Arguing that San Francisco needs changes such as a more powerful mayor and fewer commissions to meet pressing challenges, Supervisor Rafael Mandelman on Tuesday unveiled a ballot measure proposal that would make significant changes to the mechanisms of City Hall.
“San Franciscans are proud of their city but increasingly frustrated with their local government,” Mandelman said in a statement outlining ideas such as empowering the mayor to do things like hire deputy mayors and fire directors of executive departments overseen by commissions.
“These common-sense reforms will help the city government act more like a unified whole rather than a collection of loosely affiliated departments,” said Mandelman, citing The City’s lack of affordable housing, its lagging post-pandemic downtown recovery, and the high rate of drug overdose deaths as challenges needing more coordinated responses.
Mandelman said he was issuing his proposals more than a year before the November 2024 election in hopes of achieving agreement with his fellow supervisors, even amid the jockeying in a mayoral election season. More changes could happen in 2026, he said.
Mandelman’s proposals mirrored some of the ideas contained in an expansive think-tank report commissioned by TogetherSF, a community organizing group backed by venture capitalist Michael Moritz that has decried the city’s handling of homelessness, drugs and retail crime.
Mandelman’s briefing materials mentioned TogetherSF’s report, which was released in August and produced by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College.
Mandelman, however, didn’t get a big thank you from TogetherSF’s political arm, TogetherSF Action, which endorsed Mandelman in the November 2022 election but said that his charter proposals fell short. TogetherSF Action launched last year with $3 million for political activities, which are prohibited for 501(c)(3) nonprofits such as TogetherSF.
“While we appreciate Supervisor Mandelman’s proposed reform initiative, we believe that it needs to go much further,” said Kanishka Cheng, a former city official who is TogetherSF Action’s executive director, in a statement. She promised to hold supervisors “accountable.”
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“San Francisco is facing a litany of challenges and now is the time to be bold in the changes we make, so that we can provide far better outcomes than the status quo,” said Cheng, who has said flaws in city rules discourage solution-oriented actions.
Mandelman, who previously said he wasn’t ready to endorse all of the ideas in the Rose Institute report, called Tuesday for:
Eliminating a prohibition against the mayor hiring deputy mayors;
Allowing the mayor to fire directors of most executive departments overseen by commissions;
Authorizing a task force to consolidate or eliminate some of The City’s 130 commissions, boards and advisory bodies, some of which have significant power;
Giving the mayor veto power — subject to supermajority override — over Board of Supervisors appointments for commissions when appointments are split and supervisors can veto mayoral appointments; and
Expanding Local Emergency powers beyond “sudden and unexpected” events to speed up decisionmaking in order to address crises such as homelessness and drug overdoses.
In addition, Mandelman has proposed stripping both the mayor and the board of the power of the power to put initiative ordinances on the ballot, which Mandelman said is asking citizens to do legislators’ jobs.
In 2022, Mandelman said, San Francisco voters faced a 239-page voter information pamphlet containing 22 ballot measures.
The Rose Institute report similarly suggested possibly giving the mayor more power over hiring and firing, noting that for many city departments, the mayor must hire for top jobs from a list provided by a commission.
But the report also suggested possibly electing some supervisors on a citywide basis as a way to promote citywide thinking, raising the signature threshold for citizen-initiated ballot measures, eliminating the power of the mayor or a minority of supervisors to put measures on the ballot, and letting the mayor veto board-proposed ballot measures.
Mandelman represents District 8, which includes the Castro, Cole Valley, Diamond Heights, Glen Park, Mission Dolores and Noe Valley neighborhoods.
