Editorial : Is the City and County of San Francisco still deep into the culture of public corruption and collusion?

***Corrections: An earlier version of this editorial, published July 12, 2022, incorrectly reported that Sing Tao Daily didn't submit its application for San Francisco Outreach advertising. In fact, Sing Tao Daily submitted its application. This version has been corrected and updated the information related to the factual error. ***

As a reporter covering criminal justice in San Francisco for over three decades, I have written numerous stories related to corruption. But I was looking at those corruption cases in the past as an outsider and journalist.

Now I am playing one more role as the founder and publisher of an English and Chinese bilingual weekly newspaper, Wind Newspaper. I have never felt the culture of public corruption and collusion within the San Francisco city government that close to me until recently, as an applicant on behalf of Wind Newspaper bidding for the city's outreach advertising contract for the fiscal year of 2022-2023. My latest experience is happening among our Chinese American community.

A number of the city's officials, corporations, business and community leaders have been indicted by the federal authorities since the beginning of 2020 related to the corrupt activities inside the city government. Public corruption scandals have shocked the public. At the latest June 7 election this year, San Francisco voters approved three ballot measures, Propositions B, E and F, to adopt reforms to fight against corruption.

In 1994, San Francisco voters passed Proposition J to mandate the Office of Contract Administration (OCA) to manage the outreach advertising bidding process annually and open the applications to all publications which circulate in the city. OCA would select a list of recommended publications and send it to the Board of Supervisors for final approval.

As the only locally-owned and local news oriented newspaper serving the Chinese community in language in the city, Wind Newspaper was encouraged by the San Francisco Independent Press Association in 2021 to submit an application for the outreach advertising contract for fiscal year 2021-2022. The Wind was designated as the Chinatown neighborhood outreach paper by the city a year ago. I am so proud to have the honor to outreach my own community in Chinatown.

By looking back for the past year, I am also very proud to see our circulation has grown over 30% from 3,000 print copies in 2021 to 4,000 copies currently. We submitted our application both for the Chinatown neighborhood and city-wide Chinese community outreach contracts this year in April, since our circulation has expanded to all Asian neighborhoods in the city, including Sunset, Richmond, Portola, Visitacion Valley and Excelsior.

I recognize the significance of the city's outreach advertising message for our community to keep them informed with updates. I submitted our application before the deadline in April.

OCA announced the recommended list of outreach advertising in June. Wind Newspaper was on the list of Chinatown neighborhood outreach, same as last year for the fiscal year of 2021-2022. We were not recommended for the city-wide Chinese community outreach. Again we are very proud to be recommended to reach out to the Chinatown community.

However, when I checked online the bidding results provided by OCA, I was so shocked to find that our circulation was reduced to 1,450 per week from 4,000 per week that we submitted with the related documents to prove the circulation.

The wrong circulation made our awarded points to be lower than another bidding newspaper, World Journal. Not only misinformation was entered, the scoring system was unfair to us. As a result, Wind Newspaper was ranked second and the top bidder went to World Journal.

Four Chinese language newspapers serve the community in San Francisco

Within the San Francisco city boundary, there are four Chinese language newspapers, World Journal, Sing Tao Daily, China Press, and Wind Newspaper, serving the immigrant Chinese community.

World Journal is owned by the United Daily News Corporation based in Taiwan. Sing Tao Daily is owned by the Sing Tao News Corporation headquartered in Hong Kong. Both are paid newspapers and published daily.

Sing Tao Daily circulates in the major metro cities of the United States and Canada. According to a report published on August 25, 2021 by Axios New Service at the East Coast, "The DOJ (Justice Department) has stepped up scrutiny of foreign-owned media in recent years, and its demand that Sing Tao U.S. register as a foreign agent comes amid high tension between Washington and Beijing over the latter's influence efforts in the U.S." [https://www.axios.com/2021/08/25/doj-chinese-owned-sing-tao-newspaper-foreign-agent](https://www.axios.com/2021/08/25/doj-chinese-owned-sing-tao-newspaper-foreign-agent)

China Press circulates in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay Area. Its news content focuses on China. Both China Press and Wind Newspaper are weekly newspapers and free for their readers.

