San Francisco’s newest mayor, Daniel Lurie, swept into office on a campaign centered around his outsider status. He presented his lack of experience in public service as an asset, distancing himself from a broken, crooked City Hall. Given San Francisco’s recent history with public corruption, specifically the Public Works scandal that cost tax-payers more than $100 million in various pay-to-play schemes, it is clear why Lurie’s position outside of government resonated with voters. 

Now, pitching “fresh solutions,” Lurie threatens to reignite the worst aspects of corporate tampering in public policy. To maintain the city’s obligations despite a looming deficit, Lurie has called upon his billionaire allies to help fund, and advise on, city initiatives. Lurie has already announced the “Partnership for San Francisco”, a mayoral council composed of tech giants like Open AI’s Sam Altman and Salesforce’s Marc Benioff. By doing that, Lurie is making it clear that the only opinions that matter in his office are from those with the deepest pockets. 

From the start, Lurie signalled whose voice would be represented by his administration. At his lavish, $3 million inauguration, billionaires like Jed York, owner of the 49ers, and Ted Janus from J Capital pitched in hundreds of thousands of dollars to show their support for the new regime.

If the inauguration symbolically displayed the outsized role of wealth, a recent bill passed by the Board of Supervisors displays a formal transfer of power to the financial elite. Approved by all members of the board except Connie Chan, this bill waives ethics rules and  “authorizes the Assessor-Recorder and the Deputy Assessors and Director of Policy and Government Affairs in the Assessor-Recorder’s Office to solicit donations from various private, nonprofit, philanthropic, and other entities,” in this case to support specific causes related to immigration, LGBTQ causes, and reproductive rights.

In her lone dissent, Supervisor Chan warned, “There are countless big corporations and developers who are currently asking the assessor for tax reductions… Is it a good idea for the assessor to be asking these same people for donations, no matter how good the cause?” 

Chan’s objection points to the obvious flaw with this legislation. The rules around these behested payments were established in 2022 in an effort to prevent another Public Works scandal. Reversing course on these ethics laws opens the door for Big Business to finance the slush funds of corrupt agency heads in exchange for preferential treatment in permitting or city contracting.

There are some protections baked into the legislation: City officials cannot solicit payments from companies that already do business with the city and if there is potential for a conflict of interest, city officials must make the case for why a donation is necessary. However, these safeguards depend on a strong enforcement mechanism to be effective, and it is yet to be seen if we have an able watchdog to account for how easily these flimsy exemptions can be bypassed.

These bills add on to the list of city priorities to which private money can contribute. After attempting to declare a state of emergency due to the fentanyl crisis, which he could not legally do, Lurie pushed legislation to allow private donations to the city and no-bid contracts in homelessness, mental health, and addiction services. This time, Supervisor Shamann Walton offered the lone dissent, pointing out the lack of specifics in Lurie’s plan for this expansion of power. Without a clear, stated vision for what private dollars will do or what programs should receive expedited contracting with the city, this legislation is ripe for abuse. 

As expected, frequent targets of the Phoenix Project’s dark money investigations are likely to be tapped for contributions to Lurie’s initiatives. The billionaire backer of TogetherSF, Michael Moritz, has previously donated vast sums to Lurie’s Tipping Point Foundation through the Crankstart Foundation. Heavily invested in San Francisco real estate, Moritz could stand to gain from working with city officials on upzoning in areas where he has proposed new development, like his 17-story tower on the Embarcadero.

Then there’s crypto baron Chris Larsen, another Tipping Point donor. He has also previously backed SF SAFE, a “crime prevention” nonprofit that worked with the SFPD to defraud taxpayers of over $750K in 2024. Clearly, Larsen is not above the kind of corruption that will become possible with the passage of these bills.

Finally, there’s investor Ron Conway, who gave $50K to Lurie’s inauguration. He previously stirred up fears around rising crime in the effort to recall DA Chesa Boudin and spent over $100,000 on London Breed’s proposals to expand police powers. These are the individuals who will be deciding which city initiatives for homelessness and addiction will be funded and which won’t, so do not be surprised when the kinds of punitive, inhumane, and ineffective programs favored by these self-serving billionaires prevail as policy.

Even without these glaring red flags, Lurie’s bills were doomed because they assume philanthropy can work as a mechanism for change. Despite increases in corporate giving over the last five years, we have the highest level of income inequality since the Great Depression. A recent New York Times piece by Hans Taparia and Bruce Buchanan argues that “[businesses] can earn moral credit for donating a penny to a problem they made a dollar creating.”

We can see an example of this already in Lurie’s orbit of donors: Michael Moritz spent $100,000 to oppose legislation which would increase taxes on the wealthy that would go towards city homelessness services, while donating to organizations like Tipping Point who ostensibly work towards the same goal. With these profitable incentives for donating to the city, we are back to the pay-to play model that contributed to the messes the city has to address now. This is Taparia and Buchanan’s “impossible math of philanthropy” in action. 

San Francisco has outsized obligations in a Trump presidency. As a city, we have a responsibility to protect immigrants facing federal scrutiny, defend besieged LGBTQ and reproductive rights, and improve standards of living for those experiencing homelessness and addiction. As critical as these functions are, we should not cede more power to billionaires looking to influence our public processes. While corporate investments may help us make ends meet now, we invite corruption that ultimately wastes taxpayer dollars and subverts our municipal processes.