In S.F. housing agency flap, ask Ed Lee
Published 7:19 pm, Sunday, December 9, 2012
There are many important questions being raised by The Chronicle's no-holds-barred reporting on problems at the San Francisco Housing Authority.
Many questions, but, so far at least, few detailed answers. Mayor Ed Lee said he was too busy to answer questions about the serious allegations of racism, favoritism and poor performance at the agency responsible for maintaining more than 6,000 units of public housing.
I know the mayor is perhaps too busy to hold impromptu press conferences. I also know there is a time set aside on his schedule each month - the Question Time forum at the Board of Supervisors - to answer questions like these.
Designed to be an instrument of accountability, it has so far been largely an underutilized instrument of reform. Instead of tough follow-up questions to the mayor, Question Time usually is a series of softball questions tossed at the mayor to help promote joint projects.
While I appreciated the supervisors' using the forum to work collaboratively with the mayor, its purpose is to seek answers to exactly the kind of tough questions the mayor has so far not addressed.
If we had a real Question Time, the mayor would be asked:
-- Why does the city have yet to retract the president's statements, which are tantamount to creating a discriminatory work environment?
-- Has there been a follow-up investigation of the explosive charges that the commission president intervened on behalf of one of his parishioners who was being denied a housing subsidy? If not, why not? If yes, what did this investigation reveal?
-- Why do e-mails disclosed through the city's sunshine ordinances show the mayor's housing staff saying decisions about funding nonprofit partners were based, in part, on political considerations? If true, this would be a violation of city law.
-- Why did the mayor not act faster to protect victims and potential victims of domestic violence in public housing who were being endangered by clearly flawed policies?
-- Why, if his chief of staff, Steve Kawa, and then-chief housing adviser, Doug Shoemaker, knew of these problems, did the mayor initially say he had no knowledge of them? If he didn't know, why not? Now that he does know, what is he going to do to investigate allegations of political favoritism, corruption, violation of civil rights and incompetence?
There is a Question Time coming up, and any supervisor who wants answers to real and meaningful questions like these and others will have the opportunity to seek them.