SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — Mayor Daniel Lurie on Wednesday filed notices of intent to collect signatures for three proposed changes to San Francisco’s city charter, setting the stage for possible voter consideration in the upcoming November general election.
San Francisco’s city charter spans more than 500 pages and is among the longest municipal charters in the country. Lurie said the document needs to be updated to address how City Hall operates.
“This system works for the insider. It’s bred corruption,” Lurie told reporters Wednesday.
If the measures qualify and are approved by voters, they would make significant changes to how San Francisco’s government is structured, how contracts are handled and how future ballot measures reach voters.
“Our city charter has grown so calcified and convoluted that it makes it harder for City Hall to respond to the needs of residents,” said Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, board president. “These measures take a practical approach to modernizing our government to be more accountable to the people it’s meant to serve, while maintaining strong checks and balances.”
Expanding mayor’s power, city contracting and referendum qualifications
One measure would give the mayor sole authority to hire and fire most city department heads and appoint deputy mayors to oversee certain policy – a change supporters say would clarify management and accountability within city government.
The second proposal seeks to streamline city contracting by giving the city administrator sole authority over changes to the city’s purchasing laws.
A third measure would change how initiatives qualify for the ballot. Lurie said the goal is to reduce the number and complexity of measures voters are asked to decide.
“What we are trying to do is to simplify ballots and actually make, supervisors and the mayor work together, come to agreement and stop putting everything in front of the voters,” he said.
Under that proposal, the signature requirement for citizen initiatives would increase from 2% to 8% of registered voters. By comparison, Los Angeles requires signatures from 15% of voters for a measure to qualify.
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It would also eliminate the mayor’s unilateral authority to place items on the ballot and raise the number of supervisors needed to do so.
Critics argue that raising the signature threshold could limit public participation in the city’s initiative process.
“These things were not broken,” said Kim Tavaglione, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council. “It is very expensive for community members to put something on the ballot.”
Tavaglione said higher signature requirements could make it harder for neighborhood and grassroots groups to place measures before voters.
“I think people in the neighborhoods will get cut off and lose the power to put stuff on the ballot, and that’s always been San Francisco, whether you like it- and obviously the mayor doesn’t like it-but that’s democracy. It’s messy.” she said.
The mayor submitted paperwork for three separate charter reform measures. Each proposal would require roughly 51,000 valid signatures to qualify for the November ballot.
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