The head of a San Francisco political group that financed the recall of progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin faces a hefty fine for failing to report payments to a public relations firm, according to a new filing with the city’s Ethics Commission.
Jay Cheng and his embattled political group Neighbors for a Better San Francisco Advocacy are expected to be fined $53,916 for not disclosing $187,084 in payments to Riff City Strategies.
Cheng and the Ethics Commission have agreed on the settlement, which the oversight body will take up Friday at its next meeting.
Cheng’s group made the payments from September 2021 through June 2022 for “strategic communications and media relations” during the recall campaign that ousted Boudin and cleared the way for the mayor to appoint Brooke Jenkins as district attorney.
Ethics watchdogs say Neighbors for a Better San Francisco violated San Francisco law by making no mention of the PR firm payments as contributions or expenditures in the recall campaign.
“By paying Riff City to perform personal services of a political nature, Neighbors made political expenditures as defined in state and city law,” the settlement says. “This is because Riff City Strategies spent more than 10% of its compensated time during several months rendering services for political purposes to the Recall Committee at the request or direction of Neighbors Advocacy.”
Neighbors for a Better San Francisco was the largest backer of the Boudin recall campaign, contributing a total of $4.47 million.
The commission found no evidence of wrongdoing by Riff City Strategies or its president, Jess Montejano, who is now the spokesperson for Mark Farrell’s campaign to unseat Mayor London Breed. Montejano declined to comment.
The settlement also mentioned payments made to Jenkins for consulting work as an “independent contractor” that netted her a six-figure salary. The commission order pegs the amount at $175,770, which she earned between October 2021 and July 2022.
Previously, Jenkins said her work for Neighbors was unrelated to the Boudin recall campaign but was part of an analysis of Proposition 47.
The ethics settlement did not say Jenkins committed any wrongdoing in the course of her work for the recall campaign. It said disclosure would be required if Jenkins had spent more than 10% of her paid time on “political activities,” but “available records do not clearly establish any violations stemming from this activity.”
In a statement, Neighbors said that the California Fair Political Practices Commission exonerated the group, but it decided to settle the complaint with the Ethics Commission.
“Since 2022, we have put a number of controls and procedures in place to make sure that no matter how small the expense, such an error does not occur again. In this case, it was less than 5% of our total expenditures to the recall campaign,” the statement said.
Joe Arellano, Breed’s campaign spokesperson, said the fine shows that Farrell’s mayoral bid is led by people with “questionable tactics” like slush funds, money laundering and secret back-door payments.
“Mark Farrell likes to tout his business acumen on the campaign trail,” Arellano said in a statement, “but it’s clear he’s more Vito Corleone than Bill Gates.”
Farrell did not immediately return a request for comment.