Voice of New Americans: San Francisco

We arrived in San Francisco a few days after the tragedy in New York and Washington, and because of this almost all the articles in newspapers that we read were about the terrorist attack. Among the few articles on local life we found a couple of interesting articles:

"Flight capital" (a SF Weekly investigation published in September 12-18 issue)

This story is about officials of the San Francisco International airport and city government who formed an odd private corporation SFO Enterprises and worked for this company without leaving their jobs for the city. "Over the time, SFO officials delivered at least $900,000 in city funds to the benefit of SFO Enterprises without obtaining specific permission from the Board of Supervisors, in apparent violation of state laws on official misconduct and federal law on the use of airport money," wrote the reporter. Documents that were available to the investigator contained names such as San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, airport deputy director, and city treasurer.

While officially the city of San Francisco is the sole owner of SFO Enterprises, it is not clear who the real owners of the company are and how they benefit from this enterprise in addition to doubled salaries. A breach of the laws is obvious.

"Grand jury investigating SF schools" (published in the San Francisco Chronicle on September 23, 2001)

The story is about possible fraud and kickbacks involving a $48 million federal technology grant. The investigation is led by the U.S. Attorney's office and the FBI. This case was triggered by a new superintendent when she came to the office. "There was evidence that we were paying more, in some cases 400 percent more," she said.

Overpayment on government contracts is a regular practice. It was once published that the Department of Defense paid over $90 for each hammer that had a price of $6.70 at Sears. The overpayment was over 1200%!

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