Penny-Wise, Pound-Foolish Quibbling Over 0.213836% of Budget

Commission Streamlining Task Force Runs Amok

by Patrick Monette-Shaw

Is the Task Force Attempting to Implement Defeated Prop D Provisions Rejected by Voters?

• • • • • • • • • • September 2025 • • • • • • • • • •

Is just two-tenths of one percent of the City Budget too much to maintain public accountability?

The Budget and Legislative Analyst (BLA) has released its report, Board and Commission Annual Financial Cost Analysis, a skimpy 15-page (plus 23 pages of tables in Appendices) to the Commission Streamlining Task Force. It says it costs $33.9 million to operate San Francisco’s approximately 112 Board and Commission policy bodies. This represents an infinitesimally small cost, two-tenths of one percent — yes, just 0.213836% — of the $15.9 billion FY 2024–2025 City Budget. Efforts are now underway to eliminate or combine commissions that represent penny-wise, but pound-foolish, quibbling.

City Controller payroll data (excluding fringe benefits) illustrates that between Fiscal Year 2009–2010 and FY 2023–2024, the “bloat” in select City job classifications ballooned by $301.5 million, as I wrote last year in the Westside Observer, Table 1. This includes $190 million in senior manager job classification codes, 0922 through 1167, and SFMTA senior managers in classification codes, 9172 through 9187, shown in Table 2.

Why aren’t TogehterSF Action, Blueprint-SF Action, Kanishka Cheng, her husband Jay Cheng, and their billionaire astroturf ballot measure backers trying to rein in excessive growth in City managers? Why focus instead on eviscerating our Boards and Commissions’ oversight of City Hall?

After all, the $301.5 million in increased manager bloat represents a heftier 1.9% of the City’s $15.9 billion budget, and cutting excessive manager and patronage jobs should be much, much simpler than getting voters to give up long-cherished beliefs in transparent, accountable City governance.

San Franciscans know all too well that without the robust transparency our City’s Boards and Commissions provide, City Hall will open its doors to public corruption. Think of the Mohammed Nuru scandal in 2020 involving the Department of Public Works that led to Nuru’s seven-year Federal prison sentence.

Unfortunately, the Commission Streamlining Task Force — created by the passage, last November, of Prop. E — appears to be dangerously close to eliminating the oversight of many boards and commissions. This may well lead to further corruption. After all, corruption flourishes in secrecy.

Now the Streamlining Task Force appears to have it’s panties in a knot!

Upcoming Task Force Meetings

After eight months of developing so-called “templates” and “evaluation criteria” to assess Boards and Commissions, body-by-body actual deliberations are being crammed into just five meetings. The first meeting on September 3rd considered 10 oversight bodies in the “Public Safety” category. The September 17th meeting will address 20 bodies in the “Infrastructure, Climate, and Mobility” category, while the October 1st Task Force meeting is set for deliberations of 31 bodies in the “Housing and Economic Development” group.

On October 15, the Task Force will assess the initial outcome recommendations for 29 “Public Health and Wellbeing” oversight bodies, and the final meeting at which individual bodies will be discussed is for 23 bodies in the “General Administration and Finance” category on November 5.

The November 19 meeting will be a doozy. It is dedicated to resolving complex and “deferred” decisions the Task Force was unable to resolve during its previous meetings, along with potential “operational improvements” recommended for specific, or all, Boards and Commissions.

That’s if things go as planned.

At its August 20 meeting, the Task Force didn’t hear four of its 11 scheduled agenda items, including Item #6 involving the BLA’s report (a discussion-only agenda item) on the costs of each of the 112 Boards and Commissions. City Administrator Staff have said two of the agenda items not heard won’t be rescheduled — Item #9 “Staff Working Groups” and #10 “Legally Required Bodies,” both of which were agenda action items — but maybe the BLA report will be rescheduled for a subsequent meeting. The BLA report was not rescheduled for the September 3 Task Force meeting, and so far, it’s not scheduled on the September 17 agenda, either. If it’s never rescheduled, it will have been of scant value for the Task Force. It’s unclear whether that report will be presented at any of the last three Task Force meetings in October and November devoted to focusing on recommendations for the remaining 83 of the 112 policy bodies.

