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Prominent S.F. developers charged with bribery in widening corruption scandal
- moralestapia 3y agohttps://siavashtahbazof.com/about/ https://siavashtahbazof.com/about/ LMAO, great story, almost brought tears to my eye; but something tells me a lot of details were intentionally left out :^)
- alephnerd 3y agoI mean, the escaping from Iran via Turkey story isn't that crazy. I've heard similar stories from Iranian friends and coworkers from that era. The Iran-Turkey border is Iranian Kurdistan which fell into chaos after the Iranian Revolution with a very brutal insurgency in the 80s, which occurred concurrently with the Iran-Iraq war which itself was horrendous. Despite all that people would literally try to escape via border regions under active war because the alternative in early 80s Iran was worse. All the other stuff might be filler or PR-ified but the first part definetly tracks.
- dboreham 3y agoTurns out: not software developers.
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- LastNevadan 3y agoI had the same reaction! Before I clicked the article, I was thinking that a bunch of Twitter or Salesforce people were going to jail.
- inopinatus 3y agoAlso not: science fiction.
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- cheriot 3y agoNobody should be surprised by this or think that these are the only bribes at DBI. It's a system designed to make bribes necessary, https://thefrisc.com/how-long-it-really-takes-to-get-a-building-permit-in-san-francisco-and-why-7f00dac3bf79 https://thefrisc.com/how-long-it-really-takes-to-get-a-build... The city invested in a building permit software system used by other cities in 2011, but that would make it easier to identify graft. From 5 years ago about the system that has still not been adopted, https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Building-inspectors-online-permit-tracking-6663895.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Building-inspect... Yet another way San Francisco snatches failure from the jaws of success.
- openthc 3y agoSimilar with other systems; eg some States appear to intentionally sabotage their cannabis tracking systems; reducing data integrity and making enforcement more difficult (subjective). Then act shocked when there are events of labs fixing the metric and inversion of materials.
- gotoeleven 3y agoWhy is it illegal to bribe an official to do their job? AFAICT from the article he was just bribing the SF city clowns to stop honking their noses once in a while. It seems like the only crime should be in accepting the bribe, not in offering it. Is this because this would be unfair to other people who would like the government to do its job and don't have money for bribes?
- justahuman74 3y agoSupply-induced demand. It's tempting. "All theses people keep offering me tons of money, but this mediocre-wage job keeps me and my family 100% financially satisfied"
- lend000 3y agoWhat's up with all the NIMBY's downvoting you? I'm also of the opinion that the penalty for accepting a bribe should be harsher than the penalty for offering one. From the article, it looks like both sides are being prosecuted, which is good, but tax dollars would be more productively spent working on a simpler, faster, less restrictive permitting system, instead of taking down people trying to work around the broken system. For those who are happy about the outcome here, are you also happy when people who grow their own marijuana end up in prison? I feel like a lot of people are missing the point that a broken local government is the root problem, not people inevitably trying to circumvent the broken system. Although sure, bribery only helps the wealthy and connected get around the bad laws.
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- monodeldiablo 3y agoI'm a little surprised that there are so many takes like yours in this thread. I don't mean to pick on you, but you seem awfully certain the briber is more ethically in the right here. I wonder, would you feel the same if this was a meat packer or kindergarten or dairy or hospital who was bribing inspectors? Building inspections are deadly serious, and when corrupt developers (who, in this case as in all cases, have the capacity to offer life-changing wealth to otherwise underpaid public bureaucrats) pay to cut corners, innocent people die. It took two to tango, here. The rich asshole paying to circumvent safety regulations is at least as culpable as the motion bureaucrat who accepted the bribe.
- kmeisthax 3y agoSomeone fell out of favor with the San Francisco government. Remember: the whole point of bribery is not just for the briber to gain an unfair market advantage. It also lets the bribee unaccountably extract phantom taxes from the wider economy. Furthermore, because participation in this system is illegal, the bribee can further blackmail the briber into paying additional bribes to avoid prosecution. Naive prosecutions of corruption can, ironically, institutionalize it.
- jeffbee 3y agoIt's a federal case. SF's system is almost intentionally designed to breed corruption. The reason is that elected officials are aligned with "community organizations" which are just extortion outfits, but favored ones, like MAC or TODCO. SF's policies direct the flow of bribes into these organizations, who if left un-bribed will sue to stop your project, and the groups in turn kick part of the money back into campaigns.
- primitivesuave 3y agoTODCO stopped construction on thousands of housing units for over 2 years by simply having a BoS member (Dean Preston) convince the board to perform a "race and equity study" that never happened [1]. They also refused to fire one of their directors who had sexually assaulted multiple people and left evidence of his crimes. 1. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/san-francisco-housing-17408816.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article...
- fuzzfactor 3y ago>SF's system is almost intentionally designed to breed corruption. One of the reasons for byzantine regulations and procedures in the first place is exactly to extract extraneous informal payments to those in position to smooth over the roadbumps which their kind created to begin with. It's the New Jersey way, badda-boom-badda-bing!
