Planning Commissioner Kathrin Moore has been fined $12,000 after city officials determined that she engaged in \u201csevere violations\u201d of conflict-of-interest laws involving her previous employer.<\/p>\n
The fines come after <\/a>The Standard<\/a> <\/a>reported<\/a> in July that Moore had voted to approve projects involving Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, or SOM, while simultaneously receiving $15,000 in yearly retirement payments from the internationally renowned architecture firm.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Ethics Commission charged Moore with four counts of violating conflict-of-interest rules for votes she participated in between 2021 and 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough there is no evidence to suggest that [Moore] deliberately intended to benefit her financial interest by participating in the votes, her failure to recuse herself from the matters constitute severe violations of the conflict-of-interest laws for which she must be held accountable,\u201d charging papers from the Ethics Commission state.<\/p>\n Moore, who retired as an associate partner at SOM in 1999, has been on the Planning Commission since 2006. The seven-person governing body is one of the most influential commissions in the city, overseeing the approval or rejection of major development projects.<\/p>\n \u201cI made an unintentional, honest mistake in forgetting to recuse myself from the SOM-related votes,\u201d Moore said in a statement. \u201cAnd while I take full responsibility for the oversight, in hindsight, it\u2019s vital to note that each project was unanimously approved, I was never a swing vote, no harm was done, nor did I benefit monetarily.\u201d<\/p>\n The Ethics Commission found that Moore had violated ethics rules based on votes involving developments at 1750 Van Ness Ave., 98 Franklin St., and 530 Sansome St.\/447 Battery St. The buildings totaled nearly $900 million in project costs.<\/p>\n \u201cGiven the large scale of these developments and their substantial impact on community space in the City, Respondent\u2019s participation in these matters despite a conflict of interest risked public confidence in the integrity of City decision-making,\u201d the Ethics Commission wrote.<\/p>\n In two instances, Moore recused herself from projects involving her former architecture firm, though it is unclear why she did not step away from other votes.<\/p>\n City officials and commissioners are prohibited from making decisions involving an entity in which they received $500 or more over the previous year. Commissioners regularly recuse themselves from votes, often to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.<\/p>\n City attorneys had warned Moore that her votes on SOM could constitute a breach of local ethics laws, according to a 2012 memo. The memo cited Moore\u2019s claim that she had been told by the city attorney that she did not have to include SOM\u2019s retirement income in her required financial disclosure Form 700.<\/p>\n \u201cThis office does not have any record of that advice,\u201d an attorney wrote in response. <\/p>\n Moore has reported her SOM income since 2012. After The Standard\u2019s reporting on the memo, Moore said she would no longer vote on SOM projects.<\/p>\n The architecture firm is behind some of the world\u2019s most famous buildings, including the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and the Sears Tower in Chicago. SOM also designed One Maritime Plaza and the trusses at San Francisco International Airport.<\/p>\n Moore was appointed to the Planning Commission by former Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin. She was reappointed by Supervisor Shamann Walton. Her term will end in July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Planning Commissioner Kathrin Moore has been fined $12,000 after city officials determined that she engaged in \u201csevere violations\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171929,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[21980,1335,1337,24780,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-171928","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-corruption","9":"tag-development","10":"tag-housing-development","11":"tag-planning-department","12":"tag-san-francisco","13":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","14":"tag-san-francisco-news","15":"tag-sf","16":"tag-sf-headlines","17":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}