Carmen Chu

Carmen Chu 朱嘉文
Assessor-Recorder of San Francisco
Incumbent
Assumed office February 27, 2013
Preceded by	Phil Ting
Member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from District 4
In office September 25, 2007 – February 27, 2013
Preceded by	Ed Jew
Succeeded by	Katy Tang
Personal details
Born	(1978-04-08) April 8, 1978 Los Angeles, California
Political party	Democratic
Alma mater	Occidental College UC Berkeley
Website	sfassessor.org

Carmen Chu
Chinese	朱嘉文
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Zhū Jiāwén IPA [ʈʂú tɕjáwə̌n] Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Jyu1 Ga1-man4 Jyutping Zyu1 Gaa1-man4

Carmen Chu (Chinese: 朱嘉文; pinyin: Zhū Jiāwén; born April 8, 1978) is an American politician serving as Assessor-Recorder of the City and County of San Francisco since 2013. Chu is currently one of the two women elected to a citywide office out of seven citywide positions. She is also the only Asian-American Assessor elected to serve among the 58 counties in the State of California. Prior to being elected Assessor-Recorder, Chu served as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors where she served two terms as the Chair of the Board’s Budget and Finance Committee, and was a Board Director of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District. Before joining the Board of Supervisors, Chu served as Deputy Budget Director in the Mayor's office of Public Policy and Finance.

Early life

Chu is the second of three daughters to Hung Wing and Shuet Ying Chu, who immigrated from Hong Kong in the 1970s with ancestry in Taishan. The Chu family settled into a number of jobs to make ends meet including initially working as a seamstress or as a restaurant worker before starting their own small family restaurant. Chu has stated that growing up in an immigrant family and in a small business household were formative experiences in her life as she never forgot the struggles immigrants and those with limited English face nor the hardships associated with running a small business.

Education

In 2000, Chu earned a bachelor's degree in public policy from Occidental College where she was a recipient of the James Irvine Foundation Scholarship- a program focused on the development of leaders and educational opportunities for city youth. She graduated from Occidental College Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

In 2003, Chu earned a master's degree in public policy from UC Berkeley as a distinguished Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) fellow - a fellowship program with a mission to promote underrepresented groups in public service and to advance roles in leadership positions.

San Francisco Assessor-Recorder

Carmen Chu was re-elected on November 4, 2014, to serve as the Assessor-Recorder for the City and County of San Francisco, and is committed to making government work for the people of San Francisco. Carmen Chu is the only Asian American woman assessor in the state of California. She is currently the Vice President of California Assessors’ Association, is on the Executive Board of the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Association (SPUR), and is also on San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System (SFERS) pension board.

Over her tenure, Carmen has effectively transformed her organization by investing in technologies. In a short few years, Carmen has already succeeded in initiating online recording and business filings for taxpayers, revamped a user-friendly website, secured data for disaster-recovery and implemented analytical tools to improve processes and inform decision making. Through these efforts, Carmen has led her team to outperform revenue expectations by $565 million, impacting San Francisco’s bottom line. In April 2019, Chu’s office was on track to close the roll on-time without an assessment backlog for the first time in more than 25 years! Eliminating the backlog and closing the roll on-time has real consequences for our taxpayers and for the City. It results in better customer service and certainty for taxpayers. As a tireless leader, Carmen has moved on to her next project. She is now spearheading a multi-year and cross-departmental efforts to modernize the City’s two-decade old property tax data system.

Committed to making the government work for all residents, Carmen Chu has served the City and County of San Francisco for over a decade. Throughout her career in public service, Carmen has distinguished herself as a fair and dedicated civic leader, a top financial mind, and a strong advocate for women in the community. In 2018, Carmen Chu’s office along with the support of strong women dignitaries, put on the W Challenge. The goals for this event was to challenge San Francisco residents to, in addition to pledge to vote, also help register one woman who isn't already registered to vote and to bring one woman along to vote on election day. As a result of the W Challenge, San Francisco has seen an increase in voter registrations.

As a daughter of immigrants, Carmen also believes in the importance of bridging the gap between government and community. Working with over 211,000 property owners and 48,500 businesses in San Francisco, the Assessor’s Office identified a need to turn complex tax laws into easy-to-understand content. As a result, she developed the California’s first fact sheets series covering ownership changes, supplemental taxes, tax-saving programs, and other frequently asked questions. The fact sheets were translated into six languages. In September 2017, she also launched the Bay Area’s first Family Wealth Forum, a one-stop shop for families with questions around asset building and estate planning. Over 1,000 families have been served through four Family Wealth Forums, a majority of them seniors, immigrants and women. Both her Community Fact Sheet Series and the Family Wealth Forum received top communications awards from the California Association of Public Information Officials.

