Two San Francisco commissioners facing ethics fines for missing required trainings are criticizing the financial penalties they are being levied as volunteers on their oversight bodies. Both contend city staff did not do enough to inform them they were in violation of ethic codes.
Gay Human Rights Commissioner Mark Kelleher, who has served on his panel since December 2010, didn’t file his required annual ethics training certificates and sunshine ordinance declarations for 2022, 2023, and 2024. He failed to do so even after the Ethics Commission said it had sent him notifications each year that he was out of compliance with the filing requirements.
According to a report by the Ethics Commission’s compliance staff, Kelleher voted 27 times on HRC matters that he should not have, including approving on consent eight grants totaling $1.68 million for the city’s Dream Keeper Initiative, the scandal-plagued program that factored into the resignation of former HRC director Sheryl Davis. None of his votes were on matters that involved a financial conflict of interest, the ethics staff noted in its report.
Kelleher, the husband of gay San Francisco Treasurer-Tax Collector José Cisneros, had agreed to pay a $2,500 fine in order to settle the matter. Last October, he completed the required trainings and came into compliance by filing his required certificates after being contacted by Ethics Commission investigators as part of their investigation, according to the staff report.
Ovava Afuhaamango, a member of the Sheriff's Department Oversight Board since January 2022, was found not to have complied with the training and filing requirements last year. According to an ethics staff report, it resulted in her voting on 12 agenda items that she should not have; like Kelleher, none of Afuhaamango’s votes involved a financial conflict of interest.
She agreed to pay a $1,000 penalty as part of her settlement agreement with the Ethics Commission staff. Yet, at the April 11 meeting of the Ethics Commission, Afuhaamango decried the amount she is being fined.
Unable to reach the commission by phone during the discussion and vote on her fine, which the commissioners approved 4-0 with the body’s vice chair absent, Afuhaamango showed up in person and spoke during public comment on another matter. She noted that city commissioners are “taking time off of our day jobs” to provide their service and that her missed training and filing deadline last year was her first offense over her four years on the oversight board.
“A $1,000 fine is ridiculous. It is crazy,” said Afuhaamango.
Kelleher did not attend or call in to the hearing. The ethics commissioners ended up tabling his settlement, as they felt his fine should be higher for his infractions.
Kevin Yeh, a city attorney appointee on the Ethics Commission, said he found it “egregious” that Kelleher missed three yearly filing requirements in a row and no one at the HRC flagged his being out of compliance and shouldn’t have taken part in the 24 meetings that he did.
He expressed disbelief that “that body did not seem to put a stop to this.”
Ethics Commission Executive Director Pat Ford, named to the position last year after first being hired as a staffer in 2017, responded, “I don’t disagree.”
Commission Chair Argemira Flórez Feng, the assessor-recorder appointee on the body, agreed with Yeh and questioned what responsibility the secretaries of the city’s various oversight panels have in notifying commissioners they are not in compliance with ethics codes and requirements. In response, ethics staff noted the secretaries have an obligation to announce at the start of meetings if any commissioners are disqualified from participating.
As they’re not doing so has been raised in various investigations taken up by the ethics staff, the agency is looking at the issue.
Comparing the fines ethics staff have imposed in settlements with others making the same error as Kelleher, such as the amount Afuhaamango must pay for one missed training, Feng questioned why Kelleher isn’t being levied a higher fine.
“It does seem, given you can give a penalty up to $5,000 or three times the amount, this seems very low,” said Feng.
Noting the length of time that Kelleher has served on the HRC, thus he should be aware of his ethics requirements, and that there was nothing in the staff report to indicate he wasn’t receiving his reminder notices, Yeh said, “this seems pretty egregious to me” and moved to have staff renegotiate its settlement with Kelleher. The motion was approved 3-1 with gay ethics commissioner David Tsai, appointed by the city attorney, voting no.
Reached by the Bay Area Reporter immediately after the meeting, Kelleher at first said he couldn’t comment since it was the first he was learning about the commission’s decision. He later sent the B.A.R. a statement in which he expressed befuddlement at its rejection of his agreed upon settlement and noted his missing the trainings and filings were inadvertent.
“Although I am not yet certain why the Ethics Commission tabled the recommended fine, they may be responding to questions raised at the meeting about whether these fines are too high for inadvertent omissions by volunteer commissioners,” stated Kelleher. “I have always filed my Form 700 on time each year and have always made sure that there are no conflicts of interest through my voluntary service as a San Francisco Human Rights Commissioner. Likewise, I have completed many of the Ethics Commission training webinars over the years, only inadvertently missing a few.”
Kelleher added that, “HRC staff did not inform me that I should not vote on commission agenda items after missing a training webinar. As a public servant, I take our work on the HRC commission very seriously, including my own ethical and good governance responsibilities. I look forward to working with the Ethics Commission to resolve this.”
