Want Clean Streets? Clean Up City Hall’s Corruption
Mohammed Nuru, also known as “Mr. Clean,” was the longtime director of SF Public Works. He was arrested by federal authorities in January and charged with corruption. Photo credit: Paul Chinn/San Francisco Chronicle
By Joel P. Engardio
You probably spent the morning of April 4, 2018 dodging broken glass from smashed car windows, discarded heroin needles and even human waste on the sidewalk as you went to work or took your kids to school.
If you cursed how this had become the everyday experience of living in San Francisco, you might have wondered who at City Hall was responsible for cleaning sidewalks.
That person was Mohammed Nuru, the director of SF Public Works, nicknamed “Mr. Clean.” But on April 4, 2018, he wasn’t busy cleaning anything. Federal investigators allege he was trying to bribe an airport commissioner with an envelope stuffed with cash.
U.S. Attorney David Anderson said the charges against Nuru include “a web of corruption involving bribery, kickbacks, and side deals by one of San Francisco’s highest-ranking city employees.”
Nuru’s arrest in January was followed by a subpoena in June of San Francisco’s Public Utilities Commission, which oversees operations of the city’s water, power and sewer systems — and many lucrative construction contracts.
Then the FBI issued three more subpoenas for the City Administrator’s Office, the Planning Department and the Department of Public Health.
As federal officials continue to widen the City Hall corruption investigation, taxpayers are left to wonder where it ends. Meanwhile, residents continue to fund a $13 billion budget that still can’t produce clean streets.
“The public is entitled to honest work from public officials, free from manipulation for the official’s own personal benefit and profit,” said U.S. Attorney Anderson.
It appears that San Franciscans haven’t enjoyed this level of responsible and accountable leadership for a long time.
Warning signs
Nuru’s alleged corruption was ignored for at least 20 years, despite plenty of warning signs.
In 2004, Nuru made headlines in a Chronicle report that said “Nuru has emerged as a central figure in a City Hall scandal involving alleged voting improprieties...But according to public records and interviews, Nuru has been the subject of repeated complaints about alleged mishandling of taxpayers' funds.”
When City Attorney Dennis Herrera ran for mayor in 2011, he blew the whistle on Nuru’s "questionable ethics and repeated misappropriations of taxpayer dollars” over the previous decade. Herrera didn’t become mayor, and Nuru stayed in city government for another decade.
As the scandal surrounding Mohammed Nuru grew, the Controller’s office issued a report on how Public Works chose contracts.
When it came to projects addressing homelessness services, the process was far from rigorous. Between 2017 and 2019, Public Works spent:
$10.7 million on contracts procured through what the report calls “informal solicitation.”
$10.5 million on contracts that went through zero vetting or solicitation.
$3.5 million on contracts for which no documentation even exists.
Almost $25 million of city money was spent on contracts with no accountability and no oversight. That $25 million could have been spent on cleaning our sidewalks, or accelerating the response time for 311 calls. Instead, it was spent lining city contractor pockets.
Closing loopholes
The City Controller’s report shows that millions are being spent every day in city departments, hidden under layers of bureaucracy. Without a fiscal audit, we will not be able to hold city departments accountable to the money they spend or the services they provide.
We must thoroughly investigate and extinguish every source of corruption, and create new safeguards to prevent future abuses. It’s a tall order, given how taxpayers already feel like an ATM for City Hall’s out-of-control budget.
Supervisor Catherine Stefani introduced the No GRAFT Act in July, which would close loopholes in city contracting processes that Nuru was able to exploit for his own gain. One thing Stefani’s legislation would do is require that contractors make their project bids public.
Stefani’s legislation will help prevent corruption in city government. But there are other perfectly legal, completely wasteful, City Hall policies that also rob San Franciscans of their tax dollars and quality of life.
Unhealthy policies
One example is the Healthy SF initiative, which mandated businesses pay into medical reimbursement accounts on behalf of their employees.
The idea was that employees could access those funds when they became sick to offset the personal cost of healthcare.
That’s not how it worked out for most workers.
Many didn’t even realize they had Healthy SF money to claim. For those who knew to look for the money, the process of filing claims with City Hall was so burdensome that many gave up. The Chronicle reported that $203 million in Healthy SF funds were tied up in red tape.
There is little incentive for City Hall to make things easier because the money is “deactivated” if an account goes unclaimed for two years. And lawmakers gave themselves permission to use that deactivated money for other purposes.
At the height of the coronavirus shutdown in April, City Hall announced that it would release $138 million of Healthy SF money to help struggling workers.
It was a feel-good headline that was never delivered. After waiting for two months, workers were told they would instead only receive a one-time $500 payment regardless how much money was in their account.
This was little help to the restaurant and bar employees who lost their jobs and were pushed out of San Francisco because they couldn’t make ends meet. City Hall’s failure with its Healthy SF program resulted in a bloated government hoarding healthcare money that it wasn’t able to release in the middle of a pandemic.
When lawmakers design a plan intended to help their constituents, they need to be sure it’ll actually work. That’s why every program must be assessed for results, not just money spent.
The way things work now, City Hall takes money from homeowners, businesses, workers, and consumers to squander it on ineffective and unaudited projects.
But that’s not the end of City Hall’s unhealthy policies.
Playing politics with governance
The coronavirus pandemic has been brutal on public transportation finances throughout the Bay Area as ridership plummeted. That’s why our transit agencies need responsive stewards who can make decisions to ensure long term sustainability.
Yet supervisors refused to reappoint a member of the commission that runs Muni because they didn’t like a fare increase the person voted for — when supervisors hadn’t provided any other method for Muni to remain solvent.
Then supervisors delayed two more appointees for months, leaving the commission on the brink of being unable to make urgent decisions during the pandemic crisis.
This power struggle among politicians was at the expense of San Franciscans who depend on Muni. It showed how City Hall cares more about scoring political points than appointing qualified nominees to important city commissions.
In June, supervisors rejected the appointment of Nancy Tung to the police commission. Tung’s resume should be the gold standard: Prosecution experience, which includes prosecuting bad cops, along with advocacy for social justice and gun control. She also had a track record of holding the powerful accountable.
Yet Tung was unfairly maligned in a process that put politics over public safety.
What are we paying for?
Our city officials have prioritized their political careers, their bank accounts, and their power struggles while residents suffer the consequences and foot the bill.
I own a home with my husband, Lionel, in the Lakeshore neighborhood on San Francisco’s westside. When we pay our property tax, we need to know that our money is paying for what matters: clean streets, less crime, and better services.
For years, I’ve said in my Examiner column that all of City Hall’s contracts and projects need to be audited and monitored — and we should only pay for what works.
San Francisco was called the “Worst Run Big City in the U.S.” more than a decade ago and little has changed. Many of the same people are still in power and leading city departments.
Residents across the city are fed up with how San Francisco is run. Our tax dollars should go to actual street cleaning programs that work — not to the bank account of the man that insiders used to call “Mr. Clean.”
Learn more about Joel Enagrdio’s views on local issues at engardio.com/issues