Chu has prioritized customer service and office efficiency since taking office. Beginning in 2013, she implemented e-Recording, which allows submitters to record documents from the convenience of their office or home. Chu has secured resources to address the increase in workload generated by historic highs in assessment appeals. This additional funding will allow the Assessment Appeals Board to schedule and hear appeals cases more quickly and ensure a more-timely resolution for taxpayers. She also began the process of digitizing historic real property records currently maintained only in hard copy. This project will ensure that vital assessment details and property files are available for staff when valuing both residential and commercial properties.

In November 2010 and November 2008, Carmen Chu was elected to the Board of Supervisors to serve as the city’s representative to the Sunset/Parkside District after being appointed to serve in September 2007. During her time on the Board, Chu worked on legislation to encourage more companies to do business with the city by streamlining the city’s contracting process; provide protections to tenants who are victims of domestic violence; strengthen regulations, coordinate enforcement and expand community review of proposed massage establishments; and encourage small, local business participation in city projects. Prior to that Carmen Chu was the Deputy Director of Finance and Policy under Newsom’s administration.

Same-Sex Marriage

When the State of California announced a resumption of same-sex marriages on June 28, 2013, Chu committed to keeping her office open through that first weekend of resumption so that same-sex couples did not have to wait any longer to marry.  That weekend, 479 marriage licenses were recorded with the City and County of San Francisco. The City and County of San Francisco was the only County Recorder’s Office to remain open that first weekend in the State of California. In 2013 Chu turned over public marriage licenses that were invalidated in 2004 to the San Francisco Public Library’s Archival Division to ensure the historic preservation of documents filed during a pivotal and defining moment in the movement for marriage equality.

San Francisco Supervisor

On September 25, 2007, she was appointed to replace the embattled San Francisco Supervisor Ed Jew, who was then suspended for alleged official misconduct. The District 4 seat remained vacant for five and a half hours until Mayor Newsom appointed her to succeed Jew for the remainder of Jew’s term. Chu ran for election after Jew’s term expired, and on November 4, 2008 she was elected by the voters as Supervisor of District 4 for the term January 2009 to January 2011. Chu was re-elected as Supervisor representing the Sunset/Parkside District for a four-year term in November 2010.

Chu worked on legislation that incentivized local small businesses to do work for the city by streamlining the city's contracting process; provided protections to tenants who are victims of domestic violence; strengthened regulations, coordinated enforcement and expanded community review of establishments in neighborhood commercial corridors; advocated for and improved neighborhood libraries, parks and playgrounds, and directed local funding for neighborhood commercial revitalization efforts including facade improvements, free assessments for compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act, installation of parklets and major street resurfacing efforts. Chu worked with the local Public Utilities Commission to develop the largest municipal solar project in the country at the time. The rooftop of the Sunset Reservoir, a project which would provide clean energy for municipal buildings.

Fiscal Stewardship

Chair of the Board’s Budget and Finance Committee for the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 budgets.

As Supervisor, Chu chaired the Board’s Budget and Finance Committee for the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 budgets and served as a member of the committee in all but one year while in office.  Working with the Mayor, community leaders, city departments and labor, the 2011-2012’s $6.83 billion budget preserved funding for critical city services while closing a General Fund deficit of $380 million.  In 2012-2013, Chu again chaired the Budget and Finance committee where she led the development of San Francisco’s first two-year budget, a good government initiative designed to recognize the ongoing long-term budget impacts of annual budget decisions.  The 2012-2013 budget included key measures to back-fill State funding cuts to childcare subsidies for San Francisco’s working families and was the first year of a multi-year plan to fund the recruitment and back-filling of critical public safety positions in the police and fire departments.

SF Mayor's Office of Public Policy and Finance

Prior to her time on the Board of Supervisors, Chu served as the Deputy Director of the Mayor Office of Public Policy and Finance – the division charged with balancing the City and County’s annual appropriations. Chu worked on projects such as the development of the City's first 311 Customer Service Center - a centralized point of access to City services available to residents 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Under Chu's direction, San Francisco was awarded the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award in 2006-2007 from the Government Finance Officers Association for the annual proposed budget document.

See also

• History of the Chinese Americans in San Francisco

External links

• Official website
• Campaign website