Next, the September 3 Task Force meeting failed to hear Agenda Item #8, “Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board and Inspector General (SDOB),” which was also an agenda action item. So the fate of the SDOB will presumably be recalendared — unless City Administrator staff decide not to discuss that body at all, knowing that is sure to involve time-consuming extended public comment. That would slow down adherence to meeting schedules, given the great public interest in the SDOB. And even more so, combining it with the “Department of Police Accountability” under the Police Commission. The SDOB discussion has not been rescheduled on the Task Force’s September 17 meeting agenda.

The leading cause of the bottleneck? In the last two meetings, staff could not locate a City Hall room for meetings longer than two-and-a-half hours, so planned agenda items may be cut off with scheduled items not heard.

BLA’s One-Sided Cost Analysis

The BLA’s cost analysis was released a day late, and only a day before the Task Force’s September 3 meeting to make initial recommendations on whether to retain, eliminate, or consolidate 10 Public Safety bodies — including the Police and Fire Commissions, and the Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board (SDOB). That left the Task Force with inadequate foreknowledge that the SDOB’s total costs were just $1.3 million — again, a scant 0.0081761%, or less than one-hundredth of one percent of the City’s budget for the current fiscal year. The Task Force ran out of time.

The BLA’s report noted repeatedly that its data was derived from estimates provided by City Department staff for their respective governance commission or board using a Microsoft nine-tab worksheet. The survey instrument in Microsoft Excel was sent to 118 Boards and Commissions, and 111 surveys were returned and used in the BLA’s analysis. The data collected were estimates from staff, who were left to use their own devices and recall how much time they had spent each month in the past year. All numbers collected were pure estimates, which the BLA admits could be higher or lower than the data reported. Few City staff ever track and record their time on individual tasks, with the exception of City Attorneys, who bill their time by the hour.

Of interest, the BLA sought “hard costs” of time spent by full-time staff assigned to support a Board or Commission, vs. “soft costs” of additional “less than full-time personnel” who provide support to a board or commission. Exhibit 5 on page 8 of the BLA report summarizes that the full-time “hard costs” were just $7 million of the $33.9 million total, while “soft costs” of part-time support from additional employees were $22.6 million, with an additional $4.3 million added in for non-personnel costs of having the 112 boards and commissions.

Although the BLA asserts the “hard cost” full-time departmental staff accounts for 20.6% of the $33.9 million in total board and commission costs, those hard costs represent just 0.0440252% (less than one-tenth of one percent) of the City’s $15.9 billion budget, while the part-time support staff “soft costs” account for 0.142138365% (just over a tenth of one percent) of the budget, and the non-personnel costs are 0.027044% (also less than one-tenth of one percent) of the City’s enormous budget.

Buried in the 38-page BLA analysis is an admission that even assuming many of the City’s 112 boards and commissions might be eliminated or combined, it is doubtful that it would save anything from the City budget. That is because the $22.6 million for part-time “soft costs” staff who perform other job duties and only contribute small fractions of their time supporting boards and commissions won’t be eliminated from the City’s payroll, even if their governing board and commission is, in fact, eliminated. The BLA reported: “Such positions are not likely to be deleted in the event of a board or commission elimination and thus would not represent hard savings for the City.”

The five-member Streamlining Task Force seems all too eager to ignore this inconvenient fact.

BLA Reports Minimal Savings

By its own admission, the BLA reported on page 10:

“The financial impact of eliminating Charter-based boards or commissions is less than the annual financial cost for the same boards and commissions established through the Charter, or both Charter and an ordinance.”

