I talked to a guy who's trying to open a business in the Mission. Zero emissions. DBI is putting him through the wringer and making him spends $10,000s on electrical upgrades he doesn't need because he has some custom solar tech. He's banging his head against the bureaucracy.
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I wish him well, so of course I start thinking of how to help, because I know people in city government. From that thought, it is the easiest, tiniest step to him paying me for those relationships, to outright bribery & corruption. (Which didn't happen. I'm not doing anything.)
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But the root is that DBI is slow and stupid and not helpful and grinds you down... unless you have what Willie Brown used to call "juice."
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And this is a basic truth about every single thing in San Francisco city government and everyone knows it. Everyone knows that the City's hiring process is broken and you it's nearly impossible to get a job in any kind of timely fashion unless you know someone.
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And that DBI & Planning are an opaque & stupid mess and you can't do anything unless you know someone or pay an "expediter". And everyone knows that the streets are broken & dirty & won't get cleaned unless you have political connections to get DPW to prioritize your problems.
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And everyone knows that SF General Hospital is fucked up because the patients are poor and on a very basic level that is not a political constituency anyone with power cares about.
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And everyone knows that politicians broker real estate deals in their districts, which creates a predictable set of incentives for all involved.
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And btw everyone knows that you can't just run for office or serve on a commission for anything unless you've gone around and kissed the ring of whatever faction you're aligning with.
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None of this is the workers' fault. For the most part, most of the people who work in City government are mission-driven people who want to do right by the people they serve, and they too get beaten down by the apparatus and general like of political will.
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The line between actually-illegal corruption and this kind of access politics and cronyism is so thin as to be meaningless. But to me, practically the only time government works smoothly is when those things are happening, for those people participating in it.
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This is why I'm skeptical about any crusade to "root out corruption" that isn't coupled with a bigger crusade to get government to work.
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Like what if public agencies had the staff and the mandate and the resources to do their jobs and provide good services to everyone, and nobody needed to call in favors because stuff was handled the way it's supposed to be?
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This sorry state of affairs is a consequence of austerity & deregulation and neoliberals & endless attacks on the public sector. It’s why the solution is more political power for working class people and not more white people with graduate degrees who think they have the answers.
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