The Charter Reforms San Francisco Needs to Thrive Again

City Hall Digest is TogetherSF Action’s weekly dispatch from San Francisco’s City Hall, broken into bite-sized pieces—because understanding local government is your fundamental right.

Today, TogetherSF Action held a press conference to announce our sponsorship of a package of reforms that will help San Francisco become a more manageable, governable, and accountable city for all residents. These reforms aim to update San Francisco’s charter (the city’s governing document), and are narrowly targeted at some outdated, fundamental flaws that have made San Francisco nearly impossible to govern. 

Because in its current state, San Francisco is in desperate need of some fundamental changes to move forward. The city faces major challenges on multiple fronts, like deteriorating public safety, escalating homelessness, skyrocketing overdose deaths, a shaky economic recovery, and a $780 million budget deficit. A recent poll found that 76 percent of San Francisco voters believe the city is on the wrong track, and pessimism about our local government is at an all-time high. With voters paying increased attention to elected officials’ actions as they work to fix these problems, this is the moment for a sea change in San Francisco, an improvement to “business as usual.”

In August 2023, TogetherSF commissioned a report from the independent, non-partisan Rose Institute at Claremont McKenna college that revealed some structural problems embedded in San Francisco’s government. This report found that San Francisco's government structure is hampering effective solutions for the challenges we face. Outdated elements in the City Charter have created way too much bureaucracy and are huge contributing factors to our inability to make progress on the issues that residents, businesses, and visitors expect and deserve to see. Due to the overlapping layers of bureaucracy in San Francisco, it’s clear that elected officials cannot and likely will not be able to deliver solutions to these problems without reforms to our city charter.

These reforms will need to be made at the ballot box. In October, District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman proposed to the Board of Supervisors a draft of a six-part charter reform. We commend Supervisor Mandelman's proposed initiative, but believe this amendment does not go far enough to deliver the reforms San Francisco needs. 

“TogetherSF Action is committed to championing evidence-based solutions so our City government can finally address the many challenges that we face,” said principal of the  Committee to Fix San Francisco Government and TogetherSF Action Founder and CEO Kanishka Cheng. “While we appreciate Supervisor Mandelman’s commitment to reform, we have little faith that a majority of the Board of Supervisors will back the big and bold changes we all need. San Francisco is tired of waiting for change, and our reform package will help build a City government that can finally work.”

That’s why TogetherSF Action is stepping up. This reform package targets two key aspects of the city’s charter: the unnecessary commissions that dilute accountability and prevent progress, and the constraints that make the Mayor ineffective at running the city.

Cut Commissions to Improve Government Efficiency

San Francisco has 130 commissions, with over 1,200 commissioners overseeing critical city services like public transit, public safety, and homelessness. That’s way more than any other city in California—for reference, larger cities like Los Angeles and San Diego have fewer than 50 each. These unelected commissions create a layer of unnecessary bureaucracy that prevents city government from efficiently addressing residents' concerns. City staff ends up spending valuable city time and money preparing materials, staffing meetings, and filling open commission seats.

This just isn’t an effective way to run a city—we need to reform the structure of our city commissions to bring San Francisco in line with good government standards. The reform TogetherSF Action is sponsoring would cut the number of city boards, commissions, and advisory bodies by half to reduce and combine commissions, and standardize rules for selection and removal of commissioners.

Our proposed reform would set a hard cap of 65 commissions, putting San Francisco more in line with similar California cities. A task force will decide which commissions to keep, and which can be combined with other commissions or cut completely. Going forward, all commissions would be formally evaluated every 10 years to see if the commission is still needed and adds value to the government.

Empower the Mayor to Build an Effective Government

San Francisco was designed to have a “strong mayor” form of government—in other cities, this means the Mayor has strong administrative authority, with the power to appoint and remove department heads, and set city policy. But in San Francisco, the Mayor’s power has been weakened by ballot measures over the past few decades, to the point the mayor’s ability to govern is severely limited. Think of it like this: the Mayor’s authority is like the foundation for a strong building. Over time different builders had different ideas of what the final product should look like, and now we have an uninhabitable structure. It’s a good metaphor for City Hall at the moment.

Under the city’s current charter, the Mayor can't actually fully hold city departments accountable. For example, the Mayor can’t fully select or remove the department heads of most of the city departments they’re responsible for. Instead, the Mayor has to select from a list of potential department heads provided by the commission overseeing the department. San Francisco’s Mayor also has limited resources to staff their office—unlike most other major American cities, the Mayor can’t hire a deputy mayor who could help the Mayor manage SF’s sprawling bureaucracy. To make matters worse, the Mayor’s office has salary restrictions that limit the pool of talent hired to work for the Mayor—most other cities don’t have these kinds of restrictions.

The reform TogetherSF Action is sponsoring would permit the Office of the Mayor to build a more accountable and effective executive office in a few ways. First, it would restore the Mayor’s power to appoint and remove city department heads, allowing them to select the leader they feel is best suited for the job. Second, it would eliminate the restriction in the city’s charter that prevents the Mayor from having deputy Mayors. Finally, it would remove the salary cap on Mayoral staff, which would allow the office to attract and retain top talent.

The Next Steps

This package of reforms was developed through community-led conversations and in-depth, expert analysis that identified meaningful solutions to address the real needs of our city. As the largest, most engaged political movement in San Francisco, TogetherSF Action seeks out data and evidence-based solutions that aren’t driven by ideology. We hold elected officials accountable to good governance, public safety, healthy street conditions, and economic opportunity. And our work gets results—our That’s Fentalife! campaign earlier this year led to increased funding for drug treatment and public safety in the next budget.

These reforms give the public and the city tools to address our current challenges and make progress on our biggest challenges. We’ll be supporting the committee submitting these two measures to the Department of Elections and building a citywide campaign to collect signatures and qualify for the 2024 ballot.

Want to help? Become a Community Leader and organize your family, friends, and neighbors in support of these important reforms. TogetherSF Action’s Community Leaders are highly-motivated, resourceful San Franciscans who mobilize their networks around shared goals to get our city back on the right track. 

Interested? Sign up to meet a member of our engagement team.