Appendix 6 in the BLA report documents eliminating all 41 boards and commissions listed would save the City a mere $5 million annually — just 0.0314465% of the City budget (yes, just three-hundredths of one percent). Similarly, Appendix 7 in the BLA reports revealed that potentially combining those 41 boards and commissions with another oversight body would increase City costs by $422,881. Saving the entire $33.9 million simply won’t happen!

When the BLA conducted its analysis, it had no idea which Boards and Commissions were actually being considered. While Appendix 7 suggested an increase in costs of $422,881 by combining 41 Boards and Commissions with others, Appendix 8 reported that combining 12 Commissions into just 6 Commissions would result in potentially $934,130 in annual savings for the City. The BLA offered no explanation for the conflicting estimates in Appendix 7 vs. Appendix 8.

The BLA did note on page 12:

“The functions performed by the board or commission and the associated department need to be identified and analyzed to determine what the associated department would still be responsible for even if their board or commission no longer existed.”

For good measure, the BLA added on page 13:

“To the extent that the Commission Streamlining Task Force considers specific consolidations, an analysis of both entities’ costs and functions will be essential.”

In other words, those key questions haven’t been answered. It’s entirely unclear who will conduct those two analyses, when, and at what additional cost — or if the Commission Streamlining Task Force will charge ahead and recommend eliminating or combining bodies without clear answers. How will the mandated functions be carried out, and by whom, and who will perform additional “essential” specific cost analyses on combining bodies?

The BLA admits on page 6 that because data entered into the Excel worksheet surveys were “inconsistent or were unresponsive to the questions asked,” the BLA made an unspecified number of “adjustments” to survey responses — without explaining how many adjustments were made.

Additional BLA Material Buried Online

On August 20, the BLA was scheduled to make a presentation in advance of its full-cost analysis. But meeting time ran out, the scheduled presentation wasn’t made, and may not be rescheduled for a future meeting.

That PowerPoint presentation included several essential details on data limitations in the planned complete analysis report.

That presentation is buried on the Task Force’s August 20 agenda web page reserved for that particular meeting. People won’t be able to find that presentation easily, unless they know where to look for it. A request to have it placed on the main web page was denied by City Administrator staff because no other PowerPoint presentations are posted on that page.

The slide titled “Limitations of Legislation” — referring to the legal text of “Prop. E” that created legislation requiring the BLA’s analysis — indicates data in its full report was limited because the legislation:

Did not provide guidance on any approach to board/commission consolidation (e.g., consolidate mission-aligned bodies; consolidate smaller entities into larger boards and commissions; or add/delete functions to a board of commission).

• Did not call for assessment of value of board and commission functions, or opportunities for eliminating or adding functions.
• Required the financial impact [analysis] of eliminating and consolidating only for Charter-mandated bodies.
• Did not mandate a cost-benefit analysis of City boards and commissions; called for financial analysis only.

None of those data limitations and caveats were mentioned in the BLA’s 15-page (plus 23 pages of tables in the eight Appendices) final report.

The Streamlining Task Force appears to be taking a meat cleaver to our public oversight system without a full cost-benefit analysis.

Even Streamlining Task Force Chair Ed Harrington cautioned the other four Task Force members on June 4 against “dramatically altering the city’s commission structure.”“Prop. E” was about streamlining, not radically overhauling, public governance.

Questionable Excel Data Collection

Of the 112 Boards and Commissions listed in Appendix #4 of the BLA’s cost analysis report, just 28 of them reported having full-time, “hard costs” staff employees, totalling $7 million in costs.

Because neither the BLA nor the Streamlining Task Force has posted the Excel survey responses online, the Westside Observer placed a public records request for 13 of the Excel files completed by Boards and Commission support staff in City Departments that we found of interest.

For those 13 Excel files reviewed, the BLA’s Appendix listed no full-time costs for either the Police Commission or the Planning Commission, yet the Excel files for those two commissions show each Commission had three full-time job classification codes entered. The Police Commission’s Excel file listed the annual salaries and benefits of its three full-time staff members, but it failed to enter their FTE status, as the other 12 Commissions had. (FTE represents “full-time equivalent,” with “1.0” representing one full-time employee, vs. “0.5” representing a half-time employee.)

