By Michael Barba : sfchronicle – excerpt (audio)
Nearly a year ago, the city’s top park official received an ominous message.
The San Francisco Parks Alliance, the big and politically connected nonprofit that Recreation and Park Department General Manager Phil Ginsburg had relied on for years as a conduit for private dollars to fund public projects, was facing “dire cash flow shortages.”
The words came not from a whistleblower, but directly from the nonprofit’s then-CEO, who admitted the problem in a message to a key donor last June that was forwarded to the city. Ginsburg sought assurances from the Parks Alliance that the funding it held for his department was secure.
But it wasn’t until 10 months later that Ginsburg halted his department’s relationship with the Parks Alliance and alerted other city officials. By then, the group had misspent millions of dollars earmarked for specific projects to cover its operating expenses and was headed toward potential insolvency…
The district attorney, city attorney and controller are investigating, and Mayor Daniel Lurie has frozen the flow of funding between the nonprofit and all agencies. Supervisor Shamann Walton is holding a hearing on the crisis at City Hall next week, and Supervisor Jackie Fielder has called for a full audit of Ginsburg’s department and its financial ties to the nonprofit.
The Parks Alliance has served as a pass-through for big donors to help fund city projects such as the construction of a state-of-the-art tennis center in Golden Gate Park and the opening of a new waterfront park in the Bayview. It also acts like a bank for more than 80 small community groups around San Francisco that pay the nonprofit a small fee to collect donations and grants on their behalf and disperse the money when they need to use it to care for playgrounds, trails and other parks projects
Former Supervisor Aaron Peskin, a longtime critic of Ginsburg and the Parks Alliance, said Ginsburg should have reported the organization’s financial problems months earlier to the mayor, the controller and other agencies that fund the nonprofit.
Peskin said Ginsburg had erred in protecting and championing the Parks Alliance for years, even after the organization in 2020 became implicated — but not charged — in an FBI bribery investigation. The nonprofit was used to funnel about $1 million from waste company Recology to disgraced former Public Works head Mohammed Nuru, who spent the donations on parties and merchandise for his staff.
“The public and the mayor need to know that this scandal was preventable and happened in large part because the general manager of rec and park was so closely tied to and invested in the Parks Alliance,” Peskin said. “If people are not held accountable, it sends a message to the public and to the rest of the government that there are no consequences.”…(more)
I’m shocked! Shocked I say.” to hear that Ending Nuru’s reign at the Parks Alliance under a cloud did not end the corruption and abuse at the all to powerfully connected denounced non-profit. Ginsburg’s name popping up is no surprise. How could he have not have noticed that something was amiss with his department finances?
So many questions were never answered when Nuru left.
How much money was laundered through the agency that so many non-profits trusted to provide banking services for them?
Why were the investigations into Parks Alliance affiliates stalled after the Nuru incident was exposed?
How much momentum was lost by the switch between parties that cut off the initial FBI investigations based on complaints filed by whistleblowers?
How many cases were left out of the investigation? No doubt the successor to Nuru 1 cannot be far removed from the top of the power pyramid.
Has no one noticed that a lot of city departments and affiliates use the same PR firm? No one sees any conflicts during an election?
