Matthew Hirsch (San Francisco Bay Guardian): The nonprofit gold rush

[Jack Rabbit]

From the San Francisco Bay Guardian
Dated Wednesday March 9

The nonprofit gold rush
S.F. spends billions on nonprofit contracts without adequate oversight. It's a recipe for disaster.
By Matthew Hirsch

When a San Francisco Muni driver or hospital worker or cop starts racking up a lot of overtime, the local newspapers are all over the story. When Recreation and Park Department workers are caught slacking off on the job, it's big news.

If the city were badly underpaying employees, or using nonunion workers to do city jobs, or letting top departmental executives take home fat salaries while scrimping on frontline services, the public would howl.

That's because it's relatively easy to find out how the city spends public money: employee salaries and work records and just about everything else that's done to deliver public services are matters of public record.

But a lot of the public services San Francisco residents and businesses rely on – and pay for – aren't delivered by city employees.

In fact, since 2002, a Bay Guardian investigation shows, the city has distributed more than $1.5 billion to nonprofit organizations that provide services ranging from housing and health care to carefully planned celebrations of dead people in U.S. history.

Read more.