Not quite a year ago, Mayor Daniel Lurie hired Jessica MacLeod to a newly created position, chief of strategy and performance. With much pomp, Lurie said in his official announcement (opens in new tab) that MacLeod would “lead a citywide effort to set clear goals, track clear progress, and deliver results San Franciscans can see and feel.”
In the ensuing 12 months, little was heard from or about MacLeod — until she stepped down Sept. 2. And even then, the mayor’s office said goodbye quietly, by planting a story about her departure in the San Francisco Chronicle, which duly published an article (opens in new tab) around 6 p.m. on the Friday before Labor Day weekend, when the citizenry’s thoughts had mostly turned to cookouts and walks on the beach. The Chron, with all the critical rigor of Soviet-era Pravda, quoted amply from MacLeod’s word-salad of a resignation letter as well as canned statements from Lurie and a single department head.
There’s a heap of irony here. MacLeod’s role was to make good on one of the mayor’s chief campaign promises: to hold San Francisco’s government accountable. You’d think that when the administration’s chief transparency officer flames out, the transparent thing would be to give an account of what actually happened.
But that’s not how Team Lurie rolls. When it comes to carrying out his agenda, our chipper and ubiquitous mayor has his own definition of forthrightness. If he has good news to share, he shouts it to the algorithmic masses. If the news is not so flattering, he seeks to bury it. The dismissal of a high-profile appointee who exited less than a year after her hiring is only one example.
Consider what happened recently when Supervisor Jackie Fielder invited Ned Segal, the policy chief responsible for the city’s problematic OpenGov permitting software project, to appear before a Sept. 2 Board of Supervisors committee hearing about renewing OpenGov’s contract. He snubbed her by declining to appear.
Then there was the list of questions Supervisor Bilal Mahmood sent to several department heads and the mayor’s office about the July 4 Waymo fiasco. The mayor’s office failed to respond.
When Lurie last week reached a shockingly early conclusion to contract negotiations with much of the unionized workforce, he shared next to no detail about how the deal would affect the city’s alarmingly strained budget.
And of course, there is The Standard’s recent discovery that Lurie and his deputies pick and choose when to turn over records or communications, as they are required by law to do. The headline says it all: “New evidence suggests Lurie’s office is concealing or destroying public records.”
If only all that missing information could fit on an (opens in new tab)Instagram Reel (opens in new tab)!
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By any measure, MacLeod’s hiring was a big deal. She had cofounded the U.S. Digital Response, (opens in new tab) which connected technologists with governments during the pandemic, and Lurie named her a fifth “chief” — one of the powerful, deputy-mayor-like positions he created to help oversee the city’s sprawling bureaucracy. The new position was significant for its potential to deliver on the technocratic, get-shit-done posture that is Lurie’s whole brand. But MacLeod didn’t have the power or the resources of the other chiefs. I’m told that she instead was a jargon-spewing martinet, fond of referring to meetings as “pods,” who never quite got the hang of how the city works.
An example: In June, MacLeod invited every department head, their deputies, and the mayor’s leadership team to a virtual seminar on “how to craft a theory of change.” Problematically, she called the meeting for June 18, the same day many department officials planned to present their budgets to the Board of Supervisors. She quickly proposed an alternate date.
I reached out to MacLeod, who referred me to her resignation letter, which, she texted, “captures the details of my decision to depart and a few of the accomplishments I’m proud will continue.” She declined further comment. The mayor’s office informed me that MacLeod’s position had been temporary and that she would not be replaced. This was a fact not provided in the news release (opens in new tab) announcing her arrival, which dubbed her the “first chief of strategy and performance.” She turned out to have been the last too.
The deck was stacked against MacLeod from the beginning in that no departments were in her remit. Early this year, she took over responsibility for the Mayor’s Office of Innovation, a technological SWAT team funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies since Mayor London Breed’s administration. But sources tell me MacLeod quickly clashed with that office, then pushed out its highly credentialed head, Florence Simon, who landed on her feet at Google (opens in new tab). In June, the mayor shifted control of the innovation team from MacLeod to Kunal Modi, the health and human services chief, who installed one of his deputies, Eufern Pan (opens in new tab), to run it.
You won’t hear any of this from the mayor’s office, of course, which is as loath to air its own dirty laundry as any political operation. Nor will the mayor’s office have anything to say — at least publicly, while the cameras are rolling — to the Board of Supervisors about OpenGov. Lurie’s team seems to think that because Segal, the chief of economic development and housing, is not involved with the day-to-day implementation of OpenGov software, it’s fine for the mayor to defer to Liz Watty, the Planning Department official overseeing the rejiggering of Permit SF, to represent the city.
But that’s a gesture of arrogance from a mayor who claims to be proud of the collegial relations he has maintained with his legislative partners. When the people’s representatives request that an official who was the driving force behind a high-profile mayoral initiative appear to answer questions about that program, the official (in this case, Segal) should walk to the other side of the building and comply. (Not for nothing, Lurie is missing an opportunity: The loquacious and persuasive Segal, a former executive at Twitter, might make the case on the mayor’s behalf better than a career civil servant like Watty ever could.)
Segal’s snub is this administration’s standard practice. Lurie’s office consistently deflects questioning by supervisors to departmental pooh-bahs. That is in contrast to how past administrations have taken their lumps, such as when Breed’s chief of staff, Sean Elsbernd, faced the board to discuss resignation-gate, the 2022 kerfuffle over Breed’s request that every member of the Police Commission submit an undated resignation letter.
The mayor’s office under Lurie declines to answer other types of questions from the legislative branch. As The Standard reported this summer, Mahmood asked three departments — as well as the relevant member of the mayor’s office, Ellie Schafer, director of large special events — to answer written queries about the traffic screwup after the July 4 fireworks show. The heads of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, Department of Emergency Management, and Fire Department all responded; Schafer did not. Mahmood told me the mayor’s office believed DEM’s responses were sufficient. But Mahmood had questions about the office’s planning for crowd expectations and its coordination with SFMTA. It isn’t the mayor’s prerogative to blow off questions he doesn’t feel like answering.
The mayor’s lack of transparency and unwillingness to face tough questions will also be tested by his recent deal with public-sector labor unions, and what it means for the city budget. That deal would give most workers a 12% pay increase from 2027 to 2031 and a no-layoff promise through mid-2029. The controller’s office isn’t expected to release its analysis until December.
Before then, Lurie will have an important message to communicate: why he is promising not to lay off a single employee until 2029 at the same time he is facing down a budget deficit that year of about $450 million. (opens in new tab)If he’s going to ask voters to open their wallets to bail out Muni this November, it’s fair for him to explain how he plans to balance the city’s checkbook.
For now, though, we’re in the dark about Lurie’s fiscal plans. That, despite the mayor’s sunny disposition, seems to be how he likes it.
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By the way, yes, I’m back! After eight months of book leave, I’ve returned to my regular routine of writing The Lash every week. If you have feedback on my columns, or thoughts for what I should be writing about next, please email me at [email protected] or just leave them in the comments.