Mayor’s Secret Resignation Letters ‘Inconsistent’ With SF Legislation, Metropolis Legal professional Finds

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Mayor London Breed didn’t explicitly break the regulation by directing her appointees to signal secret, undated resignation letters.

However her newly uncovered follow is “inconsistent” with the Metropolis Constitution, and will threaten the independence of her appointees from her “undue affect,” Metropolis Legal professional David Chiu’s workplace concluded in a memo Tuesday.

“For these causes, appointing authorities mustn’t require resignation letters earlier than or as a situation of appointment for commissioners who could solely be eliminated for trigger or with the concurrence of a Metropolis physique aside from the appointing authority,” Chiu’s workplace wrote.

The Metropolis Legal professional’s Workplace weighed in on the follow after The Customary revealed its existence final Friday, publishing a draft letter that Breed’s workplace directed considered one of her appointees on the Police Fee to signal.

Whereas the extent of the follow was initially unclear, the Mayor’s Workplace launched information Tuesday exhibiting that dozens of Breed appointees to a number of the strongest commissions at Metropolis Corridor have submitted draft resignation letters, elevating questions on their independence.

The workplace launched 40 draft resignation letters from appointees to 23 totally different commissions starting from the SFMTA Board of Administrators to the Planning Fee and the Board of Appeals. 

Critics say the follow seems to run afoul of Metropolis Constitution language that serves as a verify on government energy. The constitution offers the Board of Supervisors—not the mayor—the ultimate say on whether or not to take away her appointees to most of the metropolis’s unbiased oversight our bodies.

The revelation raised considerations about how Breed’s appointees might act independently when the mayor basically had an undated resignation letter from them in her desk, that she might apparently use in opposition to them.

The Metropolis Legal professional’s Workplace discovered, nonetheless, that the letters doubtless wouldn’t maintain up in court docket in the event that they have been signed as a situation of employment.

Whereas Breed introduced Sunday that she would finish the follow and cancel any excellent letters in response to reporting by The Customary, Supervisor Dean Preston plans to push laws that will explicitly ban the mayor directing her appointees to sing the letters as a situation of the job.

Preston, with the help of Supervisor Hillary Ronen, can be planning to carry a listening to on the matter.

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