Mayor Breed’s strange and terrible foray into ‘reform,’ six years into her term

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Last week, on the 2,232nd day of her tenure as mayor, London Breed put out an executive order trumpeting the need for comprehensive charter reform to re-do the way San Francisco government works. 

This is such a pressing and vital endeavor that Breed’s plan calls for us to place this matter before voters on the November 2026 ballot, a mere 799 days from today. 

It was Berkeley free-speech activist Mario Savio who said that, when a certain level of odiousness is achieved, it “makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part.” 

San Francisco is a city that is, in many ways, sick at heart. But we can’t even passively claim that the mayor’s broad and vague executive order is a serious move to address that. Rather, it’s just the latest attempt to present voters with her deeply counterintuitive reelection message: I cannot fix the problems. 

Breed’s gambit is a novel one for a political re-election bid, but not for other venues in which people attempt to elude culpability. Defense attorneys could tell you about the vaunted SODDI and BEE strategies: These acronyms stand for “Some Other Dude Did It” and “Blame Everyone Else.” 

With Mayor Breed, some other dude always did it. It’s always blame everyone else. But this pressing call for charter reform — a mere six years after she took office and with the goal of getting something in front of voters in two years and change — does advance these stratagems to brave new realms. Rather than blaming flesh-and-blood supervisors, her own appointees or the voters, this is a condemnation of the entire system. 

And this, again, is a curious message from a six-year incumbent fighting to stay in power. Effective San Francisco mayors didn’t wheedle about charter reform or make their inability to do the job a campaign issue. Rather, charter reform tends to be discussed and initiated under ineffective mayors. 

Is San Francisco poorly run? Yes: Same as it ever was. And, yes, part of that is a broken process issue. But you might also say it’s a talent and vision issue. And there’s no charter reform to fix that. 

We’ve written this before, but it bears repeating: You cannot legislate a solution to a problem that is fundamentally a management problem. It requires good management.

The notion of an entrenched incumbent running on reform is not just laughable in the abstract, but also in the concrete. And, also, on celluloid. From the 2000 Coen Brothers film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”:  

“Well, he’s the reeee-form candidate, Daddy. People like that reeee-form. Hey! Maybe we should get us some?

“I’ll reform you, you soft-headed sumbitch! How you gonna run reform when we’re the damn incumbent? Is that the best idea you boys can come up with? Reeee-form? Weeping Jesus on the cross!” 

And yet, 24 years later in San Francisco, this is an actual serious political strategy for a viable candidate. Twenty-four years later, the ascendant wing of the San Francisco Democratic Party, which calls itself “Democrats for Change,” is emphatically endorsing the six-year incumbent. 

Weeping Jesus on the cross. 

Breed was, alas, a shade late to the reeee-form party: There are already two items on the November 2024 ballot calling to remake the charter. One is a sweeping TogetherSF proposal to halve the number of city commissions, significantly enhance mayoral power and essentially curtail civilian oversight of the police, which also serves as a fundraising vehicle for mayoral candidate Mark Farrell. Another is a more moderate counter to the TogetherSF measure, backed by mayoral candidate Aaron Peskin and former city controller Ed Harrington.

Over the weekend, Breed abruptly yanked her support of the TogetherSF measure citing, in part, the vast torrents of money it has amassed in serving as a stalking horse for Farrell’s candidacy. Well, okay then: That’s been apparent for months and months and, regardless, has little to do with its substance. 

Breed’s executive order really is broad and vague, while also managing to be short; there’s not much of note in here, other than exhortations for people to get to work, and a timeline for them to do it in. Waiting six-plus years to put out a two-page document renders this foray into reeee-form — sorry, reform — awfully late as a practical matter. And waiting until other charter reform efforts are on the ballot and amassing millions of dollars for her competitor renders it awfully late as a political one. 

Aides for prior mayors, meanwhile, tell me they’d have never, ever suggested a move like Breed’s. That’s because I’ll reform you, you soft-headed sumbitch! How you gonna run reform when we’re the damn incumbent? is the response they’d anticipate getting. Or perhaps something a bit more polite (but maybe not).

Meanwhile, in other reeee-form news, the good-government think tank SPUR recently released its own road map to curtailing San Francisco’s dysfunction and scleroticism.  

Make no mistake, the city’s status quo is not optimal. There’s some good stuff in here: Would-be reformers have been trying to consolidate redundant city bodies for generations, and San Francisco’s low bar to placing material on the ballot hampers actual governing.  

These would be good legislative fixes but, remember: You cannot legislate a solution to a problem that is fundamentally a management problem. And everyone is still fixated on matters such as mayoral hiring and firing of department heads or sprawling and ineffective commissions. Of course those are problems. But they are not remotely the major problems limiting the effective functioning of San Francisco government.  

To be frank, San Francisco presently has a bigger issue with qualified department heads not wanting to come work for us than an inability to properly onboard them or send them packing. As for commissions, your humble narrator spoke to a handful of erstwhile staffers who had worked for a succession of mayors going back to the 1990s. 

On literally hundreds and hundreds of occasions, these former aides sat with mayors in City Hall Room 200 as those chief executives outlined what they wanted to do. 

If you’re wondering how many times someone interjected and said “Hey, we need to talk to the commission about this,” the answer is: Zero. 

The inherent hilarity of a six-year incumbent pushing for government reform is blunted by the fact that ostensibly serious people claim that San Francisco’s mayor — who is clothed in immense power — is not powerful enough to be effective.   

The mayor of San Francisco, a combined city-county, has far more centralized and universal control than virtually any of her colleagues. The city-county runs the water system here, and the transit system. And, for that matter, the airport and the hospital. San Francisco’s mayor can, for better or for worse, effect far more change than elsewhere in the Bay Area, where city and county governments overlap and elected bodies control utilities districts or transit agencies. 

The mayor’s control of San Francisco’s vast budget dwarfs that of other city or county executives, let alone the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. In fiscal 2023-24, for example, she had a direct hand in some $2.4 billion in discretionary spending, nearly 60 times the amount re-allocated by the 11-member Board of Supervisors during the “add-back” process. 

While “add-backs” dominate whatever media coverage there is of the city’s vast budget, it warrants mentioning that they represent about two-tenths of one percent of our yearly spending. 

Yes, San Francisco’s lethargic bureaucracy invites cronyism and influence-peddling. But merely streamlining government isn’t enough. The city likely only had the best of intentions when it moved to expedite the creation of homeless housing and navigation centers via no-bid contracting. And yet, the practical result of this was to put since-imprisoned Public Works boss Mohammed Nuru in a position to hand out contracts as he saw fit. 

San Francisco remains a place that could generally use more oversight, not less. And streamlining without addressing endemic ineptitude and corruption issues will only streamline ineptitude and corruption. 

Again, the problem with city government is a broken process issue. But it also remains a talent and vision issue. With enough talent and vision, you can overcome a broken process. But without it, even the best process will founder. 

The proposals presently on the table only deal with process, because you can’t legislate away a management problem. Barring unforeseen lunacy, the city isn’t getting fixed anytime soon — because these are the fixes.