![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1761948491_769_-S3840x2561-FPNG.png\"\/)
Board President Rafael Mandelman is teaming up with Lurie on charter reform efforts. | Source: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades\/The Standard<\/p>\nDaniel Lurie rose to power in large part because he promised to dismantle the city\u2019s notorious bureaucracy and make government work better for frustrated residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, the mayor and a coalition of reformers are eyeing the city\u2019s charter \u2014 a roughly 540-page governing document, almost twice the size of L.A.\u2019s \u2014 as a major step toward that goal. Lurie argues that the behemoth charter stands in the way of a more efficient \u2014 and effective \u2014 City Hall, and he is considering asking voters to help him shrink it.<\/p>\n
Lurie is teaming up with Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman, a moderate ally, and the urbanist think tank SPUR for what could become a November 2026 ballot measure that will chip away at the myriad rules nestled in the charter \u2014 essentially, the city\u2019s version of a constitution. They argue that excessive and redundant laws have gummed up city operations in a way that makes it difficult to deliver services and address some of San Francisco\u2019s most daunting challenges.<\/p>\n
The charter, Lurie said, is \u201coutdated and overly complicated.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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,\u201d he said in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lurie and his allies are in the brainstorming phase of what their voter referendum might include. The mayor\u2019s office and others involved in the effort provided The Standard with a glimpse into some of their early ideas for condensing the charter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Board President Rafael Mandelman is teaming up with Lurie on charter reform efforts. | Source: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades\/The Standard<\/p>\n
Changes under consideration range from the lightly technical to the inscrutably wonky. They include a tweak that would give the city administrator more authority to handle San Francisco\u2019s procurement process, which dictates how the government purchases items such as software. The process, now handled at the department level, has led to an often disjointed bureaucracy, as exemplified by the 20 different software platforms that are used for permitting<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Other ideas proposed by Mandelman are more robust and politically complicated, such as empowering the mayor with new authority over city commissions \u2014 a move that would almost certainly spark a fight with the city\u2019s progressive wing.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mandelman said some of those changes are necessary to make it clear who is in charge of what. The charter, which saw its last major reform in the mid-1990s, has \u201cled to a system that is easy to stop things getting done,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, SPUR is expected to release a report Wednesday with recommendations on changes to the charter that could be included in a 2026 measure. SPUR CEO Sean Elsbernd, who was chief of staff under Mayor London Breed, said the report (opens in new tab)<\/a> will include ideas on how to overhaul \u201cthe structure of the city administrator\u2019s office\u201d and change \u201chow procurement should work.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a very complicated document,\u201d Elsbernd told The Standard. \u201cThat makes running the government in an efficient manner that much more difficult.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Changes to the charter require voter approval, meaning residents must be the ones to roll back the regulations they previously approved. The mayor would need Mandelman \u2014 plus five other supervisors \u2014 to send the measure to the ballot, an easier task after voters last November added moderate allies to the 11-member board.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI do think it would be good to use this moment of comity to try to make it a little easier to be a good mayor,\u201d Mandelman said.\u00a0<\/p>\n There is evidence that voters might be open to this idea. Last fall, voters approved Proposition E (opens in new tab)<\/a>, which created a task force to review San Francisco\u2019s sprawling network of roughly 130 commissions overseeing city business and identify which ones could be consolidated or eliminated. The task force has been meeting throughout the year, with a final report expected (opens in new tab)<\/a> by February.<\/p>\n Critics of the current charter blame the myriad commissions for having overlapping responsibilities and preventing the mayor from advancing their agenda. While the mayor can make appointments to commissions, he needs the Board of Supervisors to approve some of his selections. Mandelman suggested that the measure could grant the mayor unilateral authority over appointments on certain commissions. The mayor could also take over some commission positions that are appointed by the Board of Supervisors, he said.<\/p>\n Other ideas circulating include removing the mayor\u2019s authority to place a ballot measure before voters, and the ability of four supervisors to do the same. Such changes would ameliorate the current situation, in which competing pieces of legislation are pushed before voters. Mandelman also said the rules around the mayor hiring and firing department heads could be relaxed.<\/p>\n The mayor\u2019s office is also considering moving some language from the charter into the administrative code, which lays out the city\u2019s ordinances. That would be significant because while the charter must be amended through voter approval, the Board of Supervisors can make changes to the administrative code.\u00a0<\/p>\n The measure could be one of several contentious issues on next year\u2019s ballot. Others include Lurie\u2019s parcel tax to fund Muni<\/a> and a slew of new taxes<\/a> on corporations, authored by progressive supervisors.<\/p>\n But several organizations have signaled their support for reforming the charter.<\/p>\n Wade Rose, president of Advance SF, a group that advocates for the city\u2019s business interests and is helping with the 2026 effort, likened it to a \u201chouse cleaning.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cLots of things have been thrown into the closet,\u201d he said, \u201cand it has become too difficult to manage.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daniel Lurie rose to power in large part because he promised to dismantle the city\u2019s notorious bureaucracy and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32547,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[4752,636,21973,101,103,102,104,106,105,23542],"class_list":{"0":"post-32546","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-city-hall","9":"tag-daniel-lurie","10":"tag-rafael-mandelman","11":"tag-san-francisco","12":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","13":"tag-san-francisco-news","14":"tag-sf","15":"tag-sf-headlines","16":"tag-sf-news","17":"tag-spur"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"People](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1761948492_714_-S3840x2563-FPNG.png\"\/)
San Francisco\u2019s charter was last reformed in the 1990s. | Source: Jungho Kim for The Standard<\/p>\n