Dellums' Top Staffer Is Also Clorox Director

Update: Less than seven months into his term, mayor Ron Dellums let chief of staff Dan Boggan, Jr. go. The Oakland Tribune noted that people had "criticized him for maintaining his membership on the Clorox and Payless Shoesource boards of directors, saying it created a conflict of interest." (July 10, 2007) Oakland Residents for Peaceful Neighborhoods broke the story on Boggan's lucrative and inappropriate board memberships; the East Bay Express and other publications picked up the report.

David K. Chai, named to replace Boggan, has worked for several governors, mayors, and other officials, most often as a press secretary.

– July 10, 2007

While collecting $97,000 a year as chief of staff for Oakland mayor Ron Dellums, Daniel Boggan, Jr., also receives $200,000 annually as a director of The Clorox Company.

Daniel Boggan, Jr.: Conflicts of interest

Boggan has considerable influence over who sees mayor Dellums and what policy choices are presented to him, but as a director of Clorox since 1990, Boggan is duty bound to serve its stockholders, not the public. Boggan has already become ensnared in two conflicts of interest:

• Taxes: Proposing his first City budget, mayor Dellums served notice that he will push homeowners and other property owners next year to increase their Landscape and Lighting Assessment tax, despite the fact that voters turned down the same idea in 2006. Much of the money would not be used to trim trees, maintain parks, or light streets; instead, it would go into the general fund for unknown uses. The LLAD assessment is a regressive tax that hits struggling homeowners the hardest. The 24-story Clorox headquarters, 1221 Broadway, pays at about half the rate for its square footage as a typical flatlands home. Clorox has an interest in imposing a regressive property tax rather than, for example, a levy based on business revenues. For the year ended June 30, 2006, Clorox made a profit of $444 million on sales of $4.6 billion.

• Police: When the Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce studied how Oakland businesses might thrive, it surveyed them and found that their top concern is the lack of public safety, the understaffed police department, and the costs imposed by crime. Yet the Chamber's April 30 report, by omitting the fact that Oakland has only half a police department and by avoiding calls for at least 1,100 officers, played down the need for public safety – except for the report's specific attention to downtown near the Clorox headquarters.

In addition, former councilmember Wilson Riles, Jr. told ORPN that early this year the Dellums administration leaked advance copies of recommendations made by Dellums' secretive task forces to the Chamber of Commerce. The information was withheld from the public at the time. As City Hall chief of staff and also board member at Clorox (a major power in the Chamber), Boggan was situated right in the middle of this insider affront to democracy.

Boggan receives a City salary of $97,000 plus benefits for two-thirds time, about 25 hours a week. At Clorox, he sits on three board committees. In addition, Boggan is a director of two more corporations: Payless ShoeSource, which pays him almost $118,000 a year, and Viad Corporation, which gives him more than $96,000 a year. (Proxy filings with Securities and Exchange Commission) Total income exceeding $511,000 last year puts Boggan out of touch with the problems of Oakland residents.

When your neighborhood needs police patrol and community policing attention but cannot get it, think of Daniel Boggan, Jr.

When the City tries to sell you a big hike in a so-called Landscape and Lighting Assessment having little to do with trees, parks, or street lights, think of Daniel Boggan, Jr. ... and how the Dellums administration practices democracy.

Boggan Offers Empty Reply

ORPN's exposé above caught the attention of the East Bay Express. Reporter Robert Gammon obtained this reply from Boggan about his dual role as Clorox director and chief of staff for mayor Dellums: "It hasn't been a conflict at the University of California at Berkeley, and it hasn't been a conflict here," he said. He also maintained that he merely advises Dellums and is not a decisionmaker. (East Bay Express, May 30, 2007)

Boggan could have boiled down his twenty words to two. "Trust me."

Gammon goes on to report the dismay of Wilson Riles, Jr. and other progressives with the Dellums-Boggan administration.