The BLA asserted “… we have a degree of comfort with the estimates presented given the level of care that many survey respondents demonstrated in preparing their annual financial cost estimates.”

Only a “degree of comfort”? That’s not reassuring. And the BLA found it necessary to make “adjustments” to the data? Take the Police Department’s response to the survey, for example.

Police Commission or Police Department staff may not have understood how to enter data into the spreadsheet template. Although the Excel file for the Health Commission contained a Row #54 titled “Total Annual Amount Per Position,” there was no such row in the Excel file returned from the Police Commission. And no Row #56, titled “Total Hours per Month” — to total up the 10 pre-defined rows where staff were tasked with data entry, indicating hours per month spent on a variety of tasks. (The 10 survey questions are contained in Appendix #8 of the BLA’s report.)

Each of the 10 questions had four rows in Excel: One row for the narrative question, another row labeled “a” for the job classification code of the person performing the question asked, a third row “b” for the average number of hours per month on this function, and the fourth row, “c” for the annual salary and benefits of the person identified on Row “a.” Rather than entering the number of hours performed for that task on Row “b,” Police staff appeared to have entered data on the wrong “Questions” row, two rows above, leaving the Row “b” for all 10 tasks performed blank. Making matters worse, Row #56, storing the formula used to calculate the total number of hours as a monthly “average,” was also not in the Police Commission’s returned Excel file, as it was for the Health Commission. Even if the Police Commission had retained Row #56, the formula would not have added anything up, because the data had been entered two rows above the intended Row “b’s.”

The Police Commission wasn’t the only one. Another 11 of the 13 Commissions sampled also didn’t contain Row #54 or Row #56. Of the 13 Excel files obtained under a public records request, only the Health Commission’s Excel file contained both rows. When the Observer e-mailed BLA’s principal author, Fred Brousseau, seeking comments about why 12 of the Commission’s Excel files were missing rows #54 and #56, so far, we received no response.

Among just the 13 BLA Boards and Commissions BLA’s Excel files obtained, there were a total of 19 full-time “hard costs” positions listed, shown in the attached file, compared to a staggering 376 part-time “soft cost” employees returned from the same 13 Boards and Commissions. This suggests that some of these bodies may have padded their part-time employee responses to appear to have more Departmental staff contributing to their respective boards.

Why would anyone believe the Port Commission and the Recreation and Parks Commission each need 60 part-time staff to help their Commissions prepare for meetings? In comparison, the Public Utilities Commission needs 95 part-time staff to help prepare for SFPUC meetings.

As well, of the 13 Excel file provided by the BLA, another secondary analysis shows that of the 19 full-time “hard costs” staff, there were just 5 professional secretaries who earned far less than $200,000 in salaries and benefits each, 5 senior City Managers each of whom earned well over $200,000 in salaries and benefits, and two Police Sergeants earning nearly $300,000 among other job classification codes.

Nine of the 19 full-time staff were paid well over $200,000 each, and one earned $337,000 at the SFMTA, which is facing a massive budget shortfall.

These 13 Commission “hard costs” staff are just the tip of the iceberg, since Excel files for the other 15 Commissions with full-time staff listed in the BLA’s Appendix #4 weren’t requested, or analyzed. It’s not yet known how many of the other 15 Commissions may also have full-time staff paid up to $200,000 or more each, and may be using non-secretarial job classification codes.

If reducing the costs of boards and commissions is the real goal, could requiring that Boards and Commissions use professional secretaries achieve cost savings? It could also return two sworn Police officers to fighting crime in the City!

Streamlining Task Force Chair Ed Harrington spent 19 years of his City career as the City Controller, and four years as the SFPUC’s General Manager. So far, he hasn’t said a word about the cost analysis despite his extensive financial background.

