Sheryl Davis, the former head of San Francisco's Human Rights Commission, has been arrested and charged with felonies alongside an alleged collaborator. And if you've been paying attention to how this city runs its bureaucratic apparatus, the only surprising thing is that someone actually got charged.

Let's be clear about what's at stake here: Davis held a position of enormous public trust. The Human Rights Commission isn't some obscure back-office operation — it's a body that San Franciscans are told exists to protect them. When someone at that level allegedly abuses their authority, it doesn't just damage one office. It corrodes the already-thin trust between residents and the sprawling city government that keeps asking for more of their money.

San Francisco spends more per capita than virtually any city in America. We have budgets that would make mid-sized countries blush. And yet, time after time, we see officials entrusted with public dollars and public power allegedly using their positions for personal gain. The pattern is exhausting, and it's expensive — not just in direct costs, but in the institutional credibility that evaporates every time another headline drops.

Here's what we'd like to see: accountability that doesn't stop at one arrest. How did this happen? What oversight mechanisms failed? Were there red flags that got ignored because questioning a well-connected official was politically inconvenient? These are the questions the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor's office should be answering — publicly and in detail.

San Franciscans deserve a government that works as hard as they do. Every dollar misused is a dollar that didn't go toward fixing our streets, making our neighborhoods safer, or addressing the housing crisis that's pushing working people out of the city.

Davis is entitled to her day in court, and we'll follow this case closely. But the broader lesson is one this city keeps refusing to learn: more spending without more accountability is just writing blank checks to people who may not deserve them.