Hall Approved Despite Ethics Violations

Randy Shaw 05.AUG.04
After promising to “clean up” city government, Mayor Newsom has effectively gutted local ethics laws by ramming Tony Hall’s appointment through two mayor-controlled bodies. While the Chronicle pilloried Willie Brown for ethical lapses, it let its fair-haired boy Gavin off with a mere slap on the wrist.

The Hall appointment broke two provisions of city law: the prohibition against elected officials taking employment within a year of service and the bar against his voting on the Treasure Island budget after he was in discussions with Mayor Newsom about his potential appointment to head the Island agency.

But the Ethics Commission, which serves at Newsom’s pleasure, waved the first violation and ignored the second.

Thank goodness Mayor Newsom has ended “business as usual” in San Francisco.

The San Francisco Chronicle criticized Newsom for the Hall appointment in a small editorial at the bottom of its August 4 editorial page. The paper’s front-page “expose” that day focused all the blame on Tony Hall, and largely ignored Newsom’s role in setting in motion the ethical violations surrounding the appointment.

The Chronicle was going to run an open forum that criticized Newsom and Hall over the illegal appointment process. But the paper backed off saying that it did not want to “pile on” the Mayor.

A few weeks ago, the Chronicle ran a lengthy editorial titled “Willie, Inc,” that accused Brown of a career of ethical violations and of using campaign donations for personal use.

The latter charge was false, and was subsequently retracted by the paper’s news division.

But the Chronicle remains far more interested in highlighting Brown’s abuses than in focusing on those committed by the current mayor in his appointment of Hall.