City Hall Digest: SF is the Worst-Run City in America—Our Reforms Can Help

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

Grand Jury Agrees—SF’s Commission System is a Mess

San Francisco’s civil grand jury released their long-awaited investigation into the city’s sprawling commission system last week, confirming what TogetherSF Action has been saying for a long time—government oversight in San Francisco is broken. If you want to dive into the myriad and multifaceted ways it’s broken, the full report is here, but trust us, it’s not good.

A quick recap: San Francisco has a bunch of committees, commissions, and boards that are supposed to be a watchdog for specific city departments and keep our government accountable. Over time, San Francisco kept adding commissions, even when they’re redundant or unnecessary. That’s ground local government to a halt, and kept the city from fixing some big problems.

*San Francisco’s population grew about 37 percent from 1930 to 2020. San Francisco’s commission system grew 475 percent in that same time.*

Civil grand juries can investigate whatever they see as problematic or worth investigating in a county’s government, and San Francisco’s system for government oversight is full of red flags. Their report found a number of structural flaws in the system. Some highlights (or lowlights, to be more accurate):

There’s no single, authoritative list of commissions, and the entire commission system suffers from a lack of transparency and structure.
The process for appointing commissioners is overly political. Elected officials appoint supporters and friends, with qualifications for a commission being a secondary concern.
There’s no standard for the duties, responsibilities, and performance of commissions or the commissioners who serve on these bodies.
There’s no consistent way to evaluate what commissions should be changed or abolished.

Now, we’ve been working on this issue for a while. Last year, TogetherSF commissioned a report from the Rose Institute at Claremont College that identified some of the structural flaws with San Francisco’s government. One of the report’s findings included reforming the city’s commission system. We took that recommendation and ran with it, sponsoring a ballot measure for the November election that would streamline and standardize San Francisco’s oversight committees.

Unfortunately, not every elected official in San Francisco wants to reform this broken system. Some politicians, like 16-year Supervisor Aaron Peskin, benefit from the status quo. Supervisor Peskin recently introduced a competing charter amendment that sounds similar, but doesn’t actually update or change government oversight in any meaningful way. The only purpose of Peskin’s measure is to confuse voters, keep the current system, and bolster his mayoral campaign. Our community has sent hundreds of letters to the Board of Supervisors, urging them to vote no on Peskin’s confusing charter amendment. Join them, and send your letter now.

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More Sober Housing on the Horizon?

Last Tuesday, District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey and District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman hosted a press conference to announce new legislation that would make it easier for people with substance use disorder to recover in a drug-free environment. If passed, their ordinance would incentivize new, drug-free permanent supportive housing projects in San Francisco.

Currently, drug-free housing can’t receive state funding (although a new bill from State Assemblyman Matt Haney is trying to change that). Recovery advocates say it’s difficult for people to recover from substance use disorder when they’re surrounded by drugs, but that’s been pretty much the only option for supportive housing in San Francisco for years.

If someone wants to maintain a sober lifestyle, but their only option for housing is to live next to people who may be using drugs, that’s a fundamentally broken system. People without addiction issues, including low-income families with young children, have been placed in permanent supportive housing next to neighbors using drugs. Supervisors’ Dorsey and Mandelman are working to change the system. Their law would require new subsidized housing to be drug-free until 25 percent of San Francisco’s supportive housing is sober housing.

Of course, that would keep the vast majority of San Francisco’s supportive housing the way it currently is, with residents able to use drugs while living there. But the goal of this new law is to provide options. Everyone’s road to recovery is different, but right now San Francisco mandates a one-size-fits-all approach. We’re grateful to elected officials like Supervisors’ Dorsey and Mandelman for listening to the recovery community, and introducing legislation to address their concerns.

Big Role for Small Business in SF’s Economic Recovery

Good news for San Francisco’s small businesses, and ultimately the city’s economic recovery—the Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) is expanding the Vacant to Vibrant Program this year. Led by the nonprofit SF New Deal with funding from OEWD, the Vacant to Vibrant program gives small businesses grants and free rent for three months to lease empty storefronts downtown.

This kind of economic stimulus is exactly what San Francisco needs at the moment. Downtown has been struggling to recover as employers shift to new work-from-home models. That’s left a glut of empty space downtown as the businesses that relied on regular Monday through Friday foot traffic close down. Empty storefronts give people even less reason to visit downtown, and that hurts the remaining businesses.

It’s a vicious cycle, and one that the Vacant to Vibrant program is trying to disrupt. The first funding cycle had nearly 1,000 business applicants, with 17 ultimately chosen and now offering a wide range of goods and services around the Embarcadero BART station. This funding cycle chose 11 businesses to fill eight empty storefronts downtown.

Encouraging and incentivizing the success of small businesses is one of the most important things San Francisco city officials can do right now. Thriving businesses contribute to the city’s tax base, activates neighborhoods, and boosts street conditions. We hope these 11 businesses enjoy their shiny new locations, and wish them all the success in the future.

San Francisco’s Government Has Nowhere to Go But Up

San Francisco’s reputation isn’t exactly sterling at the moment, and the problems with our city’s government are well known. Still, it’s never easy when your city is named the worst run city in the US. Making matters worse, this is the second year in a row San Francisco has topped (bottomed?) this ranking from WalletHub.

Of course, WalletHub’s rankings aren’t really scientific—they’re mainly used as local news fodder for cities near the top or bottom of the rankings. Still, San Francisco consistently ranks at the bottom of these kinds of lists, and that’s not an accident. Our city has major structural flaws that need to be fixed, and ignoring them doesn’t do anything to improve San Francisco.

TogetherSF Action is focused on fixing those problems. Our commission reform measure in the November election will go a long way towards fixing San Francisco’s broken system for government oversight. And we’re working to elect more pragmatic, effective officials who focus on results, not ideology. So there’s plenty of reasons for optimism in San Francisco—plus, local government literally can’t sink any lower in the rankings.