A Scandal in San Francisco

San Francisco has a lot of problems to deal with already, a broke public transportation system, a broke school system, corruption, a failing downtown, criminal justice problems, homelessness, etc. What the city didn't need on top of all of that was a very public scandal involving a high-profile progressive in city government. But that's what SF got in the form of KImberly Ellis, director of the San Francisco Department on the Status of Women. Ellis, who bills herself as the “most powerful unelected person in California Democratic politics,” has routinely mixed her political interests with her role as a city official, records show, raising questions about her distribution of city funding...
Ellis failed to disclose until last December that she earned at least $10,000 consulting in 2023 for PowerPAC, a political group that sponsors progressive candidates of color. City officials say they have no record of her asking for permission to work a second job, which is required by city rules...
The Chronicle also found that Ellis awarded nearly $1 million in city contracts to two political groups with which she is closely connected. One of those contracts paid for a friend of Ellis to produce a series of glossy video profiles of four local female politicians, including Breed. The other two contracts went to a women’s political group that previously employed Ellis as a consultant.
Rather than allow other companies to compete for the funding as is the usual process for awarding a city grant, Ellis did not put any of those contracts out to bid. Instead, she obtained special exceptions from her oversight board, the commission on the status of women, to grant the funding directly, arguing that the chosen organizations were the only ones qualified to do the jobs.