The State - News from Dec. 16, 1986

San Francisco’s welfare director charged more than $2,100 in business meals at an exclusive yacht club to a department account intended to buy food for poor people, a newspaper reported. Edwin Sarsfield, the $93,000-a-year welfare director, billed the business lunches, brunches and dinners to the Department of Social Services’s “foodstuffs” account from August, 1985, to July, 1986, the San Francisco Examiner said. The $4,000-a-year account is supposed to be used to buy food for low-income welfare clients, the Examiner quoted officials of the city purchaser’s and city controller’s office as saying. Money from the account also is used to feed social services volunteers and foster parents. Sarsfield told the Examiner that the $2,141 in meals were “legitimate business expenses I incur in this damn job every day.”