The San Francisco Examiner Newspaper
2008-08-01 10:00:00.0
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SAN FRANCISCO -

Alleged rogue computer genius Terry Childs, charged with locking The City’s entire information-technology staff out of the fiber-optic network he assembled to handle San Francisco’s central database needs — payroll, e-mail, etc. — is still jailed on $5 million bail. Yet he officially remains a municipal employee on unpaid administrative leave. And the City Attorney’s Office says it could require at least one year to terminate him.

We wonder what it might take for San Francisco’s convoluted civil service code to allow timely discharge of an employee charged with a major crime. Would it be necessary to actually murder someone at City Hall in full view of security cameras?

This newspaper neither opposes the key ethical principle of “innocent until proven guilty” nor supports hasty arbitrary penalties against workers. However, it does seem reasonable that there ought to be some sort of prompt internal hearing process to weigh evidence against public employees — especially administrators — suspected of major malfeasance. The limbo of unpaid administrative leave is no substitute for actually resolving allegations about betrayal of public trust.

At least we know Childs is not receiving any city salary while his case is sorted out in court. But with water meter shop supervisor Alexander deAnda, just named in a federal bribery plea bargain as having accepted $13,348 in kickbacks, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission would not even tell The Examiner whether deAnda had been placed on administrative leave from his $84,558 job. A second SFPUC manager who retired last year, Gerald T. Lyons, is also accused of accepting bribes of $4,575.

As president of Novato-based Underground Express Inc., defendant Sheldon Morris pleaded guilty last Friday to paying more than $200,000 to county officials in Sonoma, Sacramento and San Francisco during the past 19 years. His water meter recycling company bribed managers to turn over surplus equipment to him for refurbishing and resale — sometimes selling repaired goods back to the agencies he obtained them from.

While the SFPUC bribery accusations seem a straightforward example of corruption payoffs, Childs’ motivations in taking over The City’s main database network are far more mysterious. Prosecutors paint him as a malicious saboteur plotting to bring city services to a grinding halt. But numerous former co-workers and the online media insist the more spectacular charges against him are hysterical and technologically impossible.

His defenders point out that the citywide computer system has not crashed. They say Childs blocked everybody else’s administrative control only to protect the vast network from being brought down by others’ mistakes. But whether the facts eventually show Childs to be an evil madman or an overprotective Dilbert, he undoubtedly went too far. And this is a level of insubordination deserving stronger personnel action than an “unpaid leave.”