Charter amendment would give mayor the ability to reorganize or consolidate 24 city departments. Yes, that’s a big deal.
onto the November ballot to remake the city charter — the constitution that undergirds San Francisco government. Experienced government hands often liken tinkering with the charter to brain surgery. A more apt metaphor, however, might be entering into a marriage: The consequences aren’t fatal if you make a mess of it, but, for the sake of everyone’s sanity, well-being and bank account, you’dJust reading the words “charter reform” can numb voters like a few shots of NyQuil .
Hey, we get it — it’s not sexy. Itimportant: Altering the charter can induce profound consequences with ramifications that can carry on for years and cannot be easily reversed. Sign up Lurie is gathering signatures to enact a ballot measure that will make it harder for you to gather signatures to enact a ballot measure. He is doing this in the name of fostering greater cooperation between the mayor and Board of Supervisors — but Lurie is choosing to bypass the Board of Supervisors and go straight to the voters, at great monetary expense. And that’s the way it is, regardless of one’s feelings about the content of these three measures. Also: There could be. The Board of Supervisors may yet add several additional charter amendments to what appears to be a loaded November ballot. Vamos a ver. Multiple participants said they’re surprised to learn about some of what’s actually in here, and how much it would enable Lurie to do. would give the mayor the ability to vastly reshape city government by reorganizing or even consolidating 24 city departments. That includes the big ones, the ones you’ve heard of: police, fire, public works, public health. At present, any reorganization or consolidation would require a vote of the people or, more likely, a series of votes. Pass this measure and it doesn’t. Is this, on its face, a terrible idea? Not necessarily. It’s hard to say San Francisco is presently running like a Swiss watch. But it makes one a bit uneasy that legislation enabling the mayor to make sweeping changes to two dozen departments — perhaps reducing some to husks and shunting their duties and vast workforces elsewhere — has been undersold in It also makes one a bit uneasy that, according to participants in the charter reform working group, these extremely consequential details were not discussed. that, in fact, the proposals you’ll be voting on were circulating before that so-called working group even finished its meetings. If voters approve Lurie’s charter amendments — and it’s difficult to imagine these haven’t been polled extensively — the possibilities for him to reshuffle the city’s departmental deck are broad. He would all but certainly advance his quest to detangle San Francisco’s Gordian permitting Knot by consolidating the planning and building inspection departments,That’s the crux of what this amendment would allow the mayor to do. There are mandatory duties enshrined in the city charter and that’s not changing. Whatdepartment. He could make one department subservient to another or reduce a department to little more than a plaque on an office door, with all its personnel and responsibilities migrated elsewhere. Pass this charter amendment, and the mayor can start deconstructing and reconstructing some of the city’s biggest departments like Lego sets — without going back to the voters to cross every t or dot every i. A common critique among government players was that the mayor’s forthcoming ballot measures were small-time. Well, like Rick Blaine,San Francisco City Hall is illuminated during sunset on Sept. 11, 2025. Photo by Mariana Garcia.— or being able to boot commission appointees on a whim, for no reason. Those are the charter reform bullet points you’ve read already . Another Lurie proposal would centralize city procurement under the City Administrator. Maximizing city buying power is a solid idea — but the mayor and his allies appear to already be overselling it.was soft costs — design, fees, management, insurance, etc. Experts told us that’s three or more times what a project’s soft costs should be — which, of course, has nothing to do with procurement. Those swollen soft costs were indicative of inefficiencies and even corruption within departments that can’t be rooted out by mere legislation, let alone procurement legislation. So the use of this example by the mayor and board president is concerning. An “I voted” sign hangs on the wall at San Francisco City Hall on Jan. 16, 2026. Photo by Mariana Garcia. Voters may glaze over when they hear the term “charter reform,” but their reaction to terms like “election reform” may not be so benign. The most contested of Lurie’s three amendments would figure to be the one about ballot access. San Francisco has, by far, the lowest threshold in the state for getting material onto the ballot. The power of labor, the last bastion of the city’s desiccated progressive movement, would clearly be mitigated if it was harder to place items on the ballot via signature-gathering — or via a minority bloc of the Board of Supervisors. “Over the last year seen how City Hall can at times water down reforms,” wrote a spokesman for the mayor’s campaign. “These issues are too important to be delayed by City Hall factionalism.” That explains why Lurie isn’t even trying to get six votes for his proposals from the supes and is going straight to the voters. This sets up an intriguing scenario: Government theorists and practitioners can tell you that San Francisco’s ballot threshold is too low, and it probably is. But the fact is that voters like voting — and tend to react poorly to proposals that would abridge their existing ability to vote. So, in the event labor deigns to spend money to fight this among the many issues on a packed November ballot, voters may be hearing more about “election reform.” To be fair, Lurie is also moving to reduce his own access to the ballot too. Only in San Francisco can the mayor unilaterally put a measure before voters. And only in San Francisco can that bloc of four of 11 supervisors put a measure before the voters. Lurie’s proposal would nix his own ability to unilaterally place items on the ballot. And the board would require six votes moving forward. Beyond ballots and voting, this would fundamentally shift the M.O. of wheeling and dealing at City Hall. It would do more than merely force our lawmakers to make laws: