Among large commissions frequently stocked by the usual gang of apparatchiks, dysfunctional bodies that exist solely as window dressing, and a galaxy of oft-ornamental citizens' committees, whether we're reaping the real benefits of public input is arguable.
We're certainly stuck with the detriments.
Fred Noland
Fred Noland
Pandering to off-leash dog activists? There’s a committee
for that.
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If God's task force were to decree that San Francisco build an ark, the city would have this much going for it: We've already got two of everything. In a city that doesn't know how many commissions it has, it's to be expected that duplicate boards, plans, and studies will overlap. More troublesome, however, are major commissions and even departments treading the same ground.
Take the city's programs regarding early childhood education. This area is overseen by not one but three separate entities: The Department of Children, Youth, and their Families (DCYF); the Human Services Agency (HSA); and the Children and Families First Commission (CFC).
A 2010 audit noted that there is no central, accountable policymaking body for early childhood education. As a result, it's not uncommon for care providers to be awarded contracts by all three agencies to undertake essentially the same services. In doing so, providers are given three different answers to the same question; are gauged by three performance evaluations (sometimes with varying results); and must enter data into three separate systems. Making matters more complicated, the city also has a Childcare Planning and Advisory Council and Childrens' Fund Citizens' Advisory Committee.
The funding structure for the three major agencies has become such a Gordian knot that they each administer programs that are largely financed by the other two. This is how early childhood education must have been handled back in Byzantium. Not surprisingly, the audit found "better program coordination" would have kept the agencies from underspending their mandates by at least $1 million — at a time when demand for early childhood education far outstrips the city's supply.
It warrants mentioning that other counties avoid this problem largely because they put less money into early childhood education. In addition to state and federal dollars, San Francisco has a Children's Fund and Proposition H set-asides. But while this city and its voters were generous enough to establish local funding, creating a streamlined system to effectively serve the children isn't happening. While the agencies couldn't argue with the audit's findings, they bristled at the notion of consolidation. To date, the audit has never received a public hearing.
Consolidating San Francisco's redundant jobs, committees, or even departments is a tough sell. Redundancies provide city politicians with patronage opportunities and union workers with jobs. A 2009 working group headed by then-City Administrator Ed Lee found numerous areas of overlap within city government. Among its myriad suggestions were combining the efforts of the Department on the Status of Women, the Immigrant Rights Commission, and the Human Rights Commission. Also, fold together the Arts Commission and Grants for the Arts. Neither of these proposals was touched. Erstwhile Mayor Newsom was running for statewide office — and eliminating redundant positions doesn't endear Big Labor. Queries of Mayor Lee's office regarding whether he'll follow his own advice have not been answered.
(Yes, you read that right: The city formed a committee to declare that San Francisco has too many committees.)
The call to merge the Arts Commission and Grants for the Arts was a familiar one for Newsom. His longtime former adviser, Eric Jaye, notes that Newsom "promised to make one of his campaign pledges to merge these two." Jaye grins. "That did not happen!"
You're not going to believe this, but wealthy, influential patrons of the arts know people to call when their favored bureaucracies' status quo is threatened. Those bureaucracies "have their own nonprofits they fund and, of course, these nonprofits dabble in politics," Jaye continues. "They have political networks they activate, they have people that show up to testify to protect themselves. That political activity protects their turf, even if the turf isn't particularly efficient."
The utter impossibility of joining even the Arts Commission and Grants for the Arts sends a clear message. It underscores the political suicide of asking whether we really need a Commission for the Status of Women when we already have a Human Rights Commission and Immigrant Rights Commission. It evaporates any possibility of pondering why we're the only California county to have both an adult and juvenile probation department. Is there no way to reduce overlap between the County Transportation Authority and Municipal Transportation Authority? Why do we have a police department and sheriff's department?
"Because the constituency for the status quo is always so much more powerful than the constituency for change," Jaye says. "San Francisco is a giant bureaucracy that almost constitutionally rejects innovation. For all its progressive rhetoric, we're one of the most conservative governments in terms of attitude."
Famed baseball pitcher Satchel Paige once quipped, "Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you." San Francisco has evinced the same attitude regarding its uncountable commissions. When you don't know how many you have, you don't know how much they cost. Until now. A recent Budget and Legislative Analyst report commissioned by Supervisor Jane Kim pegged the yearly price tag of the city's "boards, commissions, committees, task forces, authorities, and councils." Depending upon your point of view, the multimillion-dollar outlay could be expensive or cheap.
