Candidate for
Board of Supervisors; County of San Francisco; Supervisorial District 5

Hope Johnson is the immediate past Chair of the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, San Francisco's open government commission. She has earned a reputation for holding public officials and city departments accountable for their actions.

She worked on resolving disputes between the public and City Hall including cases requiring the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority to provide employees with previously denied access to their personnel files to prepare for disciplinary hearings; the Recreation and Parks Department to review electronic back-up tapes to recover improperly deleted emails; and alerting the Board of Supervisors of the need to investigate mismanagement at the Arts Commission. Audio recordings of Task Force hearings and case documents are available for review online.

During her tenure as Task Force Chair, the Ethics Commission held its first public hearing on a referral from the Task Force and found a city commissioner in violation of San Francisco's public meeting laws. Hope helped draft recommendations to the Ethics Commission on handling enforcement of state and local open government laws, and participated in a joint meeting between the two bodies to develop details of the regulations.

Hope facilitated the creation of a Sunshine Task Force Technology Committee to help improve San Francisco's lagging technology infrastructure and public record policies. A recent report by the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury echoed the need for improvement in this area.

Hope Johnson previously covered local politics for the online publication Fog City Journal. In 2008, she broadcast from City Hall during the same sex marriages that followed the California Supreme Court's ruling holding statutes banning lesbian and gays from marrying unconstitutional. The camera operator she worked with was one of the first people to ever file a lawsuit demanding the right to marry a same sex partner in Washington in 1971. The video report was used online by LGBTQ communities across the country.

Hope won San Francisco's infamous Best Political Mind Contest in 2008.

Hope Johnson has lived in District 5 for seven years and currently rents an apartment in the Western Addition with her three-legged cat Zoe. She chooses not to own a car, preferring walking and public transit to spending time spent hunting for parking. Hope has been a member of City CarShare since 2004.

Hope was born in Berkeley, CA in 1966 to traditional middle-class parents. Her father was a World War II veteran and a union iron worker for over 30 years in the East Bay. Her mother's Concord home was destroyed in a fire in 2011, and Hope is managing the rebuild.

Hope attended public schools and was one of the first members of her family to attend college, graduating from UCLA with a degree in Psychology.

Hope studied law for one year at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall and is currently employed as a paralegal at a law firm specializing in maritime law in San Francisco. She has been volunteering in the community since moving to San Francisco. Her volunteer experience includes Animal Care and Control Cat Volunteer; FixSanFrancisco.org Animal Rights Group, Founding Member; Cat Declaw Ban; San Francisco Democratic Party, Event Volunteer; Campaign to Re-Elect Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi; Prop F Lennar Affordable Housing, Signature Collector; Prop H Clean Energy, Media Volunteer; SF Neighborhood Emergency Response Team (NERT), Registered Volunteer; SF SPCA, Cat Behavior, Hospital Trainer, Adoption Center, Outreach Volunteer; and Heller Ehrman Adopt-a-School Program, Pen Pal Volunteer. Hope Johnson District 5 San Francisco Supervisor