San Francisco Mayor London Breed on Thursday nominated Carmen Chu to serve as the new city administrator, replacing Naomi Kelly who resigned earlier this week amid an unfolding corruption scandal.
Chu, who is now the city’s tax assessor and recorder, still needs to be confirmed by the Board of Supervisors.
Kelly, the former administrator, resigned after her husband, former San Francisco Public Utilities Commission General Manager Harlan Kelly, was charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office with wire service fraud, in connection with a probe that has brought down several high-ranking city officials.
The city administrator post is San Francisco’s highest-ranking non-elected office, overseeing more than 20 departments and a $700 million annual budget.
Chu is no stranger to taking the reins of a new position amid scandal. In 2007 she was appointed to the city’s Board of Supervisors by then-Mayor Gavin Newsom after former District 4 Supervisor Ed Jew was accused of extortion in a wholly separate scandal.
Responding to KQED in a Thursday morning press conference, Chu said she would work to ensure that the departments she oversees are clear of corruption.
“One of the things that all of us will be doing is looking very, very closely to make sure that we have the systems in place to ensure that there’s transparency in how we’re delivering our public service and how it is that we run our organization,” Chu said. “It’s a fundamental piece of the picture that we have public trust and that we can tap into.”
Breed lauded Chu’s leadership as “valuable, citing her record of reversing a backlog of cases in the assessor’s office that boosted the city’s available budget.
Some of San Francisco’s Asian American groups have lamented the lack of leaders from their community represented in San Francisco government, following the death of Mayor Ed Lee in 2017. Malcolm Yeung, executive director of the Chinatown Community Development Center, and an airport commissioner, lauded Chu’s nomination as a step in the right direction for Asian American representation in the city.
“This announcement surprises me, but in a very good way,” Yeung said. “I deeply appreciate the ongoing commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in how the mayor is picking our city leaders.”
Okay, Asian press has been outspoken on Asian & Pacific Islander being underrepresented in San Francisco's City Hall, especially there's no Chinese major city department head.Now Mayor Breed just nominated an Asian to be the department head of all department heads.
— Han Li (@lihanlihan) January 14, 2021
Kelly, who resigned Tuesday, is the latest city official to step down after being implicated â though not charged âin the wide-ranging corruption scandal that has already ensnared the former Director of Public Works, the former head of the Department of Building Inspection, and the general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.
Breed was evasive when asked by KQED if she had pushed Kelly to resign.
“Well, many of you know better than to ask about personnel issues,” she said. “The fact is we cannot discuss them.”
Notably, at least two of the officials charged in the scandal were long-time allies and friends of Breed.
And while personnel matters are sometimes legally touchy areas for discussion by city mayors, the former mayor Ed Lee publicly did ask for the resignation of former San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr, following the shooting deaths of black and brown suspects by police, and subsequent public outcry.
Breed’s office would not say what was different about Kelly’s resignation.
Copyright 2021 KQED