Connie Chan's Convenient Crusade Against PermitSF
- 7 days ago
- 3 min read
If you've ever pulled a permit in San Francisco, you don't need a blog post to convince you the system is broken. Twenty different software platforms, months-long delays for routine work, a Kafkaesque maze that has long been the bane of homeowners, contractors, and small businesses alike. Mayor Daniel Lurie campaigned in 2024 on actually fixing it, and PermitSF is his signature effort to do so. Now, just as the project is starting to deliver, Supervisor Connie Chan is leading the charge to torpedo it.
Where we are with PermitSF today
In October 2025, the city signed a $5.9 million one-year contract with OpenGov, a San Francisco-based govtech firm, to build a modernized digital permitting platform. The launch hit familiar roadblocks, and only 7 of the 15 permit types targeted for March made it online, with the rest expected by summer. A $28.5 million contract renewal - six years of professional services and licensing - is now up for approval.
The legitimate questions
This story isn't without real concerns.
Conflict of interest: The San Francisco Standard has reported that Lurie's family previously held investments in OpenGov through their family trust, that OpenGov executives donated to Tipping Point (Lurie's former nonprofit), and that policy chief Ned Segal, a former Tipping Point board member, was in contact with OpenGov more than a month before the city's official vendor search began.
An unusual no-bid contract: The original award skipped competitive bidding, and city staff preferred a cheaper competitor, Clariti.
See our previous article where we debunk some of the concerns around the selection process.
Whistleblower complaints: Former SF Planner Michael Christensen, who was on the PermitSF implementation team before resigning in December, has filed two whistleblower complaints with the City Controller. He says he was asked to identify colleagues likely to "cause problems" for the project, that he was retaliated against after blowing the whistle, and, most explosively, that a manager asked OpenGov to build a "backdoor" allowing officials to bypass staff permitting decisions. It's worth noting that other current city employees, including union members working on PermitSF, have publicly supported the project.
We have some insider input that Michael may be a disgruntled employee with an axe to grind, but can’t confirm with certainty.
These are not nothing. The Board of Supervisors' Budget and Legislative Analyst is investigating the procurement, and the whistleblower allegations deserve serious review. We're glad both are happening.
But.
The Lurie-skeptical chorus has a problem: SF permitting was a disaster long before PermitSF, and "defending a failed status quo" (the mayor's spokesperson's phrase) is exactly what most of the opposition amounts to. The current PTS system is extremely outdated and breaks down constantly, requiring a significant amount of tech support. It also doesn’t have the ability to integrate with any of their other software systems. Its replacement has been inevitable for a LONG time.
Interestingly, IFPTE Local 21 is the public-sector union leading the campaign against OpenGov. They aren’t fighting for taxpayers, contractors, or property owners. They're fighting to protect union jobs that more efficient software might displace. That's their job. It's not a reason to keep a broken system in place.
And then there's Chan. Last week, she advanced to the November general election for Nancy Pelosi's congressional seat, having earned the endorsement of organized labor across the city. Her aggressive opposition to a popular mayor's signature initiative - chairing combative hearings, citing whistleblower coverage in real time, demanding documents - has unfolded in lockstep with a congressional primary in which labor support was decisive. To put it kindly: convenient. Our architectural colleagues' calls to her office, touting the benefits of the new system, were met with hostility, accusations of being “in league” with the Planning Department, and a flat-out refusal to discuss the matter. She simply can’t afford to lose the union vote and refuses to acknowledge that replacing a broken-down, antiquated software system with a new setup is both necessary and can’t be implemented overnight.
Where we land
PermitSF deserves scrutiny, not sabotage. The procurement raised real questions, and hopefully the BLA inquiry will resolve them. The whistleblower allegations deserve investigation, not dismissal. But the underlying reform is right, the permitting nightmare is real, and using a contracting controversy to kill the city's most serious effort in years to fix something that genuinely needs fixing would be cynical, if not reckless.
We want PermitSF to work. So should anyone who's ever tried to pull a permit in this city.
Brought to you by Property Atlas