By Cassi Feldman

OVER THE PAST two years the San Francisco Purchasing Department spent $26,667 on work clothing and rain gear from Butler's Uniforms. The Department of Parking and Traffic paid the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition $73,000 to run a hotline. The Recreation and Park Department hired the Golden Gate Park Band to perform on summer Sundays to the tune of $160,000.

Those may be reasonable contracts with legitimate outfits. But they're also "sole-source" contracts, meaning they never went out to bid – and until now, the departments have been keeping them secret.

The San Francisco Sunshine Initiative, passed by voters in 1999, requires that every city department submit a list of its sole-source contracts to the Board of Supervisors at the end of each fiscal year.

But most departments have ignored the law.

A Bay Guardian review found lists revealing more than 100 such contracts, including the ones above, worth millions of dollars. Many more are still hidden from public view – 35 departments, including the Planning Department and the Department of Elections, have never filed their lists.

With a projected city budget deficit of $100 million for 2002-03, every dollar counts. And given the city's dubious history of awarding juicy no-bid contracts to firms with more political connections than qualifications, this lack of compliance is disturbing. Not only does it prevent the public from keeping tabs on government spending, but it also knocks would-be competitors out of the game.

As of February, only 23 departments had provided sole-source lists for 2000-01. We chose 10 that didn't file but seemed likely to have these contracts, and we asked them to provide the data to us under the Sunshine Ordinance. Since they were "immediate disclosure" requests, city agencies had 48 hours to respond.

Four of the departments – the Police Department, the Department of Human Services, Muni, and the Fire Department – couldn't supply those lists by press time, two weeks after our requests were submitted.

Of those that responded, we found sole-source contracts totaling nearly $10 million – and remember, that's just for six departments: the Fine Arts Museums, the Department of Building Inspections, DPT, the Purchasing Department, Rec and Park, and the Port of San Francisco.

Heart and sole

By law, contracts should be put out to bid unless one particular consultant or company has a product or service no one else can provide. The Fine Arts Museums, for example, hired Butterfield and Butterfield to auction off surplus art. "There are no other auction houses in San Francisco that have both the facilities and expertise of Butterfield's," department spokesperson Carolyn Macmillan said.

But it's hard to say that about the Johns/Rife Group, which was paid $89,955 to coordinate the port office's move from the Ferry Building to Pier 1. Although Renee Dunn, spokesperson for the port, told us that Johns/Rife had "unique skills," as of press time she wasn't sure exactly what they were.

Asking around, we found two other S.F.-based companies with similar expertise. Norm Torello, director of PMLA, which specializes in commercial relocation management, said his company has done bigger moves than that in the past and worked for major cities including Los Angeles. "We would have bid had we been given the opportunity," he said.

Christopher Owen, director of corporate accounts for Trammell Crow Co.'s Bay Area branch, told us his firm hasn't worked for the city yet but would certainly consider it. "We'd love to work for the public sector," he said. "It's well within the scope of our capability."

The port isn't the only department with a sole-source skeleton in its closet. In 1998, for example, the San Francisco Housing Authority paid a consultant named Zirl Smith $400,000 for what amounted to very little work (see "Living High off Public Housing," 9/15/99). The following year the city's Public Transportation Commission awarded NextBus Information Systems a $900,000 sole-source contract to equip Muni buses with tracking technology. Unfortunately, the commission never bothered to research other companies providing the same product and may have overlooked a much cheaper competitor (see "Corporate Welfare Feeds at Sole-Source Trough," 10/6/99).

To bid or not to bid

That is exactly the reason why the Sunshine Initiative called for sole-source lists. In June, as the fiscal year drew to a close, Donna Hall, administrator for the Sunshine Task Force, sent e-mails and memos to 75 individuals representing departments, board, and commissions, reminding them to turn in their sole-source lists to the board.

As of February, only eight departments had filed for both years.

Others have made it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find out whether they have sole-source contracts. The SFPD, for example, faxed us a list of 22 contracts worth more than $5 million. When we called for more information, however, they turned out to be "personal service" contracts, which may or may not have been bid. The SFPD's fiscal division had no record of which were sole-source and were not sure who would know. Captain John Goldberg directed us to the Human Rights Commission, which did not return calls by press time.

It's hard to know whether this indicates intentional secrecy, a lack of interest in public disclosure, or a lapse in training.

Last year we did a similar research project and found several gaps in compliance despite hours of sunshine training former city attorney Louise Renne's office claimed to have provided (see "Partly Cloudy," 3/21/01). Not much has changed. The City Attorney's Office hasn't even filed its own sole-source lists.

Business as usual

Like all open-records laws, the Sunshine Ordinance is only as strong as its enforcement. "As of now, there is no enforcement procedure in place," Hall said, though she plans to send out another reminder notice in June.

Some say that's not likely to make a difference. "The degree to which they're ignoring [the law] shows the degree to which it is business as usual," said Thomas Burke, who helped draft the initiative and is the Bay Guardian's attorney. "These departments don't have to listen to the city attorney. Absent an order from the Superior Court, they will not come into compliance."