- renewiltord 3y agoThis is such a common thing in third-world countries that people who lived there can see it in SF immediately. It's very obvious, but I've found that Americans are a very honour-and-pride based culture, so it's best not to inform them that they're being suckered or they'll get upset at the messenger rather than the conman and will work very hard to believe anything but fact.
- jimrandomh 3y agoDon't forget, every time a bribe changes hands, there are _two_ criminals: the one who paid the bribe, and the one who received it. SF city bureaucracy is notorious for using flimsy pretexts to destroy projects, which is exactly what you would expect to see if they've designed a system to extract bribes, and are making examples of people who fail to pay.
- lazide 3y agoKinda. That the projects get destroyed under flimsy pretexts is also because the general voter direction is anti-development (really, don’t change anything). Plenty of places extract bribes while being pro-development too (they just generally more directly ask for bribes - or ‘planning fees’ - and are more consistent with it, so that it actually functions). Very few places with the type of control a city planning department has don’t end up corrupt.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> because the general voter direction is anti-development The problem seems more that most San Franciscans are civically uninvolved. There are elections where less than a third turn out [1]. From what I hear, most voters never bother reaching out to their electeds. So you have a naïve, ignorable centre. And vocal minorities who engage. Most San Franciscans are reasonable; the problem is they’re electorally irrelevant. [1] https://sfelections.sfgov.org/historical-voter-turnout https://sfelections.sfgov.org/historical-voter-turnout
- lazide 3y agoThey’re not reasonable voters if they never vote. Especially not when it’s a secret ballot system!
- InSteady 3y agoFYI that's actually pretty decent turnout for local elections. The national average for large cities in recent years is 15%, and cities like Las Vegas and Fort Worth had turnouts below 10 percent. [1] Note these are mayoral elections. When the mayor is not up for election and it's mostly councilors and local initiatives, turnout may be even lower. It's ironic, given that local issues actually tend to impact us more directly and immediately, while at the same time local elections are where your vote has proportionally the most impact (aside from a few unique situations thanks to screwy districting and the electoral college). [1] - http://whovotesformayor.org/ http://whovotesformayor.org/
- iancmceachern 3y agoMy wife and I have attended several local government functions in SF and I can say we are consistently impressed by the conduct of some, but flabbergasted by the conduct of most city officials. They're really genuinely at odds with the public in the city, they have real contempt for them and dont even hide it well. They view them as the enemy and actively work to quell their voice and continue the status quo. It's depressing really. Bad people.
- gustavus 3y agoIt sounds like A Very British Democracy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzfNEF0e-y4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzfNEF0e-y4
- swsdsailor 3y agoPaying a bribe should not get you in trouble. The city forces their hand. One stroke of their pen and your design costs increase by tens of thousands under some minor pretext. If you want to get something done you absolutely have to bribe them or they will decimate your budget with endless changes.
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- birdyrooster 3y agoAhh yes these pesky pretexts like regulations… look no further than China for what happens when one takes this to its logical conclusion.
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- gojomo 3y agoOne of the many reasons onerous discretionary land-development systems are bad is the giant opportunities & incentives for corruption. Some other comments have raised the question: if you're stuck in a corrupt system, should the payers of bribes to government officials be punished as harshly as public officials who take them? Or even punished at all? A way to square this circle without having open-season for payer-initiated corruption would be to allow blanket amnesty for bribes that are preemptively reported, whistleblower-style to an anticorruption agency or mechanism. That is, before delivering any money-for-favors, you pre-register (with a person or trustworthy system) your confession/testimony against the recipient, in a manner to be revealed automatically for prosecution at an appropriate time. Further, the payer could be given a default hard-to-reverse presumption of keeping any such purchased approvals, if-and-only-if the bribe-taker is punished/removed-from-office, and further the payer should be given first priority in recovering the bribe funds. Then, the incentive flips for everyone under pressure to pay bribes to instead become skillful 'sting' operatives against corrupt officials. Similar ideas have been suggested by prominent economists, including India's chief economic advisor 2009-2012 Kaushik Basu, before: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/03/reduce-bribery-make-it-legal.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/03/re...
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- akira2501 3y ago> should the payers of bribes to government officials be punished as harshly as public officials who take them? It depends. If the bribe is coerced through threats of violence? That should be seen as an extenuating cirumstance. If there are no such circumstances, then yes, they should absolutely be punished just as harshly. They had an opportunity to report the behavior and they passed on that to benefit themselves at the expense of others. > Then, the incentive flips for everyone under pressure to pay bribes to instead become skillful 'sting' operatives against corrupt officials. That's all very interesting. How about instead, we just hire law enforcement with specific skills in combating these crimes, and then let them work on it?
- TriangleEdge 3y agoI'm shocked \s. Is there a list of dark tetrad personality trait prevalence by occupation? I'm not sure how you'd quantify this, but I am curious in any case.
- alex_young 3y agohttp://web.archive.org/web/20231110163049/https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/sf-corruption-scandal-sia-tahbazof-18334456.php http://web.archive.org/web/20231110163049/https://www.sfchro...
- egberts1 3y agoAnyone remember the $1,700,000 single-toilet restroom in Noe Valley Town Square, San Francisco? https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/million-dollar-toilet-17518443.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article...