SF has problems. The recent FBI investigation that nabbed Mohammed Nuru and the city's own investigation that nabbed Hui have helped a lot because it has reminded the rats that consequences exist. It's all just rumor but that seems to have damped down on corruption quite a bit.
That said... for the life of the average person there is not as much impact. I don't need to bribe anyone to get something done. I recently installed solar and batteries and we got permits, inspection, and approval including variances for some placement issues. It was all wrapped up within two months.
Another example: I've reported problems via the 311 app and the tickets were fixed. One was a burned out and broken light in a playground bathroom (replaced the next week). Another was a water leak on O'Shaughnessy Blvd that took about 3 months to resolve because no department could figure out what line was leaking or who owned it with lots of finger-pointing... but ultimately the 311 people stayed on the ticket, figured it out, and the city fixed the leak.
Corruption tends to happen on large projects or city contracts. Part of it has to do with public project bidding laws that don't allow for reputation to be considered. There's a gaggle of CA contractors who are experts at submitting low bids, then jacking the cost with change orders and delays. They keep winning contracts because they often submit the lowest bid. Sometimes things that seem way overpriced are that way for good reason... like buying rights to the land, digging up the street to run new plumbing which may require relocating other massive utilities, and so on. Other times you have things like the new outdoor trash can design where DPW employees treated it like a fun vanity project instead of buying an off-the-shelf design... resulting in vastly inflated costs. It's possible someone in DPW took a bribe but it's also possible they just didn't care about cost.
The tl;dr: No. Corruption and political meddling in SF doesn't come within an order of magnitude of India... especially not for the average citizen who can usually access relevant government services within reasonable times at the scheduled rates. That said there's more of it than average involving large projects, but recent arrests have helped.
SF has problems. The recent FBI investigation that nabbed Mohammed Nuru and the city's own investigation that nabbed Hui have helped a lot because it has reminded the rats that consequences exist. It's all just rumor but that seems to have damped down on corruption quite a bit.
That said... for the life of the average person there is not as much impact. I don't need to bribe anyone to get something done. I recently installed solar and batteries and we got permits, inspection, and approval including variances for some placement issues. It was all wrapped up within two months. Another example: I've reported problems via the 311 app and the tickets were fixed. One was a burned out and broken light in a playground bathroom (replaced the next week). Another was a water leak on O'Shaughnessy Blvd that took about 3 months to resolve because no department could figure out what line was leaking or who owned it with lots of finger-pointing... but ultimately the 311 people stayed on the ticket, figured it out, and the city fixed the leak.
Corruption tends to happen on large projects or city contracts. Part of it has to do with public project bidding laws that don't allow for reputation to be considered. There's a gaggle of CA contractors who are experts at submitting low bids, then jacking the cost with change orders and delays. They keep winning contracts because they often submit the lowest bid. Sometimes things that seem way overpriced are that way for good reason... like buying rights to the land, digging up the street to run new plumbing which may require relocating other massive utilities, and so on. Other times you have things like the new outdoor trash can design where DPW employees treated it like a fun vanity project instead of buying an off-the-shelf design... resulting in vastly inflated costs. It's possible someone in DPW took a bribe but it's also possible they just didn't care about cost.
The tl;dr: No. Corruption and political meddling in SF doesn't come within an order of magnitude of India... especially not for the average citizen who can usually access relevant government services within reasonable times at the scheduled rates. That said there's more of it than average involving large projects, but recent arrests have helped.