Ethics panel lets Christensen serve on agency she helped create
The city Ethics Commission unanimously voted Monday to waive conflict-of-interest laws to allow her to take a part-time job with the newly formed Dogpatch and Northwest Potrero Hill Green Benefits District.
City laws mandating a one-year “cooling off” period to curb the influence of powerful former city employees would have made Christensen ineligible for the position.
Christensen asked for three waivers of city codes to allow her to take the job with the benefit district, which collects property taxes and invests the money in improvements.
The laws dictate that a former city employee could not communicate with former board members or other city departments for one year after leaving their position, nor get a job from an agency that contracts with the city.
In a memo, Ethics Commission Executive Director LeeAnn Pelham recommended denying all but one of the waivers, saying that the restrictions were intended to be “fairly strict.”
A longtime community activist, Christensen was appointed by Mayor Ed Lee in January 2015 to represent District Three on the Board of Supervisors to fill out the remainder of the term of David Chiu, when he was elected to the state Assembly.
A former product appearance consultant for companies such as Whirlpool and KitchenAid, Christensen closed her design practice to be supervisor.
[...] unemployed for six months, Christensen said she is gearing up to redirect her career to focus on the public sector.
Only two waiver applications have been granted by the commission, both in 2011, to Doug Shoemaker, formerly the director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing, and Kyri McClellan, a former project manager at the Office of Economic and Workforce Development.