Removing the mayor and legislators’ ability to evento easily lob items onto the ballot would radically alter both the sorts of legislation introduced and the means of negotiating it. It could tone down the vituperative and high-energy style of politics that has come to define San Francisco City Hall. But Lurie went further: The mayor’s charter amendment would also quadruple the signature requirement to place items before voters. Those are the facts. But these are also the facts: Gathering signatures costs money. So quadrupling the signature requirements is essentially a monetary barrier. For the wealthiest among us,in their aims to funnel obscene sums into politics in a truly vulgar display of power, this is no real barrier. . You can state that San Francisco’s ballot threshold is too low and also state that raising it only burdens the non-rich. Both of these things can be true. Daniel Lurie is calling for charter reform to help him better govern despite having a reliable majority on the Board of Supervisors and the most pliant board in recent memory. But it may not always be so. If, in the future, he can’t reliably push items through the supes, he may yet rue his decision to make it harder to go directly to the voters. There are, Oscar Wilde wrote, two tragedies in life: One is not getting what one wants. And the other is getting it. It remains to be seen which will befall Mayor Lurie. Because of you, Mission Local reached and surpassed our $300,000 year-end fundraising goal.Thank you for choosing to invest in a local newsroom rooted in San Francisco’s communities — one that listens first and reports deeply. Your contribution today helps sustain the reporting our city relies on all year long.getbackjoejoe@gmail.com Joe is a columnist and the managing editor of Mission Local. He was born in San Francisco, raised in the Bay Area, and attended U.C. Berkeley. He never left. “Your humble narrator” was a writer and columnist for SF Weekly from 2007 to 2015, and a senior editor at San Francisco Magazine from 2015 to 2017. You may also have read his work in the Guardian ; San Francisco Public Press; San Francisco Chronicle; San Francisco Examiner; Dallas Morning News; and elsewhere. He resides in the Excelsior with his wife and three kids, 4.3 miles from his birthplace and 5,474 from hers.Most of our local politicians rightly criticize Trump’s unilateral extra-legal maneuvers to increase his power – and line his pockets. Although so far Mayor Lurie has refused to utter the orange jackass’s name in public, he at least lip-syncs some of the key critical talking points against fascism. The Lurie-Mandelman conspiracy explicitly intends to make our already too-strong executive branch even stronger by gutting citizen input and restricting elected legislators’ participation in governing. Their quest to consolidate decision making in the hands of a single person loudly echoes the Trumpian agenda.I suspect that a fair number of the electorate think that there is already too much “citizen input” into the legislative process. The same few hundred usual suspects seem to show up at every City Hall meeting, with hours of “public comment”, whilst the Supes roll their eyes and check their phones. Lurie won office on a fairly clear promise to untangle the bureaucratic blob and legislative logjam. This initiative deserves support in order to fulfill that mandate.As someone who is pretty ignorant, I have to ask – would it be crazy to simply ban paid signature gathering?Any SF resident who has engaged with a City department for a non-trivial permit or license knows the process is arbitrary, inconsistent, and slow. With unpredictable and high costs. It resembles a legislative process of multiple involved committees, hearings, and arcane procedural rules. The lesson is political connections are a prerequisite to get reasonable reliability and efficiency. As a result, most residents fear dealing with City regulations/processes as they fear being party to a lawsuit. So they ignore City regulations and essentially conspiring with neighbors to avoid a dreaded “complaint” that brings them to City attention. The bottom line is resident are cynically alienated from City government. That makes us susceptible to believe every allegation and conspiracy of City misconduct however unfounded. And vote for candidates who exploit those beliefs.The real question raised by this piece is how do we macerate desiccated progressivism so that progressives put forth an affirmative vision of a charter, and does not face an extinction level event without putting up a fight?Lurie is nice guy social media fluff up front, while he is harassing people in the TL and engineering a total take over of SF for the benefit of the rich.Please keep your comments short and civil. Do not leave multiple comments under multiple names on one article. We will zap comments that fail to adhere to these short and easy-to-follow rules.Sign up for Mission Local's daily newsletter: The latest San Francisco news in your inbox, no more than once a day, for free.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Trump retirement proposal; licenses; Senate candidates; City HallReaders cited Trump’s record on wage-earners; called for high-caliber political candidates; and wonder even more about the thinking on City Hall.
Read more »
Why is National City’s police chief running the city?A retirement hour cap, a years-long vacancy and a council’s trust in a hometown officer all converged to put National City’s top cop in charge of the city
Read more »
Michael Smolens: Backers of San Diego parking, trash fee repeal ponder broader changesFormer Republican mayors seek to shape policy at Democratic-controlled City Hall through ballot initiatives.
Read more »
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson defends exploring City Hall relocationIn his weekly newsletter to residents on Sunday, Johnson outlined his most detailed case yet for studying whether Dallas should move City Hall, saying...
Read more »
Inside 5,000 pages of Dallas City Hall emails: site tours, deals and disputesReview of internal correspondence offers a rare look at officials navigating major civic decisions, disagreements and fallout from major projects.
Read more »
Letters to the Editor - Iran; Dallas City Hall; DART; Trump; CornynReaders maintained that Iran started the war; vacillated on City Hall; disagreed that Trump is learning; and begged Cornyn for policy ads.
Read more »