By Tim Redmond
The Small Business Commission isn’t one of the highest-profile public bodies in San Francisco, but to the tens of thousands of small entrepreneurs in the city, it’s important. So the recent appointment of Luke O’Brien to a vacancy on the panel left a lot of small business activists scratching their heads.
“Nobody knew this individual,” Scott Hauge, one of the city’s best-connected and active small business leaders, told me. “As far as we know, he’s never been active in small business issues.”
When the seat opened up, the commission’s director, Regina Dick-Endrizzi, let the small business community know there was on opening, and advised interested people to send in recommendations, and Hauge and others had plenty to offer. But in the end, the way the new commissioner was chosen says a lot about how Newsom makes decisions — and how little he cares about real community input.
O’Brien, according to a resume the mayor’s office sent over, has a background in sales, engineering and technical support and has worked for several technology companies, including Lucent, where he was a corporate sales engineering manager, and two start-ups, one in Mountain View and one in Reno. In 2003, he joined Pattani Construction, a San Francisco outfit run by Mel Murphy, a developer and Residential Builders Association guy who holds the RBA seat on the Department of Building Inspection Commission. When Murphy set up a real-estate investment company the next year, O’Brien joined him as vice president and partner.
According to the mayor’s press secretary, Nathan Ballard,
Commissioner O’Brien will work to ensure that small local construction companies get their fair share of construction dollars. He will work with Small Business Commission Director Regina Dick-Endrizzi and Supervisor David Chiu on their ongoing efforts to reduce redundant and unnecessary businesses fees, and will bring needed expertise into those business fees flowing out of the DBI and Planning Department that are most onerous for small businesses.
In other words, he’s an RBA guy who wants to make life easier for developers. He’s given money to Newsom allies, including Doug Chan for Supervisor and Joe Alioto for supervisor. (I haven’t been able to reach O’Brien, but I left him a message and I’ll let you know if I hear back.)
Since he has no visible background in the small business community, none of the activists had ever heard of him, and none of the names that Hauge and his allies submitted had made the cut, I asked Ballard who the mayor had met with, reached out to or discussed this appointment with. His response:
“O’Brien was recommended to us by his business partner, Mel Murphy.”