Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Alameda County: Oakland mayor may hit pay dirt with clean sweep

Chip Johnson, Chronicle Columnist - Tuesday, March 13, 2012
If Oakland Mayor Jean Quan was searching for an issue on which to establish her leadership position after a rocky first year, I think she has found it: cleaning house.

She has a bulldog city administrator in Deanna Santana who is taking on issues her predecessors - and city officials - have avoided like the plague for years.

Two top City Hall officials confirmed Monday that Quan's administration has turned over to the FBI the results of a police probe into the Oakland Building Services division.

The building division was the subject of a 2011 annual report of the Alameda County grand jury, a civil grand jury that discovered abuses throughout the process of citing building and home owners for blighted properties.

The report outlined a pattern of arbitrary and excessive fees, fines and abusive actions by the city against property owners that appalled the panel. In some cases, building inspectors who issued citations served as the hearing officers in resident appeals.

In one case, Oakland building inspectors tagged a home with a blight order, demolished a garage legally converted into a recreation area two decades earlier and handed the owners a bill for $18,000.

But last year wasn't the first time Oakland had been informed of such outrageous practices by city employees.

The report noted that 12 years earlier, another grand jury pointed out similar problems within the Building Services division. But nothing was done about that - and things got worse.

This is a city whose ability to provide oversight has been called into question in its Police Department, its financial dealings and its political ethics. So, making someone accountable for the abusive, unethical practices outlined by the grand jury would be a breath of fresh air to residents.

One case handed over to the FBI's public corruptions unit involves allegations of building inspectors taking bribes, said an Oakland Police Department official who requested anonymity.

"One or two cases were handed over to the FBI from that grand jury report," the source confirmed.

1st to take action

Another case involves the actions of a Buildings Services manager who received a 10-year interest-free loan from a debris removal contractor. The contractor received a "disproportionately large number of contracts" for debris removal and abatement work. The Building Services manager "at one time listed her address at a property owned by the contractor," the report said.

Every candidate and their brother has claimed the moral high ground and promised reforms during campaigns to lead this city, but Quan is the first one in a long time to take action.

This is tough sledding for any politician. In most political settings, the fallout of upsetting long-standing alliances and creating animosity between colleagues results in making legislative and policy agreements even more difficult.

Mayor stands to gain

But in Oakland, where the council is in an utter state of chaos, blather and confusion, there is low risk - and high rewards - for Quan.

Her reputation and standing as mayor can only benefit from making internal reform a high priority. If she can remove the debris that has hindered effective political leadership in Oakland for years, she needn't worry about her efforts as mayor being judged solely on the rise or fall of the city's crime rate.

If you took a survey asking Oakland residents to identify the city's No. 1 problem, the overwhelming response would be crime and its impact on the city's budget, night life and its public image.

But when you consider the internal scandals that have surfaced over the years, from cases of police abuse to unethical administrative actions, a case could be made that public corruption in government may be more harmful overall to the city than the violence.

Chip Johnson's column appears in The San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday and Friday. chjohnson@sfchronicle.com

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