SF MAYOR: Mark Farrell Faces Questions After Companies With Business Before City Gave $1.2 Million to Wife's Nonprofit
It’s beginning to look a lot like Nuru with a pattern uncovered during mayoral candidate Mark Farrell’s time on the Board of Supervisors, as a report details how he got $1.2 million in donations directed to a nonprofit where his wife serves on the board.
There’s an interesting contrast in some local media coverage of mayoral candidate Mark Farrell over the last two days. The SF Standard ran a Thursday piece on Farrell’s proposal to put the SF Public Utilities Commission in charge of the city’s arrangements with Recology, partially in light of disgraced former DPW head Mohammed Nuru soliciting “behested payments” for his favorite nonprofits in exchange for the rate hikes Recology was seeking.
Yet today in the Chronicle, there’s an exhaustive analysis of the $1.2 million Farrell raised in behested payments during his tenure on the SF Board of Supervisors, much of it from private companies and entities who had business deals proposed before the city. The Chronicle notes these companies included “tech goliaths, a fitness club and Recology.”
These so-called behested payments are donations elected officials request that private companies make to a nonprofit or cause of their liking. They are technically legal (to a degree), but to a normal person, this sure smells like a quid pro quo or a backroom deal, particularly if the donor has some business before City Hall.
https://sfist.com/2024/09/13/mark-farrell-faces-questions-after-companies-with-business-before-city-gave-1-2-million-to-nonprofit-where-his-wife-is-on-the-board/