Engardio dinged over calendar controversy in run-up to recall vote

Gay District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio violated open government rules, a San Francisco city task force unanimously decided. The finding comes just days before he faces a recall election in the Outer Sunset neighborhood.

Engardio meanwhile secured a high-profile endorsement in his fight to stay in office, though a newly-released poll showed him in a tough spot to keep his seat next week.

As the Bay Area Reporter previously reported, former San Francisco Police Department commander Richard Corriea filed an official sunshine complaint alleging a May 2024 meeting on Engardio’s calendar was unlawfully redacted. Corriea is a prominent proponent of the Engardio recall.

According to Corriea’s complaint, in March 2025, when he received a copy of Engardio’s calendar, there were three meetings listed with Lucas Lux, who is now president of Friends of Sunset Dunes, an affinity group connected with the park that replaced the Great Highway. These occurred March 18, June 17, and July 18, 2024. 

However, Corriea wasn’t the first person who’d asked to see Engardio’s calendar. An October 2024 request had also been made by an unnamed person and was shared with Corriea. This version showed a May 28 meeting from 11 a.m. to noon between Engardio, Lux, and Todd David, who is now political director for Abundant SF and was a former political director for gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) when Wiener was running for state Senate.

The person who requested the first calendar did not wish to be publicly identified, according to recall proponents.

The San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance Task Force voted 8-0 September 3 that Engardio was not in compliance with local ethics rules on the calendar matter. It forwarded the matter to the city’s Ethics Commission, which can decide to investigate. Engardio Chief of Staff Jonathan Goldberg had testified at an earlier hearing that an intern made the error when moving the official calendar from a Microsoft Word document to a Google document.

Recall proponents alleged a cover-up and said Engardio – facing the recall in large measure because of his support for Proposition K, which closed a portion of the Upper Great Highway to cars and established the new Sunset Dunes Park – should resign. For his part, when asked via text by the B.A.R. to respond to the allegations, Engardio campaign spokesperson Joe Arellano responded in July with a picture of a man in a tin foil hat, with the text, “You can say I sent this as my response.” 

He then sent a picture of a dictionary definition of tin foil hat, which states, “Used when talking about people who believe in conspiracy theories (the belief that events or situations are the result of secret plans by powerful people).”

In August, Engardio addressed the situation personally, telling the Sunset Beacon that, “The most important thing is that the meeting was disclosed. As to why it fell off the calendar, that was human error. So, we’re going to look into it, correct it, make sure the systems are in place so that it wouldn’t happen again.”

The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force did not have the ability to determine if the missing meeting was a “willful” violation. In a separate vote, members voted 6-2 to forward that matter to the Ethics Commission. Engardio did not show up, nor did a representative, which led the task force to add an additional charge for his failure to appear.

Corriea told the B.A.R., “The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force doesn’t have an investigative arm that's why they sent it forward to the Ethics Commission. In this case, it was just so clear.”

“There’s no defense,” he continued. “The defense they read in the first hearing [about Word and Google Docs] was so ridiculous, I don’t know how you’d come back and try to defend it.” 

Corriea said the crux of the matter is that, “Joel’s office scrubbed a politically sensitive meeting from the calendar.”

“Let me cut right to the chase here,” Corriea said. “There were 344 meetings listed on the calendar he had released six months earlier, then when I requested his calendar, there’s 343 meetings. The only one that disappeared was the one against his political interests, and would’ve been hard for him to explain.”

Reached for comment, Arellano stated that, “This was simply human error – people make mistakes.”

“What matters is the calendar entry was provided, the mistake was corrected, and nothing was hidden,” he continued. “To suggest otherwise is grasping at straws. Joel is door-knocking and talking to hundreds of voters every week and they care about the work he's doing to help the Sunset, not clerical errors.”

On the other hand, recall organizer Otto Pippenger issued a long statement in which he stated that “several things are clear.”

“By his failure to appear, Joel and his team plainly do not hold our required transparency systems as a value to the degree which we and the voters of San Francisco demand,” Pippenger stated. “The possibility that a sole, politically sensitive meeting alone was excused by accident is risible in the highest degree, and while the ultimate determination is yet to be made, the public can judge for itself if its intelligence is being respected, or if their right to information has been prioritized.”

He continued, “Every voter should ask themselves seriously whether these are the actions of an elected official with their interests in mind.

“That Joel chose to answer this situation (we can only assume on full knowledge that the violation has occurred) by insulting and dismissing an enormous portion of the public in order to gain a few weeks’ reprieve from the proof of violation, is both emblematic of his attitude to the public throughout his tenure, and a damning example of why it is urgently necessary that he be recalled,” Pippenger concluded.

New survey, Pelosi nod
An EMC Research survey in June of 300 District 4 residents, reported recently in the San Francisco Standard, found that 55% of likely voters supported Engardio’s ouster, with only 41% supporting retaining him.

Engardio’s campaign is touting an endorsement from Congressmember Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), a straight ally who has urged District 4 residents to oppose the recall.

“Supervisor Joel Engardio is delivering results for the Sunset and for all of San Francisco,” Pelosi stated. “In our work together on health care, transportation, and other vital priorities, Joel has shown his commitment to strengthening our neighborhoods and enhancing our city’s natural resources.”

Pelosi’s representative at the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee voted to oppose the recall. The committee could not come to a decision one way or another, as the B.A.R. reported. https://www.ebar.com/story/157423  

“No one stands for progress more than Nancy Pelosi, and I’m honored to have her endorsement for my work in the Sunset,” Engardio stated. “From creating housing and public spaces, to supporting parents and families, to helping small businesses thrive — we believe in moving the city forward.”

District 4 voters have until September 16 to cast ballots or return them by mail.