This article is from Power Play, a twice-weekly newsletter rounding up the latest City Hall and local politics gossip. To sign up, visit The Standard’s newsletter page.
It’s spring cleaning time in City Hall.
Mayor Daniel Lurie filed paperwork with the Department of Elections on Wednesday to launch three signature-gathering drives aimed at placing charter amendments on the November ballot. The mayor’s calling it the “Clean Up City Hall” campaign.
“This system works for the insiders,” Lurie told reporters. “It does not work for everyday San Franciscans.”
Of the three proposed amendments, two are expected to be noncontroversial. One would streamline and centralize the contracting process, giving more flexibility to the city administrator; the other would expand the mayor’s power to hire and fire commissioners and department heads, and allow the mayor to restructure departments.
The third proposal will likely spark a battle, as it would raise the threshold for future ballot measures to qualify. Currently, proposals backed by signatures from 2% of registered voters can qualify; Lurie wants to raise that to 8%. He also proposes increasing the number of supervisors required to place a measure on the ballot from four to six — a simple majority of the board. The plan would also remove the mayor’s own authority to place measures directly on the ballot. The change would apply only to ballot measures that are ordinances, and the process for charter amendments would remain unchanged.
Some labor leaders have spoken out against that proposal. (opens in new tab)
Beyond political opposition, the biggest challenge may be gathering signatures. Lurie and his allies must collect about 53,000 — roughly 10% of local registered voters — to qualify the measures for the November ballot, a process likely to cost millions of dollars.
“[We] haven’t figured out how much that will cost,” Lurie said. “But anyone who wants to join us, we would love their support.”
There’s a notable exception to the mayor’s expanded authority. While Lurie wants broader power to hire and fire most department heads, he keeps the existing process for selecting the police chief. Under that system, the Police Commission provides the mayor with a shortlist of candidates to choose from.
“We’re always going to work with a commission on that front,” Lurie said. “And I think that process is working well.”
If all that isn’t confusing enough, the mayor’s proposals come alongside a separate effort to streamline the city’s commissions that stems from Proposition E in 2024. That effort is expected to advance through the Board of Supervisors. Lurie has also launched a separate signature-gathering campaign for a tax measure to fund the city’s transit system. — Han Li
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State Sen. Scott Wiener released a video attacking Saikat Chakrabarti.| Camille Cohen/The Stand
VIDEO FIGHT: The race to replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi is heating up as state Sen. Scott Wiener, a leading candidate, posted a spicy video (opens in new tab) Tuesday targeting Saikat Chakrabarti, a former tech founder who has been flooding local airwaves with expensive TV ads.
“Being hyper-rich can buy you a lot of things, but it shouldn’t be able to buy you an election,” Wiener wrote in the social media post.
In the video, Wiener accuses Chakrabarti of not living in San Francisco, suggesting he resided in Maryland or Los Angeles. The Maryland accusation stems from reporting by The Standard showing that Chakrabarti bought a $1.6 million house in the city of Gaithersburg in 2018 and signed a deed promising to make it his principal residence. The candidate chalked it up to a paperwork error, calling it “an honest mistake.”
Wiener also claims his opponent “deleted 13 years of his social media posts.” Chakrabarti previously served as chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and his past posts — including provocative tweets criticizing Pelosi (opens in new tab) — were widely documented in press coverage (opens in new tab) at the time.
The exchange quickly triggered a firestorm on X, with allies on both sides rushing to join the battle. Chakrabarti and his supporters quickly pushed back, blasting Wiener’s message as a “nativist dog-whistle attack.” (opens in new tab)
His campaign admitted to deleting tweets but also accused Wiener of recycling an old campaign tactic.
“If you run against him, he’s going to call you a carpetbagger. It’s his thing. He did it to [Jackie Fielder (opens in new tab)] (opens in new tab), and now Saikat,” campaign communications director Tiffaney Bradley said in a statement. “It’s ironic coming from someone who moved here from New Jersey and now thinks he gets to decide who qualifies as a real San Franciscan.”
Meanwhile, the moderate political group GrowSF released TV ads (opens in new tab) backing supervisors Stephen Sherrill and Alan Wong, both of whom face reelection in June. GrowSF said it expects to spend about $250,000 on each race. — H.L.
BIG ETHICS FINE: A Municipal Transportation Agency staffer who engaged in a yearslong scheme to score sports tickets and other free stuff by faking a job title has been handed a big fine by the Ethics Commission. Charlie Chiem has agreed to fork over $42,611 in response to 19 violations of city laws, according to a stipulation agreement made public Monday.
Chiem was found to have broken a slew of rules: use of city resources for personal gain, misuse of city email/impersonating an official, falsely representing oneself as a department representative, accepting gifts from businesses seeking contracts, and accepting gifts from restricted sources.
Investigators say Chiem, an IT administrator for the transit agency, pretended to be a manager and attended 14 sporting events, some in luxury suites, with companies that were expected to do business with the city. Monday’s filing states that the value of his attendance at those events totaled nearly $9,000 between 2021 and 2023.
Chiem also found time between 2021 and 2024 to attend more than 600 webinars, in which he received thousands of dollars worth of merchandise, including Uber credits, headphones, and gift cards. The pace of Chiem’s attendance of the webinars — which were hosted by Microsoft, Proofpoint, Nutanix and other companies — is eye-opening: He would join more than one per day; he attended eight over the course of three days in 2023. He would also create fake email accounts to attend events multiple times.
“Respondent’s use of significant amounts of City time and resources, including creating unauthorized City email accounts are severe and demonstrate a blatant abuse of City resources for private gain,” the commission stated. Attempts to reach Chiem were unsuccessful. — Gabe Greschler
PROP. ASSIGNMENTS: The proposition letters for the June primary election are here. Prop. A, a bond, would bring $535 million in funding toward earthquake safety and emergency preparedness. Prop. B, a charter amendment, would establish lifetime term limits for the mayor and Board of Supervisors. Props. C and D are in battle with one another: C is the business community’s tax on top executive pay, while D, the “Overpaid CEO Tax,” is the union version, which would more aggressively tax businesses based on C-suite salaries. — G.G.
Clarification: Wednesday’s newsletter’s description of the “Overpaid CEO Tax” has been updated for this article.