Date: August 4, 2025
To: Members of the Ethics Commission
From: Patrick Ford, Executive Director
Subject: Agenda Item 4 – Executive Director’s Report
Summary and Action Requested
This report provides various programmatic and operational highlights since the last report.
No action is required by the Commission, as this item is for informational purposes only.
Recruitment Update – Senior Investigators
As reported in the July Executive Director’s Report, recruitments were initiated for two Senior Investigator (1823) positions on the Enforcement Division. I am happy to announce that both recruitments have been successfully completed.
Emma O’Donnell began work as Senior Investigator on July 21st. Emma joined the Commission in January as an auditor. Emma has played a key role in developing the Audit Division’s new audit processes and was responsible for successfully completing the audits of multiple candidate committees. Before joining the Commission, Emma worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers as a Senior Audit Associate in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. There, she conducted audits for clients in the technology, media, and telecommunications sector, ensuring compliance with accounting standards and financial regulations. Emma earned a Bachelor of Arts in Business from Rhodes College.
Recruitment for the now vacant auditor position is already underway. A link to the job announcement is posted on the Commission’s website.
Bailey Bryant will begin work as a Senior Investigator on September 2nd. Bailey is currently a judicial law clerk to the Honorable William J. Lafferty III, United States Bankruptcy Judge for the Northern District of California. While earning her JD at UC Berkeley School of Law, Bailey served as research assistant to Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. Prior to law school, Bailey worked as an Executive Legislative Coordinator and Program Coordinator for the King County Office of the Executive where she was responsible for managing legislative affairs for county Executive Departments and served as liaison to the King County Council. Bailey also served as a Project Lead for the Oregon Business Council. Bailey earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science & Legal Studies from Seattle University and a JD from UC Berkeley School of Law.
KPI and Procurement Trackers
As part of the EDDA Division’s work to constantly improve the Commission’s technology infrastructure in order to optimize operations, the team is developing new interactive tracking systems for key performance indicators (KPIs) and procurements.
The Commission already tracks many KPIs on an ongoing basis to gauge the effectiveness of its work. These include the number of enforcement cases and compliance advice matters and how quickly those items are handled. Some of the KPIs are reported out to the Controller’s office and/or the Mayor’s office during the budget process. Other KPIs are used internally for operational purposes. One goal for the staff in FY26 is to review and revise current KPIs that are being tracked and to consolidate the tracking into a single shared system. This will allow managers to easily enter KPI data into a single place and, ultimately, for that data to be reviewed quickly and conveniently during the budget process or performance reviews.
The new procurement tracker will allow for enhanced monitoring of procurement needs, budget availability, and current steps for each procurement. A single procurement typically involves many steps in order to comply with the City’s many rules, policies, and procedures. Having a centralized tracker will allow staff to communicate their procurement needs to the Operations Division and for the Operations and EDDA Divisions to be efficient in completing the steps involved in each procurement.
Performance Plan and Appraisal Report (PPAR)
As discussed in previous reports, staff have been going through the end-of-fiscal-year process to close out the FY25 PPARs and to set up new PPARs for FY26. The PPAR is the standard template used Citywide to plan work for each staff member for the fiscal year, monitor project status, and provide a performance review at the end of the year. At this time, all FY25 performance reviews have been completed, and managers are nearly finished putting the final FY26 PPARs in place.
Proposition E Commission Streamlining Task Force
In the November 2024 election, San Francisco voters approved Proposition E. Prop E “create[s] a Commission Streamlining Task Force (Task Force) to review the structure of the City’s commissions and recommend to the Mayor and the Board by February 1, 2026, how the City could change, eliminate or consolidate commissions to improve the administration of City government.” The Commission Streamlining Task Force consists of five appointed members, and the Task Force has begun holding regular public meetings.
The Task Force recently informed staff that the Ethics Commission will be discussed at the Task Force’s November 5th meeting as part of the “general administration” group of City departments. This group also includes the Controller, Human Resources, City Administrator, and Elections. The Task Force’s calendar is attached as Attachment 1. The Task Force also distributed an additional questionnaire seeking information about each department. Staff will submit the questionnaire by its due date on August 8th.
Budget Update
On July 24, 2025, Mayor Daniel Lurie signed into law a Citywide budget for FY26-FY27. This final version of the budget made no material changes to the Commission’s budget as passed by the Budget and Appropriations Committee on June 25 and as described in the Executive Director’s Report to the Commission on July 7, 2025. Commission staff worked with the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor’s Office to successfully retain all filled positions.