Earlier today I wrote about an infant who overdosed on fentanyl while playing in a park. The child’s nanny had taken her to the park for a walk and among the detritus left by druggies was enough fentanyl to cause a near-fatal overdose. Luckily the EMTs arrived and saved her life.

This is modern San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi’s shining city on a hill. The park is a few blocks from Pelosi’s scene of the crime home.

I stumbled across this new investigative report an hour after I finished writing that post, and it helps explain why San Francisco is a literal crap-filled mess.

Hundreds of SF gov employees illegally moonlight w second jobs at city-funded nonprofits. One health department worker had a secret $123k job on top of her $428k city gov compensation. https://t.co/zWs1odqg3e

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) December 1, 2022

As I have said before, public employment in San Francisco isn’t public service; it is nothing but another government grift. Not that most of the taxpayers in San Francisco don’t deserve to lose money to the confidence men; they are idiotic enough to keep voting for this crap.

Still, David Sjostedt of the San Francisco Standard deserves kudos for reporting the story. If San Franciscans aren’t engaged enough to care about the decline of their once-breathtaking city, at least people from more sane venues can learn from their experience.

At least 300 people have held unauthorized second jobs while working for the city’s Department of Public Health and are only now seeking approval as the city investigates the practice.

The health department said on Wednesday that it has received 300 additional requests for secondary employment since Oct. 21, the day that Jail Health Services director Lisa Pratt resigned from her second job at a city-contracted nonprofit.

The surge of dual employment applications came after the health department reminded employees of their responsibilities to seek permission for secondary jobs. The city launched an audit of the practice after The Standard revealed that Pratt, a top public health executive, was moonlighting 20 hours a week for the nonprofit Baker Places in violation of city rules.

The department said that of 304 currently pending applications, 44 are in need of additional paperwork and 260 are under review.

“In other words, those 300 were violating the law, never asked for permission and are now asking for forgiveness?” said Supervisor Aaron Peskin.“Well shit, somebody call the police.”

Notice how the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (city council in regularspeak) guy expresses shock and outrage? That’s BS. This has been going on for years, and the only crime these people committed was not asking for permission to bilk the taxpayers out of money.

And it’s not just that they are working for other employers in 2nd jobs. They are working for employers who get business and grants from the city in the very areas these public employees manage. This is simple bribery, nothing less. And it is standard practice in the city, and only frowned upon when they fail to inform the city that they are doing so.

There are 137 health department employees who have an already approved side job for an entity outside of city government, the most of any city department by far. If you add that number to the 304 pending requests, then 441 health department employees work second jobs, making up 6% of the department’s total workforce. 

Meanwhile, the Public Utilities Commission has the second-most employees working second jobs, with 18 employees reporting side gigs, which amounts to 1% of its workers. 

Perhaps you might suppose that, given San Francisco’s high cost of living these poor city workers have to find second jobs to make ends meet? You know, a school teacher getting a job as wait staff at a diner?

Uh, no.

Employees are barred from working jobs that contradict, interfere or present a conflict of interest with their city job, according to the city attorney’s Good Government Guide.

In Pratt’s case, her city job running health care in the city’s jails requires her to be on call for the city 24/7, and public record emails obtained by The Standard show her routinely responding to emails for the nonprofit during normal business hours. Pratt earned $123,000 annually at Baker Places on top of her $428,750 city compensation.

“The department is confident that this new process will ensure greater compliance and reduce confusion among employees about their responsibilities when seeking additional employment,” said the health department in a statement.

San Francisco has a “good government guide.” How appropriate. Whenever the city or its employees get caught doing shady stuff they can point to the “good government guide” and claim that any problem is an aberration, not systemic. The city is all-in on good government. The results speak for themselves, after all.

The results of this incestuous relationship between government workers and the nonprofits they grift for are obvious: hideously expensive “services” that perpetuate, not solve the underlying problems. The nonprofits need the problem to persist in order to keep the gravy train going, and the city workers get paid to ensure that happens.

That’s why it costs $60,000 to monitor each tent in a city-provided tent city. We are not talking about large tent structures the city puts up to house lots of homeless people. These are the camping tents that the homeless put up on city property lent to them by the bureaucracy across from City Hall.

The bureaucrats get that money, not the homeless people. They are just the excuse for the public employment their existence ensures. No wonder the city is a magnet for homeless people: the city workers need them to get the big bucks.

If you think these problems are limited to the bluest of the Blue cities in the Left coast, you are sorely mistaken. Local governments have become the employer of choice for some of the most incompetent and greedy folks in the US. People who are too useless to employ at even the most bloated corporations.

Sure, there are a lot of dedicated city and county workers who labor to do the right thing. As critical as I am of government unions and government itself, there are actually lots of people doing yeoman’s work keeping our cities functioning. I just wish those were the people running things. Usually they are not. They are victims of the same system that the rest of us are, and frustrated as hell by what is going on.

But in most cases the people at the top are grifting, incompetent boobs who should be homeless themselves if there were any justice. But they are children of the Elite™, or have somehow obtained impressive credentials that immunize them from criticism. They are the Experts™, and they are destroying our country.

None of these people are getting fired for their malfeasance. The Jail Health Services director Lisa Pratt who violated the law by moonlighting for a related nonprofit simply had to resign from her outside job, retaining her $500k city job.

The next time you hear somebody say “government should do…” or “there should be a law…” just say no. Government screws everything up, usually intentionally. The more problems the government has to solve the more money it can steal from taxpayers.

Government is the only business where you get more money the more you fail. And when you pay for failure, you get more of it.