SPUR, a Bay Area urbanist think tank, released a report today with 10 recommendations for City Hall to reform its 548-page charter, which functions as the constitution for San Francisco.
The report echoes past SPUR reports in that it recommends increasing mayoral power, and specifically calls for the mayor to be empowered to unilaterally hire and fire department heads.
It also calls for enhancing the power of the City Administrator, setting a higher threshold for issues to end up on the ballot for voters, and creating more flexibility to make changes on city budget and departmental structures.
The report essentially tees up a shot for Mayor Daniel Lurie and Board President Rafael Mandelman, who will be teaming up for a November 2026 charter-reform ballot measure that, all but certainly, will greatly resemble the SPUR paper.
The report was written by Ben Rosenfield, former San Francisco city controller from 2008 to 2024 and a member of Lurie’s transition team; Nicole Neditch, SPUR’s governance and economy policy director; and Maeve Skelly, SPUR’s governance and economy policy manager.
SPUR adviser Ed Harrington, San Francisco’s controller from 1991 to 2008 and later a Public Utilities Commission general manager and commissioner, said that augmenting mayoral power is actually a good way to hold the mayor accountable.
“If you want the mayor to be held responsible, you have to give them authority to make decisions,” he said.
Harrington recalled his conversation with former mayor London Breed.
“What she said was, ‘nobody in the public is ever going to care what five of you who were on the Public Utilities Commission did,’” Harrington said. “They’re going to blame me as mayor if I didn’t make sure the water department ran.”
SPUR is also recommending a new organizational structure for the mayor’s office that cements the policy chiefs, which are positions instituted by Mayor Daniel Lurie.
Lurie added four “deputy-mayor”-like policy chiefs to “coordinate” with different departments and oversee different issues. He has also recently added a fifth policy chief, Jessica MacLeod, to oversee the city’s strategy and performance.
However, the policy chiefs currently don’t have the authority to manage departments, according to the report.
The report also recommends raising the signature requirement for non-charter ballot measures from 2 percent to 5 percent of the city’s 522,265 registered voters — jumping from about 10,445 to 26,113 signatures.
And it proposes requiring a majority of the 11-member Board of Supervisors, subject to the mayor’s veto, to place a measure on the ballot, instead of allowing just four supervisors to do so — or the mayor to do so alone.
It recommends giving the city administrator more responsibilities by acting like the city’s “chief operating officer.”
For example, the City Administrator — presently Carmen Chu — would have more power over the city’s procurement process, which decides how City Hall purchases software and merchandise. Under the recommendations, the city administrator would have a term of 10 years instead of the current five years.
Other recommendations are:
- Move some of the departments from charter to administrative code, which allows more flexibility for the mayor and the Board of Supervisors to make structural changes on departments without having to put the issue on the ballot for voters to decide.
- Revisit or reduce San Francisco’s charter-mandated spending set-asides, money earmarked for specific services, such as parks, libraries and public transit. It recommends giving supervisors and the mayor more flexibility to reallocate funds and respond to changing needs or budget shortfalls.
- Set up a labor-management working group to update the city’s binding arbitration system for labor negotiations, which occurs when labor negotiations reach an impasse and requires a third-party independent arbitrator’s decision, given recent state rulings have made it unbalanced and costly.
Compared to other major U.S. cities, San Francisco’s charter is exceptionally long. It is nearly a third longer than New York City’s 340-page charter, and 23 times longer than Seattle’s 23-page charter. Lurie and Mandelman want to explore ways to shrink it.
“Our administration is working every day to deliver more effective government services for San Franciscans, and our outdated and overly complicated city charter is getting in the way,” Lurie said in a statement.
“We are going to take a comprehensive look at how to modernize the charter so that we can serve San Franciscans more effectively, efficiently, and accountably,” he said.
Mandelman said he and Lurie are in the process of putting together a task force to look into “what kinds of things people talk about when they talk about charter reform.” The task force will likely include “broad selection San Francisco leaders” from businesses, labor, and nonprofits, Mandelman said.
Mandelman said an array of city staff and elected officials will also participate in the discussion, such as Chu, infrastructure policy chief and former SPUR head Alicia John-Baptiste, and staff from the City Controller’s Office and City Attorney’s Office.
The task force is likely to conclude its work by February or March 2026 and “ideally” come up with some recommendations for the Board of Supervisors.
Sean Elsbernd, SPUR’s CEO and former Mayor London Breed’s chief of staff, said he is aware of the challenges ahead and said that the report is a good way to open the discussion around how to reform the city’s charter.
