SPUR, a Bay Area urbanist think tank, today released a report with 10 recommendations for City Hall to reform its 548-page charter, which functions as the constitution for San Francisco.
The report echoes past SPUR reports in that it recommends increasing mayoral power, and specifically calls for the mayor to be empowered to unilaterally hire and fire department heads. It also calls for enhancing the power of the City Administrator, setting a higher threshold for issues to end up on the ballot for voters and creating more flexibility to make changes on city budget and departmental structures.
The report essentially tees up a shot for Mayor Daniel Lurie and Board President Rafael Mandelman, who will be teaming up for a November 2026 charter reform ballot measure that, all but certainly, will greatly resemble the SPUR paper.
The report was written by Ben Rosenfield, former San Francisco city controller from 2008 to 2024 and a member of Lurie’s transition team, Nicole Neditch, SPUR’s governance and economy policy director, and Maeve Kelly, SPUR’s governance and economy policy manager.
SPUR adviser Ed Harrington, San Francisco’s controller from 1991 to 2008 and later a PUC general manager and commissioner, said that augmenting mayoral power is actually a good way to hold the mayor accountable. “If you want the mayor to be held responsible, you have to give them authority to make decisions,” he said.
Harrington recalled his conversation with former mayor London Breed. “What she said was ‘nobody in the public is ever going to care what five of you who were on the Public Utilities Commission did,’” Harrington said. “They’re going to blame me as mayor if I didn’t make sure the water department ran.”
SPUR is also recommending a new organizational structure for the mayor’s office that cements the policy chiefs, which are positions instituted by Mayor Daniel Lurie.
Lurie added four “deputy-mayor”-like policy chiefs to “coordinate” with different departments and oversee different issues. He has also recently added a fifth policy chief, Jessica MacLeod, to oversee the city’s strategy and performance.
However, the policy chiefs currently don’t have the authority to manage departments, according to the report.
The report also recommends raising the signature requirement for non-charter ballot measures from 2 percent to 5 percent of the city’s 522,265 registered voters — jumping from about 10,445 to 26,113 signatures. It also proposes requiring a majority of the 11-member Board of Supervisors, subject to the mayor’s veto, to place a measure on the ballot, instead of allowing just four supervisors to do so — or the mayor to do so alone.
It recommends giving the city administrator more responsibilities by acting like the city’s “chief operating officer.” For example, the City Administrator — presently Carmen Chu — would have more power over the city’s procurement process, which decides how City Hall purchases software and merchandise. Under the recommendations, the city administrator would have a term of 10 years instead of the present five years.
Other recommendations are:
Move some of the departments from charter to administrative code, which allows more flexibility for the mayor and the Board of Supervisors to make structural changes on departments without having to put the issue on the ballot for voters to decide.
Revisit or reduce San Francisco’s charter-mandated spending set-asides, money earmarked for specific services such as parks, libraries, and public transit. It recommends giving supervisors and the mayor more flexibility to reallocate funds and respond to changing needs or budget shortfalls.
Set up a labor-management working group to update the city’s binding arbitration system for labor negotiations, which occurs when labor negotiations reach an impasse and requires a third-party independent arbitrator’s decision, given recent state rulings have made it unbalanced and costly.
Compared to other major U.S. cities, San Francisco’s charter is exceptionally long. It is nearly a third longer than New York City’s 340-page charter and 23 times longer than Seattle’s 23-page charter. Lurie and Mandelman want to explore the possibilities to shrink it.
“Our administration is working every day to deliver more effective government services for San Franciscans, and our outdated and overly complicated city charter is getting in the way,” Lurie said in a statement. “We are going to take a comprehensive look at how to modernize the charter so that we can serve San Franciscans more effectively, efficiently, and accountably.”
Mandelman said he and Lurie are in the process of putting together a task force to look into “what kinds of things people talk about when they talk about charter reform.” The task force will likely include “broad selection San Francisco leaders” from businesses, labor, and nonprofits, Mandelman said.
Mandelman said an array of city staff and elected officials will also participate in the discussion, such as Chu, infrastructure policy chief and former SPUR head Alicia John-Baptiste, and staff from the City Controller’s Office and City Attorney’s Office.
The task force is likely to conclude its work by February or March 2026 and “ideally” come up with some recommendations for the Board of Supervisors.
Sean Elsbernd, SPUR’s CEO and former Mayor London Breed’s chief of staff, said he is aware of the challenges ahead and said that the report is a good way to open the discussion around how to reform the city’s charter.
“We’re not going into this with stars in our eyes thinking because we wrote it, everybody’s just going to say, ‘wonderful, let’s go for it,’” Elsbernd said. “We recognize that this is an iterative process. We want to start the conversation.”