Speaking at the Ethics Commission meeting Ruton & Tucker LLP partner Jim Sutton, a leading political and election law attorney in California, lambasted the high amounts being levied against city commissioners, whom he stressed are volunteers and not city employees. Noting he was not representing Kelleher in his matter, Sutton said he had received “panicked” phone calls, emails and texts over the last day from other city commissioners worried they, too, could face steep fines because they “inadvertently” had fallen out of compliance.
“I believe these fines are pretty heavy-handed,” said Sutton. “It is important to remember these are volunteer commissioners” who are “law abiding people” and not “flaunting the law because they don’t want to comply. It is completely the opposite.”
William Walker, a gay former community college board candidate, is facing as-yet-to-be determined ethics fines for six campaign violations he is accused of making during his bid for public office, according to a staff memo on the matter. He has refused to agree to a settlement, contending he doesn’t feel he has been treated fairly by ethics staff.
The Ethics Commission deferment to using emails to correspond with people it is investigating is also problematic, argued Walker and Sutton, as they can be easily missed and go unread. Walker is asking to also receive in the mail correspondence related to his ethics investigation, as he contended that his emailed replies can also go unread by ethics staff.
“If we are engaging with these departments, and no one is responding to us, we should not have the book thrown at us,” argued Walker.
While the commissioners approved moving forward on three matters related to Walker’s investigation, it delayed voting on three others to its next meeting.
In a news release issued after the meeting, the Ethics Commission noted, “It is essential that public employees and officials complete the annual Ethics and Sunshine Training to ensure that they are consistently reminded of the requirements of the ethics rules and the Sunshine Ordinance, as well as to help enhance their understanding of these rules. Additionally, failing to complete the trainings and file the relevant forms disqualifies a Commissioner or Board Member from participating in and voting on matters agendized before their Commission or Board.”
It added that the rule exists “to ensure that if an official has not undergone training in ethics rules and the Sunshine Ordinance as required, they will not participate in government decisions during the time that their trainings remain outstanding.”
Kinksters diss gay SF supe Dorsey
Gay District 6 San Francisco Supervisor Matt Dorsey is one step closer toward his self-professed desire to be the Susan Lucci of the Golden Dildeaux Awards. He got spanked by kinksters in the "Best Impact Player-Bottom" category, coming in seventh place out of eight contestants.
The annual awards are voted on by the public, with each vote cast costing $1. The funds raised benefit the Leather & LGBTQ Cultural District, which took over management of the Woodys, as the statues given to award winners are called, three years ago. The 2025 awards far surpassed the $15,000 raised last year, netting the district a record $19,540.
“We are quite happy about it. We are very excited,” said Bob Goldfarb, a gay man who is executive director of the district based in western South of Market. “It is certainly a record since we have been doing it. We believe it may be an all-time record.”
The late gay B.A.R. leather columnist Marcus Hernandez known as "Mister Marcus" had launched the awards in 1971. They honor various members of the local kink and leather scene in a variety of categories, with gay politico Scott Wiener the lone sitting supervisor to win a Woody in the last two decades. Currently a state senator, the Democratic lawmaker took home the "Has Not Had Sex in Recent Memory...(The 'Winter Sleep' Award)" in 2015.
Dorsey was anonymously entered for the spanking fetish award dubbed this year The Pound Cake Award, which was given to Julian Castillo. As Dorsey had told the Political Notebook in March, he didn’t want to win and remained in the contest to help bring more attention to the fundraiser.
He had joked his aim was to parallel Lucci’s 21 nominations for a Daytime Emmy Award for her role as Erica Kane on the ABC soap "All My Children." She only won once.
“It was a lot of fun,” said Dorsey, who attended the award ceremony over the weekend. “My message to the impact player-bottom community was I am going to be working very hard over this year and intend to be back next year, and I intend to win!”
In his remarks at the event, Dorsey noted “how grateful” he is “to represent the leather district and organizations keeping queer history alive,” as his supervisorial district includes SOMA.
As for the funds raised, Goldfarb told the B.A.R. most of the money will be saved, as the district is working to build up its reserves in order to buy a building it can call home.
“There is no timeframe for it, we are still laying the groundwork for that,” he said. “We are trying to build up our donor base and we will eventually launch a capital campaign.”
Web Extra: For more queer political news, be sure to check http://www.ebar.com Monday mornings for Political Notes, the notebook's online companion. This week's column reported on a record fine gay former Assemblymember Evan Low received from the state’s political watchdog agency.
Keep abreast of the latest LGBTQ political news by following the Political Notebook on Threads @ https://www.threads.net/@matthewbajko and on Bluesky @ https://bsky.app/profile/politicalnotes.bsky.social.
Got a tip on LGBTQ politics? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 829-8836 or email [email protected].
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