Tammy's next move
Could a hacktastic city job be in store for ousted elections chief Haygood?

By Savannah Blackwell

The lawsuit by former Department of Elections director Tammy Haygood against San Francisco is becoming a real pain for a growing list of city officials. First, Haygood's supporters (including Mayor Willie Brown) are using her dismissal as a way to attack the reform-minded members of the Board of Supervisors. And second, the battle is creating a headache for City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who has to deal with two city agencies fighting each other in court (the Civil Service Commission, which ordered Haygood back to work, and the Elections Commission, which fired her, both have outside lawyers). Then there's the mounting cost: legal work is likely to run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

We've suggested that maybe the city could simply offer Haygood a nice settlement – pay her off and send her packing. But that's not the way things are done in San Francisco these days. Instead, some insiders say, what Haygood really wants is another city job – and like a long list of Brown cronies, she may well wind up somewhere else on the public payroll. After all, Brown has never let a lack of qualifications stop him from placing people in cushy public sinecures.

Let's hazard a guess on where Haygood might land on the city's payroll with a well-paying but pointless job. From what we hear buzzing around, she may be headed for one of the mayor's past favorite hackdoms:

1. The airport (along with former supervisor Bill Maher, former mayoral aides Stuart Sunshine and Kandace Bender, and a host of others who aren't exactly experts in aviation).

2. The port (after all, she did yeoman's work counting ballots out at Pier 29).

3. The city's garbage detail, now under the Department of the Environment (where she could join Paul Horcher, a former Republican member of the state assembly who had no experience in waste management at all – but did once save Brown's political ass by crossing party lines to vote him back in as speaker). You know, Haygood did work in diapers prior to coming to San Francisco.

So: What's next for Tammy? Airplanes, boats, or garbage trucks? Who's taking bets?

Haygood's attorney, Vernon Grigg, did not return calls seeking comment.

E-mail Savannah Blackwell at savannah@sfbg.com.