“We’re not going into this with stars in our eyes, thinking because we wrote it, everybody’s just going to say, ‘wonderful, let’s go for it,’” Elsbernd said. “We recognize that this is an iterative process. We want to start the conversation.”
Rec 1: Let the mayor fire as they want
Already a non-starter, unless you forget Breed had those “undated resignation” letters just in case for funsies to play mini dictator.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s-f-mayor-london-breed-s-resignation-letter-17769925.php
Rec 2: Deputy mayors
I hate to say it, but Quentin Kopp sort of has a point, back in 1991, deputy mayors did play as mayor to certain departments, unelected. Another one is that the City Administrator already manages the departments. A mayor that can’t manage 50 direct reports with regular administration staff to make things more digestible is just posturing for power.
Just reeks of micromanagement.
Rec 3: Give the City Admin more than 5 years.
They talk about why they should, but blatantly omitted why they didn’t when making the 1996 charter reform. Suspicious.
Rec 4: Empower the City Admin to change maze of rules subject to Mayor/Board
Honestly, not bad.
Rec 5: Restrict unions from striking for better pay and moving away from PERB
Literally anti-union. Might as well come out and say, “if we give you a raw deal, we don’t want you to strike!”
Rec 6: Make ballot smaller by increasing how hard it is to put measures for sups and citizens
Long ballot, but it’s increasingly obvious that San Francisco likes a more direct democracy on major issues. Their example outlines exactly why this Rec is anti-democratic. Prop D and E were competing measures, with E placed with a minority on the board, and people DID not like D and voted for E because they wanted a chisel, not a hammer to solve things. Same for Prop C inspector general, the literal local Dem party/TogetherSF/etc tried to actually reject it. SF isn’t dumb.
Rec 7, 8, 9: Make department changes not always require a ballot
This should’ve been what people actually wanted, a reasonable approach to fix problems without political tomfoolery like it was with Prop D.
Rec 10: Emergency budget brick removal in case the budget needs to be less restricted from voter approved restrictions to spend on favored projects
Looks good, but this can go horribly wrong if legislators decide to “sunset” voter approved ballot measures that are favored and used in places where voters didn’t want.
There are reasons why SF charter mandates.
SPUR disappoints me, and seems to learn NOTHING from Prop D.
The majority of the recs are dogshit, only 4 of 10 are something that isn’t a power grab one way or another.
Recs 4, 7, 8, and 9.
Back to the drawing board, it’s not even a passing score.
This is straight out of the Republican playbook from places like Texas that repeatedly screw Austin and other blue cities, center power at the sites were you are most likely to prevail based on your power advantages.
Not even Republican.
This is just a rehash of Prop D, except Lurie gets the okay to do whatever he wants.
The Republican dominated Texas Legislature has engaged in “Austin Bashing” for decades, using the site of their power at the state level to constrain Austin and Travis County’s options.
There’s a Robert Redford produced film, “The Unforseen” that documents this phenomenon in detail, with respect to defending the Edwards Aquifer that feeds a crown jewel of Central Texas, Barton Springs, from rampant development.
First the real estate developers were de-regulated. Then the cops were de-regulated. Now SPUR wants the city’s executive government to be de-regulated. We could have an efficient government, if it weren’t for all those pesky citizens!!!
They sure know who’s buttering their bread, and it ain’t you or I.
ffs big money groups are going to be trying this shit every year from here on out. We gotta get our own version of Mamdani in room 200. See how much they like mayoral authority then…
Amen, brother!
Who needs democracy when you have SPURious think tanks pushing AI abundance bro corporatist oligarchy?
True democracy is when TODCO funds a transfer tax for the general budget that DSA can use to complain isn’t a set aside for the next decade.
Progs certainly need to clean house of Council of Community Housing Organizations political dominance and self serving corruption.
Not only does this not deliver housing, it enriches executive directors with tax dollars, constrains the art of the possible and opens the door to continued oligarch dominance.
In 2023, John Elberling of TODCO made $314,178.
We need a ballot measure that says if a nonprofit gets more than 60% of its funding from the City and County of San Francisco, the its executive director cannot be paid more than 60% of the salary of the Mayor of San Francisco.
These people really really hate San Franciscans and want to keep us as far away from the levers of power as is possible.
Terrible idea and brazen over reach by special interest groups like SPUR. SF Mayor is ALREADY the most powerful mayor in the nation thanks to the structure of the City Charter. Citizen, oversight, and a balance of powers by the Board of Supervisors are essential. Recent moves to neuter oversight commissions and committees are troubling. That is how the Nuru, undated letters of resignation, Recology and DBI troubles occurred. Gutting the Ethics, Police, and Planning Commissions to give the mayor even more power is misguided folly.
