Lurie should wear a hardhat all the time
POSTED INGOVERNMENT
S.F. supervisors advance $33M OpenGov extension — but without their blessing
The non-decision came after hours of debate over the project’s lack of a clear plan — or whether it was awarded fairly
by BRANDON PHOSeptember 2, 2026, 3:59 pm
Mayor Daniel Lurie at Napper Tandy on the World Cup opener day, June 11, 2026. Photo by Zoe Malen.Play
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A committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Wednesday couldn’t bring itself to take a formal stance on a proposed $33 million contract extension for a controversial permitting system that’s still grappling with basic tasks and lacks a clear plan for phasing in more complex ones.
The Budget and Finance Committee spent hours debating whether the contract — awarded to OpenGov by Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office last year without a formal bidding process — was even fair.
Supervisors Danny Sauter, Chyanne Chen and Matt Dorsey then opted unanimously to advance the vote on locking in OpenGov through 2031 to the full board without an up or down recommendation.
The three supervisors were largely in agreement that they supported Lurie’s effort, in the abstract, to overhaul an archaic and redundant permitting system fragmented across multiple departments.
But, after hours of questions about whether the procurement process was above-board, and whether the $33 million additional investment was sound amid mixed results from OpenGov’s first year, their opinions varied on the specific proposal before them — even as the deal’s proponents, in a concession, floated an option to terminate the contract after a single additional year of substandard results.
“There is not enough data that demonstrates [OpenGov] works as intended,” Chen said before the vote. San Francisco Supervisors Matt Dorsey, Chyanne Chen, and Danny Sauter voted to advance OpenGov without a formal stance. Photo by Brandon Pho.
While Dorsey opted not to make a recommendation, he indicated on Wednesday that he’s supportive of the deal, especially in light of the proposed early termination provision.
“In my own conversations with the mayor’s office, I made clear the absence of that provision was causing me to look at the contract unfavorably,” Dorsey said.
Discussing the fairness of OpenGov being awarded its initial $5.9 million contract without a competitive bidding process, Fred Brousseau, the director of policy analysis for the board’s Budget and Legislative Analyst, summarized his report from earlier this year.
It found that Lurie’s award to OpenGov in October 2025 “did not conform to typical City practice or best practices,” but also “did not violate city requirements.”
At the meeting, Brousseau said he found transparency and fairness “lacking” from the selection process.
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PermitSF director Liz Watty, who has overseen OpenGov’s implementation, acknowledged myriad lessons learned from the first year of the software and its selection process.
She admitted that she and the mayor’s office could have standardized scoring among staff of competing software programs. She said there weren’t enough staff to help OpenGov meet its performance metrics.
But she insisted on greenlighting the $33 million extension without a full roadmap of milestones and deliverables — a lingering concern among city staffers on Wednesday, who raised an option of reducing the extension amount to $12 million.
Watty pushed back on this: “We will not see progress if we try to map that out at the beginning,” she said.
Lingering questions
Almost a year ago, Lurie’s office awarded a $5.9 million, one-year contract to overhaul the city’s byzantine and archaic permitting systems to OpenGov, a largely untested tech firm with connections to Lurie’s former nonprofit, Tipping Point. This occurred without a formal bidding process, and over the objections of departmental staff.
At the time, the mayor’s office claimed OpenGov was the only vendor capable of rolling out the new system quickly enough. But OpenGov has since missed key deadlines by several months to roll out basic permits. The software Lurie championed still has limited functionality and, city workers say, is still only being applied to simpler tasks.
While OpenGov is eventually supposed to consolidate the city’s permitting redundancies under one platform, three workers from different departments who spoke to Mission Local said their teams are still forced to use the old system simultaneously with OpenGov.
The inspector general, the city’s fraud watchdog, also announced on Monday that it’s looking into OpenGov’s ability to ensure integrity in the city permitting process and “prevent improper activities.”
The inspector general — a newly created role in the controller’s office to investigate waste and abuse in the city — said it expects to release its report sometime in the fall, according to a letter to the committee regarding its OpenGov vote.
Supervisor Jackie Fielder, who called for a hearing on the lack of a competitive bidding process on the initial OpenGov award, questioned why the extension had to span a full five years.
“I can’t say for sure the contract deserves more than one year without clear deliverables,” Fielder said.
Watty said that truncating the extension would place more uncertainty on city departments waiting to be folded into OpenGov, and that a five-year term, versus annual extensions, might be more cost-effective.
“When you buy in bulk,” she said, “you usually get a better price.”
BRANDON PHO
Brandon Pho covers tech and power in San Francisco.
He has reported on communities up and down California since 2018.
Right before joining Mission Local, he sparked a California lawsuit against the federal government after obtaining and publishing the blueprints for a secret Bay Area ICE facility.
He likes the TV series ‘Columbo’ and lives under the panoptic surveillance of his two cats near Mission Dolores.More by Brandon Pho
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3 Comments
Lanasays:September 2, 2026, 6:10 pm at 6:10 pmSo PermitSF director Liz Watty who has failed at her job, demands a 5 year extension and an extra $33M with no benchmarks? The Supervisors should have rejected this instead of kicking it upstairs.+40votes. Sign in to voteReply
Martha B.says:September 2, 2026, 5:03 pm at 5:03 pmCheyenne is such a disappointment.+10votes. Sign in to voteReply
Danielsays:September 2, 2026, 6:01 pm at 6:01 pm“in the abstract”, the lifeblood of state and local governance. /s
So these people spent hours deliberating whether a no-bid contract (without sole source justification if you’re the federal governmebt) was “fair”. Help is on the way, the anwser is: hella no.+10votes. Sign in to voteReplyh. brownsays:September 3, 2026, 12:04 pm at 12:04 pmYour comment is awaiting moderation.“It looks like a straight giveaway.” Now that was about as blunt as the BOS Budget Analyst ever got in his about a hundred years of looking at a couple of dozen mayors and their ways of divvying out the billions and billions that flowed across the top of the desk of Harvey Rose. He was commenting on a 25 million dollar contract that Mayor Willie Brown wanted approved and expected the “serviced mistresses” that were His BOS to pass but then the Class of 2000 came along to join Harvey who was the best financial goalie this City has seen. “The hardest part about my job is telling people in high places that the things they want to do are not legal. But then, I tell them how to do it legally.” Ed Harrignton, Controller at the time I believe in an interview with SPUR. This sounds like something that you’d want to bring in the City’s new Inspector General for cause she scares the living bejeebees out of scammers (not saying they are) by just appearing in a situation like this cause she’s the one who put Nuru in the slammer. Did you know that over at the Police Commission their President, C. Don Clay who spent his career as a crime fighting judge was tossing 95 mile an hour fastballs in college ? Just a little inside baseball there. go Niners !! (Incidentally, apparently ML bought a new application cause a message just flashed across my screen criticizing my grammar. Can y’all imagine that shit ?) lol n
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