San Francisco has a lot of problems to deal with already, a broke public transportation system, a broke school system, corruption, a failing downtown, criminal justice problems, homelessness, etc. What the city didn’t need on top of all of that was a very public scandal involving a high-profile progressive in city government. But that’s what SF got in the form of KImberly Ellis, director of the San Francisco Department on the Status of Women.
Last month Ellis was placed on leave after it was revealed she had a side-gig working for a progressive policy group. She has also handed out contracts to political groups with which she had personal connections, bypassing the normal contracting process.
Ellis, who bills herself as the “most powerful unelected person in California Democratic politics,” has routinely mixed her political interests with her role as a city official, records show, raising questions about her distribution of city funding…
Ellis failed to disclose until last December that she earned at least $10,000 consulting in 2023 for PowerPAC, a political group that sponsors progressive candidates of color. City officials say they have no record of her asking for permission to work a second job, which is required by city rules…
The Chronicle also found that Ellis awarded nearly $1 million in city contracts to two political groups with which she is closely connected. One of those contracts paid for a friend of Ellis to produce a series of glossy video profiles of four local female politicians, including Breed. The other two contracts went to a women’s political group that previously employed Ellis as a consultant.
Rather than allow other companies to compete for the funding as is the usual process for awarding a city grant, Ellis did not put any of those contracts out to bid. Instead, she obtained special exceptions from her oversight board, the commission on the status of women, to grant the funding directly, arguing that the chosen organizations were the only ones qualified to do the jobs.
After she was placed on leave, former employees said she had created a department where bullying and frequent staff turnover were normal.
In the years since Kimberly Ellis was appointed as the director of the San Francisco Department on the Status of Women in late 2020, the city agency has seen the departure of at least 17 employees, not including interns, according to records reviewed by the Chronicle.
Ten of those employees were hired by the agency under her tenure. One lasted less than four months under Ellis, according to the records. The department is among the city’s smallest, with eight current employees…
“It was dog eat dog,” said one former staffer. “Nobody trusted each other. People were always throwing people under the bus, and that’s the culture she created.”
“Bullying was rampant,” said another former staffer. “She expected blind loyalty with whatever she wanted to do with the department.”
While all this was happening, Ellis was also spending lots of city money to make sure she and her staff looked good on the public website.
A top San Francisco city official spent $80,000 hiring a company to take “dynamic portraits” of her small staff and to produce a video series that apparently never came to fruition, adding to mounting concerns about her spending habits…
“Our goal is to represent the unique spirit, identity, and character of each of the members for the Department’s official website,” the memo read. “Apply any makeup as you normally would. Our makeup artist will only be doing touch-ups, adjusting for lighting and weather conditions.”
Former staffers said the spending was an example of Ellis using resources in ways that seemed excessive or inappropriate at a department tasked with ensuring that women are represented equally at City Hall.
Ellis also hired a company owned by a friend, a life coach, to host a series of training sessions for her staff, paying nearly $85,000 over two recent fiscal years, according to interviews with former employees, city records and social media posts.
Earlier this month Ellis filed a claim of whistleblower retaliation. She said all the attempts to discredit and fire her were the result of the damaging information she had privately revealed about her own chief deputy.
The real reason the city is trying to oust her is because Ellis reported “credible and deeply disturbing allegations of misconduct” involving her chief deputy, Joe Macaluso, according to the lawsuit. The misconduct allegedly involved “efforts to conceal the sexual abuse of a minor in a city-funded foster care program and document forgery.”
“Director Ellis was not forced out for poor performance or ethical misconduct,” the lawsuit reads. “She was forced out for telling the truth, for defending the vulnerable and for refusing to quietly disappear. Her removal reflects not only unlawful retaliation but also a disturbing betrayal of the values San Francisco claims to champion.”
Ellis, who twice ran to chair the California Democratic Party before her appointment by Mayor London Breed in late 2020, described herself in the lawsuit as a nationally recognized Black woman leader and longtime champion of progressive values. She said she became a “political liability” for the city after the election of President Donald Trump.
The City Attorney’s office said the allegations made by Ellis were a blatant lie intended to distract from her own problems. “The city attorney has thoroughly investigated the allegations in her complaint, and they are baseless,” a spokesperson said.
Ellis’ fate will be decided today by a commission which overseas her agency. Mayor Lurie can’t fire her himself but is encouraging the commission to remove her.
Ellis reports to the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women, a seven-member panel also appointed by the mayor. The commission is set to decide in closed session Wednesday whether she gets to keep her job after Lurie recommended that the panel remove her, the sources said. The mayor does not have authority under the city charter to dismiss her on his own.
San Francisco didn’t really need an ugly scandal involving a high-profile progressive, but that’s what it has bee dealing with for the past month. We’ll have to wait a few more hours to see if she is ousted from her position.
