messages written by Alcaraz herself regarding the Outer Sunset pet shop Animal Connection, which she owned from 2019 until selling it earlier this year. That shop had already thrust Alcaraz into controversy earlier in the week over reports that Alcaraz left the shop strewn with dead animals, a mouse infestation, animal feces, and urine galore when she sold the place.

But the new revelations thrust Alcaraz into tax fraud territory. Mission Local uncovered texts from Alcaraz in which she said "I pay people under the table now." That would be one form of potential tax fraud, but Alcaraz’s texts also openly admitted to a practice of lying about business expenses on her taxes.

“I also live off a big portion of the non cash revenue,” Alcaraz wrote in another March 28, 2025 text message. “I spend expense [sic] a bit of money on my personal life so I can use it as a tax deduction. E.g. I pay for my dinner and drinks with my friends or ‘clients’ as a business expense and then they may or may not pay me back in cash. When you see meals and entertainment, office meals, travel, etc that’s usually what that’s for.”  

The texts were to the new owner of Animal Connection, Julia Baran. Baran was also the source of this week’s reports in the SF Standard and the Chronicle about the squalid condition of the pet shop when she took it over, so this makes three times in one week that Baran has fed the press damaging stories about the new supervisor Alcaraz. So it does not seem like Julia Baran is a big Beya Alcaraz supporter.

Alcaraz herself initially pushed back.

“I don’t owe a dollar in taxes,” she said in a defensive Thursday statement to Mission Local (several hours before she resigned). “I paid the young people who came to work in my store because I believe in my core that young people in my community and every community deserve to be paid for their work. I worked seven days a week to keep my business open through the pandemic and always ensure that my employees were paid, and I’m going to use that experience every day as I work to make life easier for small businesses and families in the Sunset.”

But at the same time, Alcaraz was already canceling scheduled Thursday night appearances.

And by 9:30 pm Thursday night, Alcaraz submitted her resignation to Mayor Daniel Lurie.

“I spoke to Supervisor Alcaraz tonight,” Lurie said in a 9:40 pm statement. “She and I agreed, as we always have, that the Sunset deserves a supervisor who is fully focused on serving the community. We also agreed that the new information about her conduct while running her small business, which I learned today, would be a significant distraction from that work. In our conversation, she told me she intends to resign as supervisor.”

For his part, Lurie is canceling appearances too. His initial public schedule for Friday showed a 9:30 am press conference to promote Supervisor Danny Sauter’s new District 3 zoning legislation. His press team hastily canceled that appearance Thursday night, now saying “Mayor Daniel Lurie will hold internal meetings” on Friday.  

Oh, he had better hold some internal meetings, and some tough questions should be getting asked. This is a totally unforced error on Lurie's part, and easily the biggest mistake of his tenure thus far. And this is bound to set off very pointed questions about Lurie’s due diligence in appointing Alcaraz, and whether his team vetted her adequately. A separate Mission Local report points out that Alacaraz was “the least experienced supervisor to be appointed in San Francisco in at least 25 years.” And her disastrous, week-long tenure certainly showed that.

And perhaps appointing someone with so little political experience is the kind of mistake that a mayor with little political experience would make.

Mind you, District 4 and the Sunset were already a powder keg of simmering political resentment over the Great Highway closure, Engardio recall divisiveness, and fury at Mayor Lurie's ambitious upzoning plan. The Beya Alcaraz debacle just threw several Molotov cocktails onto that power keg.    

Because now, there is a distinct possibility that the Sunset will have no supervisor when the supervisors vote on Lurie’s upzoning plan. Lurie may also have now permanently alienated himself from a very resentful District 4 community, and by extension, he may have also alienated himself with the larger citywide Chinese-American voting bloc that propelled him into office in the first place.

All of this will make his next selection for an appointment to the Board of Supervisors that much more important, and likely to be scrutinized.

In his Thursday night statement, Lurie said, "My hopes for the Sunset haven't changed... They should have a supervisor who can be fully dedicated to representing them, advocating for their families, and bringing people together. My team and I will get back to work finding that person right away."

Related: Lurie’s New Supervisor Appointee Faces Bizarre Scandal Over Filthy Conditions, Dead Animals at Pet Store [SFist]

Image: @DanielLurie via Twitter