Cothran

Willie Brown was already well-acquainted with Besser and the Christensen, White firm. Brown served the firm in an "of counsel" capacity -- that is, as an adviser to the firm, rather than a partner in it -- from July 1994 until he took office in January 1996 as the mayor of San Francisco. Soon after taking office, he entered into a strange arrangement whereby he "sold" Christensen, White the law offices of Willie L. Brown Jr. on an installment plan that has paid the mayor more than $10,000 a year for each of the last three years. As Besser was lobbying the Parking Authority on behalf of Parking Concepts Inc., his law firm was paying the mayor handsome sums of money for "buying" Brown's law firm.

In early 1997, the Department of Parking and Traffic narrowed the field of candidates for the management of the two garages in question. Parking Concepts Inc. and three San Francisco firms remained in the running. Being the only out-of-town firm vying against three local firms could have been a problem for Parking Concepts Inc. But PCI wound up with an advantage the other firms apparently couldn't match. A race and gender advantage.

Parking Concepts Inc., employs many minorities, but its management and ownership is, in San Francisco terms, problematically Caucasian. Only one management official, the head of security, is an ethnic minority.

In the competition for San Francisco city contracts, having minority- or women-owned subcontractors or co-owners can be the difference between winning and losing. And as we will see, Parking Concepts got the difference working in its direction.

PCI struck a joint venture agreement in February 1997 with Jacqueline Besser, an African-American woman, and her newly formed firm, Daja Inc. Though her company had been in existence a mere seven months, Jackie Besser became a 42.5 percent stakeholder in the joint venture. According to Human Rights Commission documents obtained by SF Weekly, her firm was to be in charge of business management and security matters for the two garages.

In the eight months between June 19, 1996, when Parking Concepts Inc. hired Stephen Besser as its lobbyist, and Feb. 6, 1997, when it struck its joint venture agreement with Daja Inc., the garage management company from Irvine, Calif., underwent quite a transformation. It went from being an all-white, out-of-town firm with essentially no political juice to a joint venture that included a local minority- and woman-owned firm, and that was represented by a lobbyist who was a close friend of the mayor.

The change seems to have suited the new joint venture, Parking Concepts/Daja Inc., well. The city's Human Rights Commission, which oversees the participation of minority- and women-owned businesses in city contracts, awarded Parking Concepts/Daja a 7.5 percent bidding advantage over its competitors. Such an advantage is meant to increase the ability of minority- and women-owned businesses to compete against larger and more established firms for city business.

Commission documents suggest that, before they gave the venture a significant advantage over other bidders, city staffers might have had reason to ask some pointed questions about Jackie Besser's role in the running of the garages.

First of all, Parking Concepts/Daja filed documents with the commission saying that Jackie Besser would be head of security for the two garages. But commission documents show that a major security firm, King Security Services Inc., would be receiving $176,000 a year to provide security services at the two garages. King Security Services is a $5.2 million-a-year company with several city contracts, including the job of providing security for the Municipal Railway. King Security Services Inc. is a 100 percent minority-owned firm.

Does this sound like a company in need of supervision from a woman who did not list security experience as one of her qualifications for receiving a city contract?

Madame Besser's other declared role in the joint venture -- that of business manager -- could also have raised eyebrows among commission staff.

According to a joint venture agreement signed by Besser on Feb. 6, 1997, the job of overseeing attendants and managing garage operations would be handled by Parking Concepts Inc. Jackie would merely be a business manager, whatever that means. Her role isn't more precisely defined in Human Rights Commission documents and the joint venture agreement related to these garage contracts. Moreover, the joint venture agreement says, business management affairs would also be handled in part by Parking Concepts Inc.

And when the HRC asked Jackie Besser to "describe the management of the joint venture," she and Parking Concepts Inc. identified the same person as the venture's business manager -- Jon Mark Morgan, a Parking Concepts Inc. employee.

Now, it would seem perfectly natural for Parking Concepts Inc. to offer its own employee as the person who will provide PCI's portion of the business management required by the parking garage venture. But why and how can Daja Inc. use an employee of another firm to fulfill its promised duties under the contract? Why not one of its own employees? Why not Besser?