In accordance with the data released by OCA, 16 publications submitted applications this year to bid for the outreach advertising contracts and 9 were selected to be recommended to the Board of Supervisors for approval.

The data from OCA shows that Sing Tao Daily and China Press submitted their applications. Both newspapers were listed as “Incomplete” or “Non-responsive” in the compliance summary for evaluation.

On June 22, the Budget and Appropriations Committee discussed the recommended outreach advertising list in the meeting. Supervisor Connie Chan proposed an amendment to add Sing Tao Daily to the list for five neighborhoods, including Chinatown, Visitacion Valley, Richmond, Sunset and Excelsior.

"Sing Tao Daily is an important publication for the Chinese speaking community in San Francisco. It serves different populations than other neighborhood papers in Chinese language. So in order to make sure our Chinese community in Chinatown, Portola, Visitacion Valley, the Richmond and Sunset are equity served, I would like to also add the Excelsior, I make a motion to include these neighborhoods to the bottom of this resolution," Chan stated in the Budget and Appropriations Committee meeting.

The amendment was seconded by Supervisor Hillary Ronen who serves as the Budget and Appropriations Committee Chair. All five members of the committee, Ronen, Chan, Supervisors Gordon Mar, Shamann Walton and Ahsha Safai, voted for the amendment. The entire outreach advertising list including the amendment proposed by Chan would be voted by the full board on July 12.

City Hall insiders were also surprised to hear Chan's amendment. In my opinion, it was inappropriate for Chan to add Sing Tao Daily to the list. Why did Chan still add Sing Tao Daily when OCA has recommended World Journal and Wind Newspaper on the list? Why did Chan add Sing Tao Daily to outreach five Asian neighborhoods while World Journal and Wind Newspaper also circulate in those five neighborhoods?

Chan who speaks fluent Cantonese and Mandarin is a frequent guest at the Sing Tao Chinese Radio shows. Chan was offered to be the 8-week live radio and Youtube talk show co-hosts with Sing Tao Daily Editor on Friday mornings from June 10 to July 29. The advertisements to promote the radio talk show with a big photo of Chan are published almost every other day in the Sing Tao Daily.

Among four Chinese language newspapers in the city, Sing Tao Daily is the only newspaper to publish its political endorsements for all elections. In the last two elections, Sing Tao Daily endorsed David Campos in the April 19 Assembly District 17 election and recommended a no vote on Proposition H at June 7 election in which voters would decide if District Attorney Chesa Boudin should be recalled. Both Campos and Boudin are political allies of Chan.

Chan has sent a wrong message and impression to the community that she has possibly provided preferential treatment to Sing Tao Daily in exchange for her political advantage. As a result, she also created unfair competition between all the applicants in the outreach advertising bidding process. Did Chan violate the city's ethics law?

For Sing Tao Daily, they can exercise their freedom of the press and freedom of the media to invite any elected officials to their radio shows at any time to talk about issues. Sing Tao Daily also has its full discretion to make endorsements for all elections. They can decide if they want to bid for the city's outreach advertising contract.

But as an elected official, Chan is subjected to follow a higher standard of ethics to make decisions on her job.

There are still many unanswered questions for me. Why did OCA reduce the circulation number of Wind Newspaper that led to World Journal winning the bid for Chinese community outreach? I filed complaints with OCA and City Administrator Carmen Chu, who oversees OCA, on June 27 to demand the clarification of misinformation on the circulation. As of July 12 before our press time, the circulation number has not been fixed.

I sent further complaints to all eleven Supervisors and the Ethics Commission on July 11. As of July 12 by press time, none of them have replied to my complaints.

** Portia Li is the Founder and Publisher of Wind Newspaper, an English and Chinese bilingual weekly launched on September 1, 2020 with print edition primarily serving in the City and County of San Francisco.