Why Does Everything Take So Long in San Francisco?
“Commissions provide cover for elected officials to hide behind, escaping the very accountability that they’re supposed to provide. ”
San Franciscans believe in holding those in power accountable—challenging authority is one of our core values. SF is home to dozens of muckraking journalists, blogs devoted to exposing corruption, and protests that fill the city streets with every new injustice. But in true San Francisco fashion, our elected officials have taken things way too far. That anti-authority culture seeps into City Hall, evidenced by the sprawling network of internal oversight groups, known as commissions, that keep watch on the city’s government.
Ironically, these commissions provide cover for elected officials to hide behind, escaping the very accountability that they’re supposed to provide. And while commissions are supposed to keep government accountable, voters can’t hold commissioners accountable, which allows a lot of misbehavior and corruption to flourish.
So how did this happen? How did a system designed to keep San Francisco’s government accountable end up delivering the exact opposite result? It’s really a perfect demonstration of how too much of a good thing can end up being a disaster.
What Do San Francisco’s Commissions Do?
“If oversight led to good government, San Francisco would have the best government in the world.”
San Francisco’s commissions are supposed to provide guidance for certain city issues and be a watchdog for specific city departments. In theory, commissions exist to make sure city employees aren’t embezzling taxpayer money, or the police department isn’t going rogue, or the head of the public works department isn’t giving a bunch of city contracts to an unqualified cousin.
You might be starting to see the problem. To paraphrase District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, if oversight led to good government, San Francisco would have the best government in the world. To put it mildly, San Francisco does not have the best government in the world. Far from it.
Right now, San Francisco has 130 commissions, with over 1,200 unelected commissioners staffing those commissions. That’s way more than other, similar US cities—for example, the city governments of Los Angeles and San Diego manage to function with fewer than 50 commissions each.
San Francisco’s commissions have a huge variety of responsibilities. Some are purely advisory, providing citizen input for planning and department decisions. But some, like the Police Commission, have real power. Commissions with decision-making authority can set policy for city departments, nominate department heads for the mayor to appoint, remove department heads, and approve department budgets. Again, unelected commissioners are making these decisions, not the officials San Franciscans actually voted for and chose to represent them.
In theory, commissions are supposed to be a healthy check on power. In reality, there are so many commissions in San Francisco with real decision-making power that it’s no longer clear who’s ultimately responsible for solving the major issues in our city. Is the mayor responsible for public safety? Or the Police Commission?
How Commissions Let Elected Officials Off the Hook
“When everyone is a little bit in charge, no one is really in charge.”
San Francisco’s elected officials are pretty happy to take advantage of the confusion that our commission system creates. Politicians love being able to take credit for the good things that happen on their watch, and point fingers at others when things go sideways.
Just look at San Francisco’s attempts to solve homelessness. We have an entire city department with a $713 million annual budget and five (!) commissions devoted to solving homelessness. Surely all those resources, combined with all that oversight, would be enough to make a dent in the issue, right?
Well, not exactly. San Francisco’s unhoused population fluctuates year to year, but actually measured about nine percent higher in 2022 than it had been a decade prior. We’re not failing to shelter unhoused people because we lack the resources. It’s because our elected officials lack the political will. When voters ask the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors what they’re doing about homelessness, they can point a finger at one of the oversight commissions, say “don’t ask me, they’re the ones in charge,” and technically, they wouldn’t be wrong. When everyone is a little bit in charge, no one is really in charge.
The Confusion Created by Commissions
“If the commissioners making decisions for a department do not want that department to exist, don’t be surprised when employees have a hard time doing their jobs.”
Commissions don’t just provide cover for the elected officials who are failing to do their jobs. They also made the city’s org chart a giant mess. Right now, there’s no clear, aligned direction for a lot of city departments in San Francisco, because employees are answering to three or four different bosses. City employees need to follow the guidance of their oversight commission and their department head—when the direction isn’t the same, who are they supposed to listen to?
