Good Morning, San Francisco

Broken clouds, 56 degrees, and the kind of damp gray that makes Karl the Fog feel less like weather and more like a roommate who never moves out. High of 59 — so don't get ambitious. The big one this morning: the city's own watchdog just confirmed a $5.9 million tech contract went to a mayoral donor without following the rules, and City Hall is calling that a win.

The City's Watchdog Said the Quiet Part. City Hall Pretended It Was a Compliment.

Here's the sequence, because the sequence is the story. Eight months ago, San Francisco handed a $5.9 million PermitSF software contract to OpenGov — a firm whose executives donated to Mayor Daniel Lurie's campaigns and his nonprofit. A better-rated, cheaper competitor lost. Supervisor Jackie Fielder started asking questions in October. This week, the independent Budget and Legislative Analyst answered them: the OpenGov selection process "did not follow best practices." And the mayor's office, reading a report that said it cut corners on a multimillion-dollar deal for a donor, stepped to the microphone and declared vindication.

Let's be precise about what "did not follow best practices" means when public money is involved. It means a software firm with deep financial ties to the person running the city leapfrogged a vendor that scored higher and cost less. The BLA report is measured — it doesn't allege a crime, and we won't either. But measured isn't the same as exonerating, and a watchdog telling you the process was flawed is not a press release you get to repurpose as a trophy. The reframing is the tell. When an administration has to launder a critical finding into a victory lap, it's because the actual finding stings.

This is the part where a fiscal conservative gets to be consistent regardless of party. Procurement rules exist for exactly one reason: so the public can trust that its money buys the best product at the best price, not the best-connected one. Every time a city skips the competitive process "because we liked this vendor," it's not just $5.9 million — it's the next contract, and the one after that, where everyone quietly understands that proximity to the mayor is worth more than a better bid. That's how a city gets expensive and mediocre at the same time.

Credit where it's due: Fielder pressed for eight months and the BLA did its job. The accountability machinery worked. What didn't work is the response — and a mayor who campaigned on competence should understand that "we technically didn't break the law" is a bar low enough to trip over. San Franciscans paying some of the highest taxes in America deserve a procurement process they don't have to audit afterward.

The Rundown

City Hall & Politics

Newsom went nuclear on the DOJ this week, announcing that federal investigators are probing his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom's finances and nonprofits, and accusing Trump of weaponizing Justice against a 2028 rival. Here's the thing the governor would rather you skip: the probe isn't conjured from nothing — it traces partly to his former chief of staff Dana Williamson, who pleaded guilty in May to felonies including lying to the FBI. Two things can be true. A DOJ can be wielded as a political weapon and a genuine corruption case can sit underneath it. Watch both hands.

Public Safety & Privacy

Three Castro bars — Mix, Badlands, and Toad Hall — are now scanning patrons' faces with Patronscan Guard+ kiosks that log your name, address, gender, and "behavioral flags," then share bans across a nine-venue network. The kicker: SF's celebrated 2019 facial-recognition ban only covers government use. So the city tied its own hands and left the private surveillance market wide open. If biometric scanning is too invasive for the cops, it's worth asking why it's fine at the door of a bar — and whether anyone consented to a database when they ordered a beer.

Housing, Transit & the Bay

The king tides left a high-water ring on the Embarcadero this week, and the Port is holding a forum tonight at the Ferry Building about defending the waterfront. The numbers are the headline: voters approved a $425 million seawall bond in 2018, but regional shoreline protection for the whole Bay Area is now pegged at $96 billion. That's not a rounding error — it's a 226-fold gap between what we've budgeted and what the bill might be. Before anyone floats a new bond, taxpayers are owed a straight answer on what the last one actually bought.

Speaking of the Bay — at low tide, the trail past Colma Creek in South San Francisco reveals dozens of submerged shopping carts, which Save the Bay calls the densest concentration it's ever recorded. A small, grim monument to the fact that "someone else will deal with it" is not a waste-management strategy.

Tech & Startups

That viral photo of a DoorDash robot being chaperoned by a human in Fremont isn't irony — it's the permit. The city's encroachment permit mandates on-site human escorts for the current three-robot Phase 1A pilot. The autonomous future is coming; it just has a babysitter for now. Fine by us — better a cautious rollout than a sidewalk full of unsupervised coolers-on-wheels.

Culture & Food

The MLB story that won't sit still: the league warned three Giants pitchers for writing a Bible verse on their Pride Night caps under Rule 3.03 — a uniform rule that stayed asleep when Clayton Kershaw wrote the identical verse in 2025 and when players wore "SOS Cuba" messages at the 2021 All-Star Game. Selective enforcement of a dormant rule, with no explanation, is the whole problem. Apply the rule to everyone or admit it's not really about the rule.

Lighter fare: Stanford booked E-40 for a Miami halftime show on September 4 — a gloriously Bay Area answer to getting dragged into an ACC two time zones away. The SF Art Book Fair returns to Dogpatch July 23–26 for its 10th year, free all four days, 160-plus exhibitors. And the Pokémon World Championships hit Moscone and Chase Center this August with an SF-themed Pikachu promo card — note the ticket interest list closes Wednesday, June 18.

One More Thing

The city's launching fireworks off the Golden Gate Bridge on July 4 for the first time since 2012 — a genuinely cool, free spectacle for America's 250th. Small problem: July 4 is peak fog season, there's no announced contingency plan, and Karl the Fog has never been a team player. Place your bets accordingly.