By Annie Gaus, Josh Koehn & Gabe Greschler

Two people are seated on a stage, each holding a microphone. One wears a black turtleneck, and the other is in a dark blazer. They appear to be in conversation.

Last summer, Power Play filed a public records request about a city-sponsored conference we’d heard was over the top. The sponsoring agency, the Department on the Status of Women, was evasive: Officials claimed, implausibly, that they retained zero receipts or invoices for the event, a women’s policy summit held in April 2024 at Moscone Center.

Now we know what they were concealing. Turns out the city picked up the tab for three-night hotel stays for staff and guests, two massage therapists, hair and makeup services, and flower arrangements costing five figures — just months after budget officials warned of a deficit creeping toward $1 billion. The department dished out stipends for guest speakers that included a member of its own oversight body, the Commission on the Status of Women, and even paid for airfare and transportation for out-of-town attendees.

Kimberly Ellis, the Department on the Status of Women’s director, is on leave — but major questions remain. A close inspection of budget records found possible discrepancies in the way certain costs were billed by Ignite, the main vendor for the event. Amanda Conlee, Ignite’s chief operating officer, declined comment and hung up when reached by phone.

Another question is what will remain of the department’s mission of advancing gender equity, which had skewed sharply political under Ellis’ tenure. For her part, Ellis has said the allegations against her, which include steering contracts to friends and other improper activities, are baseless.

Got tips? Send us an email at powerplay@sfstandard.com or text/call (415) 408-7504.

In the pipeline

MONTANA MAGA FEST: On Thursday, former political operative Yashar Ali tweeted what he said was a confidential schedule for a two-day JP Morgan Chase tech summit in Montana. The lineup, per Ali, was packed with MAGA all-stars: Elon Musk; AI and crypto czar David Sacks; Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick; Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum; and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Oh, and Tom Brady, of course.

In between talks titled “DOGE: Sources and Uses” and ”Decoding the Trump Playbook,” our very own Mayor Daniel Lurie and ex-Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa were listed as speakers on a panel about “Rebuilding America’s Urban Glory,” moderated by actress and Goop CEO Gwyneth Paltrow.

But that wasn’t the weird part. Reached for comment, Lurie’s new communications director, Han Zou, stubbornly refused to say whether Lurie was taking part in the conference, even by video. A spokesperson for JP Morgan declined to confirm if Lurie took part in the summit.

It’s unclear if Lurie knew the reported JP Morgan event would feature so many Trump die-hards, but his love of JP Morgan is well-known.

In January, the mayor and his policy chief Ned Segal met with JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon at City Hall during the investment firm’s annual healthcare conference in San Francisco. In an interview that week, Lurie boasted to Mad Money’s Jim Cramer that he’d met with corporate bigwigs like Blackstone executive Jonathan Gray, pitching himself as a pro-business mayor eager to lure companies back to town.

So why the secrecy now? After all, just because Lurie reportedly joined a conference full of MAGA men doesn’t mean he is one. The mayor has had little to say about Trump’s attacks on immigrants, transgender people, the First Amendment, the judicial system, and federal workers — we could go on — but has pledged to stand up for San Francisco values.

At an event Friday honoring Wong Kim Ark, the San Franciscan who fought to enshrine birthright citizenship in the Constitution in the 1800s, Lurie offered pro-immigration platitudes and said people born in the U.S. “belong here.” Asked about the JP Morgan conference, Lurie said through an aide that he would only talk about Wong Kim Ark at the rally, declining to answer other questions.

HOT ZONE: Housing nerds across San Francisco have been itching to see a rezoning map from the Lurie administration, and Power Play has learned that a closely guarded document has been making the rounds — but only among a privileged few.

An expected release Thursday was delayed after YIMBYs in town raised concerns that the Planning Department wasn’t being ambitious enough to meet the city’s needs, which are staggering (82,000 new units by 2031). Lurie and his housing policy chief, Ned Segal, have been taking meetings around town, and word is they recently had a confab with Corey Smith, the executive director at Housing Action Coalition, YIMBY Action Executive Director Laura Foote, and Annie Fryman, the director of special projects for urban policy nonprofit SPUR.

Sources say the city officials are now working with UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation to analyze the map, and the goal is to release it in the next week or two. By holding off and getting Terner-approved, Lurie’s administration is hoping to satiate its angsty YIMBY supporters.

It’s not clear how public-facing the Terner Center intends to be when it comes to showing off the new map. However, the mayor’s office seems to be putting some stock in the group, as the city recently brought on Terner Center alum Ben White as a new assistant chief of housing and economic development.

KLEIN IN THE WILD: For a fleeting moment this week, the hottest journalists in town were not The Standard’s Power Play team.

That’s because “Abundance” author and YIMBY fanboy favorite Ezra Klein was at the Sydney Goldstein Theater this week discussing how Democrats — notably in deep-blue cities like San Francisco — can govern more effectively, rather than serving as beacons of liberal excess.

That wasn’t the only stop Klein made during his San Francisco tour.

Power Play spotted Klein outside City Hall on Friday morning wearing sand-colored shoes and a sharp-looking blazer. (We would have said hello, but he looked quite busy chatting away on his phone.) The mayor’s office confirmed Klein met with Lurie, and “they talked broadly, including about how government can work better for constituents,” according to spokesperson Zou.

It's no shocker the two got together. Klein and Lurie come from like-minded political backgrounds and have spoken out against overregulation. We’d love to know what Klein was thinking as he entered through the doors of City Hall, which is ground zero for many of the Democratic failures he’s highlighted. Klein did not respond to a request for comment.