Amid a push to overhaul San Francisco’s Kafkaesque city charter, officials are considering granting even more power to the mayor.
Sources say measures proposed for the November election that would overhaul the city’s governing document are designed to increase mayoral authority and control. The changes would include granting the mayor the ability to hire many city department heads, including the police chief, an authority that is now shared with the Police Commission.
The proposal follows a monthslong process (opens in new tab) launched by Mayor Daniel Lurie and Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman, who assembled a task force to examine reforms to the city’s 500-plus-page governing document. The effort incorporated several recommendations from a November report (opens in new tab) by the nonprofit think tank SPUR.
The mayor’s office declined to comment. Mandelman said many of the ideas have been discussed for years, and the timing is right to act.
“I think we should make [the changes] happen,” Mandelman said. “It makes sense to do this in this cycle. This is the right year to do it.”
The SPUR report laid out 10 recommendations, including shifting more hiring power to the mayor.
“The charter should be amended to allow the mayor to directly hire and remove executive-branch department heads,” the report said. “This change would align accountability with public expectations, ensuring that voters can hold the mayor responsible for results.”
Other proposed changes, sources say, would allow most commissioners to be removed at will by their appointing authority – either the mayor or the Board of Supervisors. The measure would also restore “deputy mayors” to oversee city departments, a structure eliminated by voters in the early 1990s (opens in new tab). It would give the mayor greater flexibility to reorganize city agencies, including potentially facilitating a merger of the Department of Building Inspection and the Planning Department.
Supervisor Rafael Mandelman and Lurie are pushing to increase mayoral authority and control. | Source: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/The Standard
Sources say that Lurie believes greater authority would bring greater accountability, and that he cannot fully deliver on his promise to revitalize San Francisco without stronger executive tools.
Other proposals under discussion include changes to the city’s contracting process and raising the threshold for citizen-led initiatives (opens in new tab) and Board of Supervisors proposals to qualify for the ballot. A separate effort is underway to reduce the number of city commissions.
Failed effort in 2024
This is not the first recent attempt to restructure City Hall’s balance of power.
In 2023, the now-defunct political group TogetherSF launched a similar campaign. After multiple revisions to its proposal, the group qualified Proposition D for the 2024 ballot. The measure focused on cutting commissions but also empowered the mayor to hire and fire department heads and remove certain appointees.
Prop. D became entangled in a contentious mayoral race as Mark Farrell, a candidate and former supervisor, developed close ties to the measure and to TogetherSF. Prop. D failed, as did Farrell’s quest for mayor, and TogetherSF disbanded shortly afterward, merging into Neighbors for a Better San Francisco.
Jay Cheng, executive director of Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, said the group strongly supports Lurie’s charter reform effort.
“It’s reminiscent of and reflective of our ideas at TogetherSF,” Cheng said. “We’re glad to see this moving forward as part of Lurie’s charter reform measure.”
Former Supervisor Aaron Peskin, a critic of Prop. D who helped defeat the measure, said he supports increasing mayoral power but urged Lurie to engage in broader discussions before moving forward.
“While I support that recommendation, I think it would benefit from being done in consultation with existing commissions that often know more about their departments than a new mayor,” Peskin said.
A poll (opens in new tab) obtained by The Standard found that voters largely support expanding mayoral authority. The survey, conducted in late January by David Binder Research among 600 likely November voters, found that 70% support giving the mayor more power to reorganize or combine departments to improve coordination and accountability.
“The high level of support for this policy reflects alignment between positive opinion of the mayor, lower opinion of the Board of Supervisors, and a desire to fix what’s seen as a broken system, prone to corruption,” the poll analysis states.
Lurie and city leaders will decide how to place a measure on the ballot, either through approval by a majority of the Board of Supervisors or by gathering voter signatures.