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San Francisco\u2019s 548-page City Charter is the longest in the nation. What is meant to be a concise constitutional framework is a detailed and disjointed instruction manual.<\/p>\n
Santiago Mejia\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
Most San Francisco residents rarely think about the City Charter<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 the foundational legal document that serves as the local constitution. Yet it shapes nearly every part of how San Francisco functions\u00a0\u2014 from who holds authority to how city departments are structured to how decisions get made.<\/p>\n Adopted in its current form 30 years ago, the charter has been amended more than 100 times since, through ballot measures put before voters. At 548 pages, it is now the longest city charter in the nation, nearly 25 times the length of Seattle\u2019s.<\/p>\n The charter is meant to set broad goals and powers. The administrative code is where the daily operational work of departments should be hammered out.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n San Francisco\u2019s charter does this well for its fire department; just three sentences define its mission. The details are left to the administrative code\u00a0\u2014 where lawmakers can adjust them as needed. By contrast, the section governing the Municipal Transportation Agency runs 16 pages, spelling out a tangled web of procedures and provisions.<\/p>\n What was meant to be a concise constitutional framework has become a detailed and disjointed instruction manual. Riddled with outdated, duplicative and overly specific provisions, the charter ties the city\u2019s hands at precisely the moment when flexibility and adaptability are needed most.<\/p>\n San Francisco is staring down one of the largest budget deficits in decades. Federal cuts to emergency management and health care will make that challenge even harder. Tough decisions will need to be made over the next few years to ensure that the city can build a sustainable fiscal future and continue to meet the growing needs of the community.<\/p>\n To do this, San Francisco must change the way it operates. This means fundamentally rethinking how the city governs itself. And that begins with an honest look at the foundation of the city government.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Public infrastructure is a perfect example.<\/p>\n The now-infamous $1.7 million public toilet<\/a> was a symptom of a system that makes even small projects painfully complex. Due to charter-mandated procedural layers and scattered responsibility, costs ballooned and timelines stretched endlessly.<\/p>\n The charter requires the city administrator to oversee purchasing but doesn\u2019t give authority to enforce consistent rules, so each department develops its own protocols. And the Board of Supervisors tries to fix problems it sees by adding new legislative requirements. This complicated system creates months of back and forth between departments and higher price tags. There is no clear central authority to coordinate across departments. This lack of cohesion extends to technology, real estate, capital programs and basic asset management.<\/p>\n Small business owners face similar obstacles. Opening a neighborhood cafe can require navigating up to 11 different departments, each with its own rules, mandates and approval processes, many of them locked in place by the charter. Nearly 90% of city departments are embedded directly in the charter, an arrangement virtually unheard of among major cities. The result: Any change, even a small one, can require a ballot measure.\u00a0<\/p>\n The charter\u2019s rigidity extends to how the city makes policy decisions. The mayor or a minority of just four supervisors can bypass the normal legislative process and place measures directly on the ballot. Meanwhile, citizens need signatures from only 2% of registered voters to qualify an initiative, compared with 8% to 20% in other California cities.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The outcome is predictable: San Franciscans vote on more local ballot measures than anywhere else in the state. In last November\u2019s election, there were 15 local propositions\u00a0\u2014 compared with three in Oakland and one in San Jose. Since 2015, roughly 30% of all measures didn\u2019t even require voter approval under state law; they could have been enacted through ordinary legislative action.<\/p>\n When we make it so easy for every decision to go to the ballot, city leaders can abdicate their responsibility for governing to voters. Important policy debates become politicized campaigns rather than thoughtful deliberations. And residents get stuck trying to parse the barrage of complex ballot measures to make decisions with implications that they don\u2019t fully understand. This often leaves the city stuck with laws that sounded appealing at the time but prove ineffective or counterproductive in practice.<\/p>\n Charter reform isn\u2019t about consolidating power or cutting corners. It\u2019s about creating a government that works\u00a0\u2014 one capable of building housing, maintaining infrastructure, contracting for services and responding to crises without years of delay.<\/p>\n By moving operational details out of the charter and into the city\u2019s administrative code, San Francisco could give its leaders the flexibility to reorganize departments, test new approaches and adapt to changing needs without having to ask voters for permission every time. This isn\u2019t an abstract bureaucratic fix\u00a0\u2014 it\u2019s the difference between a government that can act and one that gets stuck in process.<\/p>\n San Francisco is world-famous as a hub of creativity and technology. Yet our government operates under rules written for another era. We pride ourselves on innovation, but our governance model rewards inertia.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n We can no longer afford a system that prizes procedure over performance.<\/p>\n Modernizing the charter would allow city officials to manage like leaders rather than caretakers in a museum of past compromises.<\/p>\n Today, policymakers are considering changes to streamline the city\u2019s commissions for the November 2026 ballot\u00a0\u2014 an effort born from last year\u2019s voter-approved Proposition E, which established a \u201ccommission on commissions\u201d to make city government more efficient by modifying, eliminating or combining commissions.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a fine start. But we should go further.<\/p>\n Guest opinions in Open Forum and Insight are produced by writers with expertise, personal experience or original insights on a subject of interest to our readers. Their views do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Chronicle editorial board, which is committed to providing a diversity of ideas to our readership.<\/p>\n Read more about our transparency and ethics policies<\/a><\/p>\n