San Francisco Blog

Joe Eskenazi

Will Supervisor John Avalos still be smiling after the Ethics Commission finishes investigating the complaint he made aginst the mayor?

​By now, political junkies are well-informed about the gathering storm regarding Mayor Gavin Newsom's office leaking a confidential city attorney's memo to the Chronicle. Whether you buy into Newsom's rationale -- which echoes King Louis XIV's pronouncement of l'etat, c'est moi -- or give any credence to the possibility the mayor broke the law is one thing.

It's another thing to wonder if, in filing a complaint against Newsom with the Ethics Commission, Supervisor John Avalos is asking the commission to undertake something its critics say it has always been loath to do: Seriously investigate potential wrongdoing by the mayor, the man who pulls Ethics' purse strings.

Unlike the setup in other cities, it's the mayor who decides how much to give -- or take from -- the Ethics Commission in San Francisco. The Board of Supervisors can opt to augment the yearly Ethics allocation via add-backs, but, for the most part, the mayor is the sun and the moon when it comes to deciding Ethics' budget. If that sounds problematic to you -- and advantageous to the mayor -- then you are not alone.

The city's Civil Grand Jury noted the problem back in 2005 (along with the complaint that Ethics was chronically underfunded, which also benefits the city's elected officials). But a 2005 ballot proposition that would have greatly reduced the mayor's role in setting Ethics' budget -- and enhanced the supes' power -- lost handily with only 41 percent of the vote. Newsom, not surprisingly, was against it. In 2001, when he was a supervisor, he supported a similar measure.

In this economic climate, it's no challenge to argue against mandatory allocations and set-asides for government bodies. But, consider the alternative: In Ethics' situation, the commission is dependent upon the politicians it investigates for its financial well-being.

"We are stuck with a system where the Ethics Commission depends directly upon the mayor for its budget or on the board for an add-back," noted former Ethics staffer and commissioner Joe Lynn, now one of the commission's most persistent critics. "If you look at the history of the Ethics Commission with respect to the mayor's office and budget there is nothing to indicate Ethics has any spine to stand up to pushback from the mayor."

We're betting Ethics' executive director John St. Croix feels differently, but he didn't return our messages.

Of course, Avalos' request for an investigation of the mayor wasn't made to just the Ethics Commission. It warrants mentioning that the supervisor also got the jilted city attorney into the mix.

"I have some concerns about [Ethics'] track record," admitted Avalos. "I know with the city attorney working with Ethics, there's some quality assurance there."

Yet Avalos stopped short of saying he felt a need to get the city attorney involved in this matter because of Ethics' history of laxness in investigating the mayor. 

"In this case, that wasn't a consideration," he insisted. He says he simply wanted to get the city attorney involved in investigating the leaking of the memo it generated.

Well ... okay then.

Interestingly, Avalos said Ethics Commission Executive Director John St. Croix told him that the commission and city attorney's office haven't yet figured out who will lead this investigation

So it remains to be seen who will look into whether the mayor overstepped his bounds -- and how hard they'll look.