Fire Chief & Wiener Got How Many $600 Comp Tix?

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San Francisco Fire Department Chief Joanne Hayes-White is the City's second highest paid public employee according to public records, taking home a robust pay and benefits package totaling $422,353 last year for her services and expertise. She's not hurting for money with that kind of compensation.

District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener, like all members of the Board of Supervisors, received a compensation package of $154,719 in 2013. He's hardly scrapping by to pay the rent, as far as I know.

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Why are these public officials receiving free tickets to the three-days of Outside Lands concerts through Recreation and Parks Department, when they clearly can afford to purchase them with their own funds?

Wiener received three $595 tickets totaling $1,785 and Hayes-White two tickets costing $1,190. The concerts were held in Golden Gate Park from August 8 through August 10.

For Wiener, who holds sway over the Recreation and Parks Department's annual budget, I believe it's not ethical to accept any freebies from the department.

In Hayes-White's case, she has no power over the department with a yearly paycheck well over $400,000, she should buy her own tickets.

The alleged public purpose of the comps is explained as "increasing public exposure to, and awareness of. the recreation, cultural and educational facilities available to the public in the City" and "gathering public input on City facilities and spaces".

Translation? Our public leaders like to enjoy their entitlement and privilege on the taxpayer's dime and both Hayes-White and Wiener took advantage of the perks available to them, feeding themselves at the trough.



Last night, Thursday, November 13, I attended the San Francisco fire commission's meeting to again demand the $86 million fire department immediately begin meeting at City Hall and airing their meetings on SF GovTV.

The July 10 commission minutes reveal lame excuses from Hayes-White about the expense of installing television equipment in the auditorium at the department's headquarters on Second Street and that's it's easier for her commanders to meet there instead of City Hall, taxpayers be damned. I used the minutes to argue for respecting taxpayers and putting the meeting on City media platforms.

The fire chief and her department needs lot more watchdogging and it may take action from the Board of Supervisors to bring this commission into the modern tech age and taking full advantage of TV and web streaming and video-on-demand, to better serve the general public.

$86M Fire Dept to Soon Air Meetings on SFGovTV?
By Todd Swindell and Michael Petrelis

The fire department eats up a robust portion of the city's budget pie, yet its commission doesn't broadcast their meetings on SFGovTV, but that may be changing in the very near future.

At the October 23rd fire commission meeting during one of our times at the mic for public comment, we pushed for immediately moving these meetings to a camera-equipped room at City Hall, which is also much more accessible via public transit for taxpayers than schlepping down to SF Fire Department headquarters at 2nd and Townsend Streets.

If the commission chose not to take advantage of City Hall for better engagement with taxpayers, we suggested the department install cameras in the auditorium at headquarters and to begin at least live streaming the meetings. In short, we are buying any excuses for the abysmal lack of transparency.

According to the Fiscal Year 2014 budget (http://preview.tinyurl.com/SFFD-2014-budget), the department's total allocation was $86.5 million and the line item allocation for communications was $2.3 million. Them's a lotta bucks!

To our delight, and surprise, one of the commissioners, openly gay Ken Cleaveland, said he had not arranged in advance for Petrelis to show up at the meeting and advocate for his pet issue of putting the meetings on SFGovTV. We cheered him on.

The July 10th minutes (http://tinyurl.com/SFFD-mins-SFGovTv), reveal extremely lame and unacceptable excuses from the Chief about why the public is being kept in the dark:

"Commissioner Cleaveland asked why the Commission meetings aren’t televised. Chief Hayes-White stated that there were a couple of reasons. One, there is an expense to it as well as logistics. It was determined that it was more practical to have the Command Staff at Head Quarters as opposed to City Hall where SFGOV TV is set up. [...]

"Commissioner Cleaveland expressed his desire to have HQ assessed for whether or not it can be linked to the city’s feed for public access and mentioned that the recent Grand Jury Report on Commissions addressed the terms of access to the public and getting the information out. [...]

"President Nakajo informed Commissioner Cleaveland that his point was well taken and that we’re all supportive of public access of information and he added that’s what our minutes are for and it being published on the website so the public can review those."

With an $86.5 million dollar allocation of our taxes, the Chief citing expense is bogus as is putting her staff's needs of above full transparency to taxpayers. Command staff can drive their taxpayer-funded vehicles the short distance to City Hall. Reading minutes is not meeting the gamut of ways the public needs to keep tabs on the fire department. Between the Chief and the commission president, we see a department's leadership ignoring providing appropriate government sunshine to the public by 2014 standards.

By the way, in August 2012 we asked then-commissioner London Breed, now a member of the Board of Supervisors, to push for moving commission meetings to City Hall and broadcasting them (http://tinyurl.com/Petrelis-Breed-SFFD-GovTV). Breed wrote:

"I am supportive of exploring the option to move fire commission meetings to City Hall and placing them on public access television."

While she didn't lift a finger two years ago, she's been leading a pitchfork brigade against the Chief and hasn't brought up the subject of getting the fire department to become fully transparent. We ask her to look into this issue again.

Finally, we must point out that back in March we persuaded Department of Public Health director Barbara Garcia to finally begin airing health commission meetings on SFGovTV and we offered her profuse public praise (http://tinyurl.com/Petrelis-DPH-SFGovTV).

If you agree that it's a good development for taxpayers to have health commission meetings on SFGovTV and that we need the same from the fire commission, and think our advocacy on these important government transparency matters is of benefit to the public good, and you're pissed off that the fire department is dragging its heels, then #VotePetrelis!

 Two members of the ambulance force were at the commission hearing. Written minutes alone do not give the public a full picture of the diversity of who works for the SFFD or shows up at meetings.

 One of the commanders parked his vehicle where it blocked a fire hydrant.

Ken Cleaveland listening to the Chief's report.

Closed-Door Job Evaluation of SF Fire Chief Protested
By Michael Petrelis

The San Francisco Fire Commission met yesterday afternoon for a regularly scheduled meeting and I was there for a few reasons, starting with verbally protesting how Chief Joanne Hayes-White's performance would be discussed out of public view.

As you may know, she's been under withering criticism from Supervisor London Breed, a former member of the fire commission, members of the firefighters union and its bosses, and ambulance workers and their parent companies over issues such as long response time for EMT vehicles.

However, Mayor Ed Lee has stood by Hayes-White and has given no indication that he's unsatisfied with her leadership and several women in leadership positions at City Hall have come to her defense.

During public comment about Hayes-White's report to the commission, I protested the closed-door evaluation that would happen at the end of the meeting and stated it was a huge disservice to the taxpayers, the general public and the safety of citizens to conduct the evaluation out of public view.

I mentioned that she's faced a pitchfork brigade and a trial by fire, no pun intended, in the media, and that I wanted facts unfiltered about her leadership protecting the public from fires and solving the ambulance response time crisis.

Even though the job evaluation would be behind closed-doors, I still requested a summary be issued to the public about what transpired in the session. I also distributed my #VotePetrelis campaign cards to folks.

How the heck are we taxpayers supposed to fairly judge Hayes-White's performance if we don't have access to the information and details presented to and debated by the fire commission? Yes, I understand privacy protections for public employees, but when that employee is responsible for a vast portion of public safety a way must be found to provide some degree of transparency to the public.

The fire commission owes everyone additional data about the job performance and evaluation of the chief.

Chief Hayes-White giving her report.

 Two ambulance workers. Minutes do not reflect the diversity of attendees at commission meetings.

Yours truly at the podium before the meeting began.