DENNIS HERRERA ANNOUNCES THREE POINT PLAN FOR CITY ATTORNEY'S OFFICE TO PROTECT SAN FRANCISCO'S FISCAL HEALTH AND GOVERNMENTAL INTEGRITY

By Dennis Herrera

City Attorney Candidate Dennis Herrera announced today a three-point plan designed to help the City and County of San Francisco protect its fiscal health and protect its public integrity.

The three-part plan involves creating a Revenue Recovery Task Force, an Accident Prevention Task Force, and a Public Integrity Team, each of which would serve to protect the city's fiscal resources and the integrity of city government.

Revenue Recovery Task Force

Presently, no formal mechanism exists to identify and collect money owed to the City. While the City does pursue some claims, a vast amount of money due the City goes uncollected. Some departments refer specific claims to the City Attorney's Office for collection, while other departments refer no claims.

For example, the City rarely collects money to replace damaged City property, such as damage to traffic signals, fire hydrants or collisions with city vehicles.

The solution to dealing with this on-going problem is to create a Revenue Recovery Task Force consisting of the City Attorney's Office, the Controller's Office and the Treasurer's Office for the purpose of training City departments to identify potential claims. Under this proposal, City departments would be required to refer all such claims to the City Attorney's Office, which would aggressively pursue the claims, filing litigation if necessary.

A major responsibility of this Task Force would be to establish an accounting system within the City Attorney's Office to track money owed. Presently, there is no tracking of claims in favor of the city, tracking is done only of claims against the city.

Accident Prevention Task Force

Currently, the City Attorney's Office investigates and defends claims against the City. This function provides the City Attorney's Office with a strong sense of how accidents happen and how they can be prevented. Unfortunately, no formal mechanism exists to coordinate knowledge to enable departments to learn from their mistakes.

Those who do not learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them. We can increase safety, and save money, by requiring every City department to identify a risk manager to coordinate and work with the City Attorney's Office to develop proactive city-wide risk management plans.

These risk managers would meet on a regular basis with assigned staff from the City Attorney's Office. They would establish a reporting system so that data gathered would be shared with City departments on a regular basis.

Currently, some City departments pay judgements out of their own budget, and others are paid from the General Fund resulting in a clear difference between how different departments manage their risks. A coordinated risk management approach would clearly lessen exposure to the City.

Public Integrity Team

This team would pair deputy city attorneys and investigators with auditors from the Controller's Office to review allegations of fraud or corruption in City government. This team would function similarly to the United States Inspector General's Office and would serve to inspire confidence in the integrity of city government.

The City Attorneys' Office has been limited in its ability to prevent irregularities by the lack of an institutionalized public integrity team inside the office. The establishment of this team will enable us to discover any problems or irregularities before they result in crises. By being proactive we can restore confidence in our city's governmental operations.