Task Force Public Safety Nonsense September 3

The San Francisco Bar Association rightly testified to the Streamlining Task Force:

“Independent governance of commissions requires that its members [be] independent. The selection of Commissioners should rest with an informed and transparent nomination process. No single branch of government should name all Commissioners.”

The Task Force ignores that truly effective “Governance Bodies” must be independent and have split appointments.

For the Police Commission, Fire Commission, and other Governance Bodies, this Streamlining Task Force is recommending replacing the short-list of three candidates recommended for City department heads, with an undefined, “consultative responsibility only” role, absent guarantees a given Mayor will engage with any Commission in a consultative, or bicameral-like, manner between the legislative and executive branches, let alone consultatively with any specific Governance Commission to preserve checks-and-balances governance.

The staff’s 43-page “Public Safety Bodies Recommendations” memo stated in Item 4-B on page 37, that the Police Commission can not take on the work of other bodies in its policy area. Therefore, this Task Force should stop attempting to transfer the Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board to the DPA under the Police Commission.

This Streamlining Task Force is exceeding its mandate by wading into employee discipline. They created a red herring by claiming disciplinary actions must be uniformly “consistent” and standardized across all City Departments, despite Peace Officers’ unique roles and duties. The Task Force should preserve police officers’ right to a hearing on disciplinary matters before an Administrative Law Judge. Handing all disciplinary matters to the Chief of Police would create a situation in which the police are allowed to police themselves. Clearly, Police Commission members are not trained in human resources processes, or in laws regarding employee discipline and employee due-process rights.

Since 2010, San Francisco has settled at least five wrongful termination lawsuits filed by Police Department staff, at a cost of over $2 million. This does not include the time and expenses of City Attorney staff fighting the lawsuits. It’s not known what other costs were from claims filed by Police Department staff over other wrongful disciplinary actions.

The Commission Streamlining Task Force must abstain from City employee disciplinary processes. That’s not its mandate, and Task Force members are not personnel and human resources specialists.

On September 3, the Task Force delayed making a recommendation on whether the Police, Fire, and Juvenile Probation Commissions should remain authorized by the City Charter or be moved into the City’s Administrative Code. The delay in reaching a decision was principally because Task Force co-chair Jean Fraser wanted all three bodies taken out of the Charter.

Fraser is the current CEO of the Presidio Trust and a “San Francisco City Advisory Board Member” of the conservative SPUR organization. Task Force Chair Ed Harrington pointedly noted on September 3 that taking bodies out of the City Charter and moving them to the Administrative Code opens the door to governance bodies changing to merely an advisory body. Harrington stated that the only way to guarantee these three Commissions remain governance commissions is to keep them in the Charter.

Just before the September 3 meeting was about to end, Harrington made sure to resolve this spat. On three successive “motions” about each of the three Commissions, the Task Force voted 3-to-1 to keep them in the Charter, with Vice-Chair Fraser being the sole dissenting vote. The Task Force may have reached the decision to keep them in the Charter only because they involved public safety bodies.

Commissions that are not part of the Public Safety policy group may not be so lucky.

Finally, the Task Force voted on September 3 to recommend stripping the Police and Fire Commissions’ ability to create a short-short list of three nominees to become their next Department Head, handing the Mayor sole authority over who he chooses to run both departments. The Task Force insists that both Commissions be forced to “align” to the Task Force’s templates to “consultative responsibilities,” specifically regarding the appointment of a Department Head. This is one of the main reasons voters rejected “Prop. D” at the ballot box last November. “Prop. D” was designed to hand more power to a “strong mayor” form of government.

City Administrator staff supporting the Task Force had no idea what the “Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board” (SDOB) costs. Yet the Streamlining Task Force considers eliminating the SDOB, or combining it with the Department of Police Accountability under the Police Commission, based on “efficiency.”

