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Public commenter says DBI follow-up report misstates implementation of controller recommendations
Summary
A member of the public told the Building Inspection Commission that an August 2024 follow-up to a 2021 public integrity review wrongly reports that all recommendations were implemented and cited missing internal reports and limits on fee changes.
A member of the public told the San Francisco Building Inspection Commission on Feb. 19 that a controller follow-up report issued in August 2024 incorrectly states that the Department of Building Inspection implemented all eight recommendations from a September 2021 public integrity review.
Jerry Dratler, a public commenter, displayed slides and handed out documents during the commission’s general public-comment period and said, “The controller issued a public integrity review update in August of 2024 that falsely reports that all 8 recommendations from the September 2021 public integrity review have been implemented.”
Dratler flagged two recommendations he called “critical” that he said remained unimplemented 3½ years after the 2021 review: that the department use available data to track and investigate “red-flag” inspection issues, and that financial penalties for code noncompliance be increased. He said the follow-up report’s summary table lists both items as “implemented.”
“DBI is not allowed to increase penalty fees without a fee study,” Dratler said, pointing to the DBI 2024 fee study and to page 52 of the controller follow-up report. He told commissioners the fee study “specifically excluded a review of fines and penalties.”
Dratler also said DBI has not produced management-control reports to monitor inspector activities cited in the audit — for example, unscheduled inspections, out-of-district inspections, senior inspectors performing inspections they should not, and inspections on expired permits — and that his public records request returned a DBI response that “there are no reports, and they're working on it.”
He named several building-specific items in his slides, including 147 Wood Street and 533 Vicente Street, and referenced a lawsuit and a $1.8 million settlement he said appeared in the record. Those project-level references were presented as supporting examples of his broader claim that controls were not in place or not operating as the follow-up report described.
Commissioners did not take formal action during public comment, but at the end of the director’s report discussion a commissioner asked staff to provide an update and suggested the matter could be placed on a future agenda. Vice President Shattucks and other commissioners indicated interest in a staff briefing to clarify outstanding audit items.
The comments were part of the meeting’s public-comment period; no official DBI written response was provided on the record during the Feb. 19 meeting.
Ending: The commissioner who raised the request for a staff update said the commission secretary and the commission president should determine the appropriate path to present that information at a future meeting.
