City Hall Digest: Unruly Board of Supervisors Meeting in UN Plaza and New Poll on City Direction

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.

Unruly Board of Supervisors Meeting in UN Plaza

Each month, the Mayor joins the Board of Supervisors for a Q&A session known as “Question Time,” where supervisors can pose questions directly to the Mayor. As San Francisco’s elected officials struggle to solve the city’s fentanyl-fueled overdose crisis, Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin tried to highlight the epidemic by holding the meeting outdoors in U.N. Plaza, a major center of the drug crisis.

Unfortunately, the results were as predictable as one could imagine—protestors shouted down the speakers, and a particularly dissatisfied citizen hurled a brick toward the lawmakers. 

Because of crowd interference, the meeting was forced to adjourn temporarily, and was moved back into the regular room inside City Hall. While the meeting was, in Peskin’s own words, a “sh*tshow,” the intent was clear: to pressure the Mayor to publicly commit to addressing the city’s overdose crisis. 

Once back inside, Supervisor Peskin asked whether the Mayor would commit to opening an operations center where staff from relevant departments could regularly work, meet, and discuss progress—Mayor Breed responded by saying that the Board was “micromanaging” departments, and that they should pass her public safety budget without cutting it. 

The mayor's budget will be released this week, and it is our hope that it prioritizes addressing both the supply and demand side of the drug crisis, as TogetherSF Action and our coalition have been advocating for. 

State Legislature Holds Hearing on Fentanyl Crisis—Remains Split on Solutions

The proliferation of fentanyl has proven to be as vexing to solve for San Francisco’s legislators as it is deadly—this problem extends to the statewide government, too. This year, the California State Legislature has taken up numerous bills that deal with fentanyl, primarily along the lines of increasing criminal punishments for people convicted of dealing fentanyl and separately, treatment for people with drug addictions. But so far, the legislature (composed of the Assembly and State Senate) have been divided on what real solutions may look like as the overdose crisis rages on. Elected officials in the Capitol and in City Hall alike need to work fast as overdose deaths fueled by fentanyl continue to rise. 

Last week, the complexity of the fentanyl problem was on display during a five-hour “mega hearing” on the fentanyl crisis held at the State Capitol, as lawmakers from across the state expressed varying opinions ranging from “lock ‘em up” to “incarceration solves nothing.” 

While the hearing was purely informational, a voting session followed afterwards where several fentanyl-related bills were advanced, including legislation that would create a fentanyl task force, prioritize cooperation between state and local law enforcement to crack down on trafficking, increase fines for dealers, and expand Narcan accessibility.

In the 2023-24 session, there have been 25 total bills proposed that are directly related to fentanyl (i.e., have fentanyl in the text, title, or substance), none of which have reached the Governor’s desk for signing yet. There are 13 bills pending as they go through the voting process in the legislature—the other 12 have failed or been stalled. Particularly, the bills focused on punishment have experienced stiff resistance due to the specter of the failed policies from the War on Drugs.

So far, every one of the fentanyl bills introduced this session is centered on one of three things: prosecutorial tools like adding enhancements for dealing fentanyl, opioid education in schools, or making Naloxone more easily accessible. These 25 total bills are a modest increase over the 24 bills from the 2021-22 legislative session, but a marked increase from the singular fentanyl-oriented bill in the 2015-16 session (the first time a bill mentioning the drug was introduced), which indicates lawmakers are taking the fentanyl epidemic more seriously.

This increased attention from lawmakers is a welcome sign, but action is needed now. Elected officials have seen the impact of fentanyl for years. It’s time for legislators to develop and implement policies that support people who need treatment, stop fentanyl from entering the state, and enforce laws around drug dealing.

New Poll Shows Voters Think City is Headed in Wrong Direction

Last week, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, an advocacy organization that represents local businesses and large corporations, released its annual CityBeat poll. This survey takes the temperature of voters on issues that face the city—the poll’s focus last year was crime, and this year’s was the health of downtown’s economy. 

The results have ominous bearings for city leadership heading into next year’s election—77 percent of respondents said the city is headed in the wrong direction, a slight uptick from 76 percent of people who said the same thing last year. Additionally, the share of voters that said crime and public safety were major issues increased from last year—60 percent in 2023 compared to 55 percent in 2022. If residents believed conditions in San Francisco were improving, those numbers ought to be declining instead of increasing year-over-year. 

With companies steadily exiting downtown, the city is facing mounting pressure to solve for a shrinking base of revenues to fill its coffers and provide essential services to residents. While polls this far out from election day aren’t the most accurate predictions of how voters will cast their ballots, they are a good indicator of the general climate that politicians must pay attention to and respond to accordingly.

TogetherSF Action is making advocating for an end to the drug epidemic in San Francisco a top priority this year. Our first step? Flooding inboxes at City Hall. We need thousands of concerned San Franciscans to send letters to their leaders demanding they end open-air drug markets in 2023. Are you in?