The sleaze continues

IN JANUARY ALONE , three senior city employees with ties to former mayor Willie Brown have been charged with what in most cities would be called political corruption. A city attorney's report claims that a former secretary to Brown's deputy chief of staff, Steve Kawa, fixed parking tickets for herself and friends. A senior cop admitted that he voted in San Francisco although he didn't live in town. And a Department of Public Works official with close ties to Brown allegedly pressured members of a city street-cleaning crew to vote for Mayor Gavin Newsom and campaign for him on city time.

Together the allegations present a picture of rampant corruption at city hall and suggest that the Brown administration allowed, or perhaps encouraged, all sorts of illegal activity to take place. The three cases present the first major challenge to Mayor Newsom and the new district attorney, Kamala Harris: if they don't move quickly and firmly to investigate and resolve the charges, they'll be sending a clear signal that the ocean of sleaze that flowed through Brown's city hall is still at high tide.

And so far, the signs aren't too good.

Newsom's public comments on the case of Mohammed Nuru, the deputy director of public works who allegedly told the street cleaners they would lose their jobs if they didn't vote for Newsom, have been limited and cautious. He told the San Francisco Chronicle the case should be fully investigated – but he never expressed any outrage or concern that this might be more than an isolated incident.

And Newsom has said nothing of any substance about the cases of Mary Ellen O'Brien, who allegedly dismissed parking tickets for herself and friends, or Rick Bruce, the deputy police chief who apparently registered and voted in San Francisco while living in San Bruno.

Equally alarming, there has been no word whatsoever from the San Francisco District Attorney's Office on any of the cases, all of which involve potential crimes. Harris told the Bay Guardian during the campaign that she would aggressively pursue political corruption cases and that her close connections to Brown wouldn't hamper her ability to prosecute public officials who abused the public trust. But so far, the only local official who has opened investigations of O'Brien and Nuru is City Attorney Dennis Herrera, whose oversight is limited to civil and disciplinary matters. There's no evidence that anyone outside the San Francisco Police Department is investigating Bruce.

That doesn't give us much confidence in Harris's credibility. She needs to immediately and publicly open investigations into these three cases, and if there's any indication of criminal activity, she should bring charges.

Newsom should use these cases to announce that there will be zero tolerance for corruption in his administration – and begin by putting all three officials on administrative leave until the charges are resolved.

P.S. Newsom has been pushing for better oversight at the Department of Building Inspection, targeting the likes of Residential Builders Association head Joe O'Donoghue and permit expediter Walter Wong, both of whom happened to support Matt Gonzalez for mayor. We've been highly critical of DBI, and of Wong and O'Donoghue, for many years, and we're happy to see building-inspection and permit reforms. But that can't be the beginning and the end of Newsom's reform initiatives: with festering scandals at the San Francisco International Airport (the Kevin Williams firing, the Tutor-Saliba contracts, and more), at the Redevelopment Agency (with Lennar Corp.), at the Human Rights Commission (a long list), at Pacific Gas and Electric Co., and so many other city agencies and contractors, Newsom can't get away with claiming a reform agenda on the basis of cleaning up DBI.