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Ethics Commission orders more briefing on Cheryl Davis case after defense cites DA inquiry
Summary
After defense counsel said the district attorney has sought and received Davis’s records, the Ethics Commission voted to request further briefing and appointed a commissioner as prehearing officer to decide preliminary matters in the Cheryl Davis administrative case.
The San Francisco Ethics Commission on Feb. 13 voted to request additional briefing and to appoint a commissioner as a prehearing officer to resolve preliminary matters in the administrative case against Cheryl Davis, the former executive director of the Human Rights Commission.
Senior Investigator Bertha Chung told the commission the case alleges 41 violations across 31 counts, including prohibited gifts, reporting failures and conflict-of-interest claims. "This matter proceeds to an administrative hearing," Chung said, but today’s item was limited to preliminary, procedural motions.
Respondent counsel James Quadra asked the commission to stay proceedings while any criminal investigation or prosecutorial decision is pending, and to adjudicate Davis’s Fifth Amendment protections before requiring substantive administrative testimony. Quadra said documents belonging to the respondent had been subpoenaed by the district attorney, including Google Drive materials, and that the defense had received notice that those materials were produced to the DA.
Chair Flores Fane said the commission would benefit from further briefing on whether a stay is appropriate. The chair moved to request additional briefing from both parties on the stay/Fifth Amendment issues, to appoint a commissioner as the prehearing officer to review preliminary matters and return recommendations to the full commission, and to set a 30-calendar-day deadline for filing prehearing motions. The full commission voted 4–0 to adopt the motion.
Enforcement staff and a former enforcement director told commissioners that, while the commission can consider closing or deferring matters in light of overlapping criminal proceedings, there was no public evidence today of a pending criminal charge in this case. Staff said that if charges are filed or if a remedy is being pursued in another forum, that can be considered under the commission’s enforcement regulations.
The commission’s action was procedural: it directed additional written briefing and named a prehearing officer to decide threshold issues; no final merits determination was made at the meeting.
