by Susan Dyer Reynolds : marinatimes – excerpt

Attempts to end City Hall corruption are crumbling faster than San Francisco’s seawall

This is the introduction to an investigative report that will be sent to newsletter subscribers. To be the first to receive it, sign up for free here: https://susanreynolds.substack.com/

“It is clear from the context that the primary purpose of such a behested payment would have been to secure a commissioner’s support for a valuable City contract that should have been awarded through established, merit-based contracting procedures. This incident is a stark example of how behested payments can be used in a pay-to-play scheme if basic ethics rules are not in place.”

— San Francisco Ethics Commission, in its recommendation for the prohibition of behested payments, Dec. 9, 2020

The phrase “tone at the top” was first popularized in the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which highlighted poor leadership as the primary cause of the biggest corporate failures, including Enron and WorldCom. “Painfully, these scandals exposed widespread arrogance, fraud, conflicts-of-interest, preferential treatment, and a collective failure among the gatekeepers charged with oversight and maintaining the public trust,” said management consultant Deloitte in its report, Tone at the Top: The First Ingredient in a World-Class Ethics and Compliance Program…(more)