SEC. 3.400A. FINDINGS.
§ 3.400A
The Board of Supervisors establishes that transparency in the City's permitting process protects public confidence in fairness. This chapter requires permit consultants to disclose who pays them, which permits they work on, which City employees they contact, and their political contributions to City officials.
The City wants people to know more about how permit consultants work. Permit consultants are people hired to help others get permits from the City. This rule says consultants must tell the public who is paying them, what permits they are trying to get, which City workers they talk to, and how much money they give to City politicians. The idea is to make sure the permitting process is fair and that people can see what is really happening.
- Controversial:Mandatory disclosure of political contributions and contact with City employees in the permitting process is the kind of regulation that reasonable San Franciscans disagree about regarding government transparency and consultant lobbying.
AI-generated · claude-haiku-4-5 · informational only, not legal advice.
Official text
The Board of Supervisors finds that bringing greater transparency to the City and County’s permitting process is essential to protect public confidence in the fairness and impartiality of that process. It is the purpose and intent of this Chapter 4 to impose reasonable disclosure requirements on permit consultants to provide the public with information about who is paying the consultants, the permits they are getting paid to obtain, the City employees with whom they have had contact in the course of obtaining the permits, and the political contributions they have made to City officials.
(Added as Sec. 3.400 by Ord. 98-14 , File No. 130374, App. 6/26/2014, Eff. 7/26/2014; redesignated and amended by Ord. 6-17, File No. 161081, App. 1/20/2017, Eff. 2/19/2017; re-enacted by Proposition D, 3/5/2024, Eff. 4/12/2024, Oper. 10/12/2024)
Editor's Note: This section was designated as "3.400" when enacted by Ord. 98-14. The section was redesignated by the codifier in order to avoid conflicting with previously existing material. Ord. 6-17 made the redesignation as “3.400A” official.