The “Public Safety Recommendation” memo reported that the SDOB could not reasonably be combined with another body in the “Public Safety” policy area category, and that no other policy bodies cover a similar topic or policy area that the SDOB covers. Further, page 37 documented that the Police Commission can not take on the work of other bodies in the Public Safety policy category. That hasn’t stopped the Task Force from attempting to transfer the Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board to the DPA, under the Police Commission.

The BLA costs report claimed the SDOB costs just $1.3 million — a mere 4% of the total $33.9 million in costs for all 112 Boards and Commissions. More importantly, the SDOB cost of $1.3 million represents just eight-one-thousandths of one percent (0.008176%) of the City’s annual budget. Is oversight of the Sheriff’s jails and other oversight functions worth it?

Upcoming September 17 Task Force Bloodbath

On September 17, the Streamlining Task Force is scheduled to issue its initial recommendations on what to do with the 20 Boards and Commissions grouped into the “Infrastructure, Climate, and Mobility” category of public bodies. All 20 Boards are lumped into a single agenda item, perhaps to prevent having to take public testimony during multiple agenda items.

This category primarily includes oversight bodies focused on the SFMTA, Public Works, Public Utilities, and Recreation and Parks commissions, and the Port Commission.

The “Parks, Recreation and Open Spaces Committee” (PROSAC) is one of the bodies proposed for elimination that will be debated. The BLA report acknowledges PROSAC costs just $25,110 annually — all of which are “soft costs” of part-time Park Department staff who will still keep their jobs performing other duties, which won’t save the City anything. That’s 0.000157925% of the City Budget — a miserly one-and-a-half ten-thousandths of one percent.

The City Administrator’s justifications to the Task Force for eliminating or combining these five to six governance bodies are available here.

Because the Task Force only discussed 9 of the 10 Public Safety bodies during its September 3 meeting before running out of time, it’s highly unlikely the Task Force will get through discussing all 20 of the “infrastructure” bodies on September 17.

Eliminating Democratic Oversight Processes

Many San Franciscans who spoke during public comment on September 3 rightly testified that the changes the Streamlining Task Force is considering right now mirror precisely the rationales in the “Prop. D” ballot measure voters rejected last November and had not wanted when they passed “Prop. E” instead. Many commented that this task force is attempting to implement the “reforms” that voters overwhelmingly rejected at the ballot box.

One resident noted that streamlining of boards and commissions to find so-called “efficiencies” in City government does not mean simply eliminating democratic oversight, yet many of the recommendations the Streamlining Task Force appears intent on implementing do just that.

Doug Engmann — a former president of the Planning Commission — testified that every recommendation presented for altering the Police Commission is essentially what was in “Prop. D” rejected by voters. Engmann warned that if the Streamlining Task Force puts those changes in a future ballot measure to reform commissions, the ballot measure won’t pass.

The Streamlining Task Force is essentially on a penny-wise, pound-foolish fool’s errand, and acting without key questions having been answered yet about additional studies that haven’t been performed, as the BLA recommended.

Task Force members may not have read the responses in the 73 Boards and Commissions surveys returned from the separate questionnaires City Administrator staff sent seeking self-assessments. City Administrator staff are still debating whether they have the time and resources to post the returned 73 surveys online at the Streamlining Task Force’s website. Still, the Westside Observer has obtained a handful of the questionnaire responses under a public records request. If they are not posted online, will it signal they’re being kept secret, rather than posted to preserve the historical record?

The Streamlining Task Force’s recommendations should reach the Board of Supervisors in January.

In the absence of a real cost-benefit analysis or assessment of the value of Board and Commission functions, the Streamlining Task Force recommendations must distance themselves from any comparison to the Trump Administration’s “DOGE”-style slash-and-burn of citizen oversight. The Task Force’s decisions are not an accident. They’re the design!

Concerned citizens may still participate in the Task Force’s meetings and their deliberations.

Monette-Shaw is a columnist for San Francisco’s Westside Observer newspaper, and a member of the California First Amendment Coalition (FAC) and the ACLU. He operates stopLHHdownsize.com. Contact him at monette-shaw@westsideobserver.com.

September 2025