A second city official overseeing San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s signature Dream Keeper Initiative is out of a job as allegations of gross mismanagement and abuse of power continue to surface.
Saidah Leatutufu-Burch, who was the director of Dream Keeper and reported to San Francisco Human Rights Commission Executive Director Sheryl Davis, is no longer at her post. The reason for her departure has not been disclosed, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Davis was the first to go. She resigned on Sept. 13 at Breed’s request.
Stories by the San Francisco Standard and the San Francisco Chronicle raised serious questions about program spending and management and led to the program’s leader resigning under pressure.
Breed said she was “appalled” by how the initiative was being run. She also said the city’s top auditor is reviewing and controlling the finances of the department in charge of running the program.
The Dream Keeper program was a citywide initiative that was supposed to inject up to $60 million a year into nonprofit groups and other organizations aimed at helping the city’s black community.
In July 2020, Breed and Supervisor Shamann Walton proposed redirecting city funds from law enforcement to programs that promote cultural and economic support to the city’s black communities. Seven months later, they introduced a more detailed plan and asked for a $60 million annual investment. So far, the city has budgeted about $300 million for the program.
But recently, red flags have started popping up. So have questions about oversight and transparency over who gets the money, how it is distributed, and how it is used.
The program was supposed to be a shining example of how the city is giving back. Instead, it has become an example of wasteful spending, greed, and corruption.
Davis’s resignation followed reports that she was in a relationship and shared a home with the director of one of the nonprofit organizations she funded, Collective Impact. Her attorney has since acknowledged that she made a “mistake” by not disclosing her conflict of interest on official forms.
James Spingola is the director of Collective Impact. Davis personally signed off on a check for $1.5 million for the nonprofit group. In all, Collective Impact has received $7.5 million from the city.
“It’s a very big deal,” said Joan Harrington, a nonprofit ethics expert at Santa Clara University, of Collective Impact’s filings with the state, in which no conflicts of interest were listed. “I don’t think there is a way to answer ‘no’ with what was going on. … That is significant that the staff answered that question in a way that appears to be untruthful.”
Breed has rolled out tighter controls for Dream Keepers and has hit the brakes on new funding under the program without additional review. The Controller’s Office has also taken a series of steps to audit the Human Rights Commission and the initiative.
But Breed’s attempts at trying to fix the situation have not stopped her political rivals in an extremely tight mayoral race from attacking her over it.
Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, a candidate in the contest to unseat Breed, has requested hearings about the scandal. He also called Davis and Spingola’s relationship “very serious and deeply disturbing and can’t be brushed under the rug.”
“I will be utilizing the Board of Supervisors unlimited power of inquiry,” Peskin said in an interview with the San Francisco Standard. “To call public hearings and bring forward the controller and other oversight authorities to fully report and tell us the status of what they know and how they’re going to thoroughly investigate this matter, get to the bottom of it and hold people accountable.”
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Former interim Mayor Mark Farrell, Breed’s closest competitor, has called for a federal investigation into the Dream Keeper Initiative and Breed’s role in it, and Daniel Laurie said Breed “handed a blank check to her closest allies with zero oversight.”
