With the eyes of every reporter and politico on today's budget-cutting Board of Supervisors meeting, the city's Ethics Commission will open discussion this afternoon on myriad changes to the city's lobbyist ordinance, including whether to do away with rules preventing consultants from accepting pay from a third party to lobby the city officials who employ them. In a nutshell, the city's rules currently state that consultants hired by city officials are not allowed to accept pay from some other p
Like a bloody steak, the Ethics Commission earlier this week sent back a bevy of proposed rule changes for more cooking and seasoning. Along with good government types, even some members of the commission were flummoxed by the staff-generated proposed changes to the Campaign Finance Reform Ordinance -- all of which would have loosened the scrutiny applied to large contributions to politicians and allowed many more entities contracting with the city government to donate money to the elected offic
'It's good to be the king' -- and it's always good to have powerful folks in your corner pulling some stringsSan Francisco's campaign finance rules are so beastly complex that professional treasurers with decades of experience have been known to drive sharpened pencils through their palms in fits of desperation. Yet eluding these Byzantine laws need not require the greatest level of legal or administrative sophistication. In fact, you can employ the same strategy the rich kid in your high school
​Some of you may remember a June 29 article we ran here about how the city's Ethics Commission sure seemed to be going out of its way to not cite and fine Supervisor Carmen Chu -- a moderate represented by lawyer and mayoral svengali Jim Sutton. Meanwhile, progressive Supes Gerardo Sandoval and Chris Daly had been cited and fined for virtually identical campaign finance transgressions. When Ethics Commission staffer Oliver Luby sent his bosses a note noting the Sandoval and Daly precedents he
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