Policing in San Francisco gives us a really good example. For the past few years, social media and the nightly news have been filled with videos of crimes happening across the city, with nearby police officers in plain sight, very obviously not chasing the people who just brazenly committed a crime. San Franciscans are calling for better policing, supervisors are calling for better policing, the mayor is calling for better policing, but yet these videos keep popping up. Ever wonder what’s going on there?
Well, until some very recent updates made possible by the passage of Prop E in the March 2024 primary, SFPD wasn’t allowed to chase suspects, unless they were suspected of committing a violent crime. That’s thanks to a rule imposed by the Police Commission, which has several commissioners who are opposed to the very idea of a police force.
Remember when Donald Trump put charter school-advocate Betsy DeVos in charge of the Department of Education and big oil devotee Scott Pruitt in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency? It didn’t work out great. If the commissioners making decisions for a department do not want that department to exist, don’t be surprised when employees have a hard time doing their jobs.
San Franciscans wonder why it seems like nothing ever changes in the city. This is a major reason—every department in the city is being told what to do by a group of unelected quasi-experts. Some of the people guiding certain departments are actively hoping for that department to simply disappear.
How TogetherSF Action’s Commission Reform Fixes This Broken System
“San Francisco’s commissions created the worst of both worlds, where we have a bunch of extra bureaucracy, without the accountability for city officials that should come with it.”
So our current system clearly isn’t working. How can we ever hold our elected officials accountable and get them to fix San Francisco’s problems, when we don’t even know who’s responsible for fixing those problems?
It’s something we’ve been working on, and we’ve come up with a solution. TogetherSF Action is sponsoring a ballot measure for the November 2024 election that narrowly targets the root of the problems with San Francisco’s broken commission system. Right now, unaccountable, unelected commissions are the ultimate authority in city government. Our ballot measure restores ultimate authority to San Franciscans, allowing voters to hold commissioners accountable.
Our commission reform measure tackles the problem in a few ways. First, the measure would update the city charter to reduce the number of commissions by roughly half, and cap the number of commissions in San Francisco at 65. Streamlining and combining duplicative commissions is one of the biggest changes San Francisco can make to make City Hall operate more effectively.
But our measure doesn’t just streamline and cap commissions, it also updates the role commissions play in San Francisco. This reform ensures that a significant portion of San Francisco commissions are advisory only. No more unelected commissioners making major judgments around policing, housing, homelessness, and other big decisions our elected officials should be making.
Finally, this measure would allow the authority who appoints a commissioner to directly remove a commissioner. You might be surprised to learn that this isn’t how it works currently, but yeah, it’s not. It led to a bunch of problems in San Francisco, where commissioners with some incredibly problematic behavior remained in their seats, because their misdeeds didn’t technically meet the level needed for removal.
One important point—this ballot measure doesn’t directly decide which commissions to cut, combine, or retain. Instead, once the measure passes, it creates a task force of San Franciscans who will review every commission in the city and decide which ones to streamline. This is an important restructuring effort for the government, so it’s important to devote the resources necessary to make sure it’s successful.
Look, San Franciscans’ desire to keep our government from abusing its power is a good thing. There need to be checks and balances in government to keep the system from becoming corrupt. But our out-of-control commission system isn’t doing that. It’s created the worst of both worlds, where we have a bunch of oversight leading to a bunch of extra bureaucracy, but without the accountability for city officials that should come with it.
This year, it’s time to put an end to this contradiction. San Franciscans deserve a city government that can effectively address city issues. Our current commission system is blocking that—it has to be reformed if we want our government to get any better. TogetherSF Action’s ballot measure will deliver real accountability in San Francisco government that’s necessary to build a truly compassionate city—not just one that pays lip service to a vague notion of “oversight.”
Paid for by TogetherSF Action (tsfaction.org). Not authorized by any candidate or committee controlled by a candidate. Financial disclosures are available at sfethics.org.