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The Oxford dictionary’s definition of the word SPURious: “not being what it purports to be; false or fake. Bogus.
SPUR is a developer and oligarch business lobbying shop. SPUR is funded by developers and their builders, architects, attorneys and consultants and oligarch adjacent operations.
Here are SPUR’s business members.
SPUR Business Members
*Fiscal year 2020-21
Champions $25K/yr
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Google
Jordan Real Estate Investments
JRDV Architects, Inc
Kaiser Permanente
Sobrato Development Organization
The Swig Company
Guardians $12K/yr
Adobe Systems Incorporated
AECOM
Alaska Airlines
Amazon Web Services
Apple Inc.
Arup
Boston Properties
Brookfield Properties
Cahill Contractors
Coblentz Patch Duffy & Bass LLP
Comcast
Cruise Automation
DoorDash
Dropbox Inc.
FivePoint
Genentech
Gensler
Hart Howerton Architects Design
Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Co
HNTB Corporation
HOK
Initialized Capital Management
Jay Paul Company
Kilroy Realty Corporation
Kohn Pedersen Fox
Lendlease
LinkedIn Corporation
Lyft
McKinsey & Company, Inc.
Microsoft Corporation
Oracle Corporation
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E)
Pelosi Law Group
Perkins+Will
Plant Construction Company, L.P.
Port of Oakland
Presidio Trust
Salesforce
San Francisco Giants
San Francisco International Airport
San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA)
San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC)
Sherwood Design Engineers
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM)
Stantec
Sutter Health / CPMC
SWA Services Group, Inc
Swinerton Builders
Tishman Speyer
Twitter
Uber Technologies, Inc.
Verizon Wireless
Waymo
Webcor Builders
WSP
Zendesk
Stewards $6K/yr
Aedis Architects
Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc.
Bank of America
Bank of America – San Jose
Baylands Development Inc
BKF Engineers
BRIDGE Housing Corporation
Brown and Caldwell
City of Oakland Planning & Building Department
Deloitte
DIALOG
Dignity Health
Eastdil Secured
EHDD Architecture
Emerald Fund, Inc.
Equity Residential
Golden State Warriors
Grosvenor Americas
Hines Interests
Jamestown, L.P.
Kimley-Horn
Lane Partners, LLC
Lowney Architects Inc.
Mercy Housing Inc.
Mithun
Oakland Athletics
Page
Page & Turnbull
Pankow Builders Ltd
Parkmerced Owner LLC
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP
Port of San Francisco
San Francisco Office of the Treasurer & Tax Collector
San Jose Water Company
Sand Hill Property Company
Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA)
Sierra Maestra Properties
Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB)
Stanford University
Steinberg Hart
Suffolk Construction
The Core Companies
TPG Capital, L.P.
Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield
University of California San Francisco (UCSF)
Wallace Roberts & Todd (WRT)
Wilson Meany L.P.
Zillow Group
Zoox
Supporters $2.5K/yr
A. R. Sanchez-Corea & Associates
Agora Partners
Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis LLP
AvalonBay Communities, Inc.
Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD)
Bayview Development Group
brick. Inc
Build, Inc.
Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority
Cargill
Carpenters Local Union 22
Carpenters Union Local 405
Carpenters Union Local 713
CB Richard Ellis Group, Inc. (CBRE)
Charities Housing
CHS Consulting Group
Citi
City of Mountain View
City of Oakland Department of Economic & Workforce Development
City of Oakland Department of Transportation
City of San Jose Department of Environmental Services
City of San Jose Department of Housing
City of San Jose Department of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services
City of San Jose Department of Public Works
City of San Jose Department of Transportation
City of San Jose Office of Economic Development
City of San Jose Public Library
Clear Peak Development
CMG Landscape Architecture
DAL Properties LLC
David Baker Architects
Devcon Construction Inc.
Donahue Fitzgerald LLP
DWS
East Bay Regional Park District
Environmental Science Associates (ESA)
Equity Community Builders
Farella Braun + Martel LLP
Fifth Third Commercial Bank
Forell/Elsesser Engineers, Inc.
Hanson Bridgett LLP
Heller Manus Architects
Hensel Phelps Construction Co.
HGA Architects & Engineers
Hirsch Philanthropy Partners
HKS Architects, Inc.
HMH Engineers
Holland & Knight LLP
Hopkins & Carley
Hospital Council of Northern and Central California
HR&A Advisors Inc
Hudson Pacific Properties
J. Abrams Law, P.C.
Juniper Networks
KBM-Hogue
KTGY Group, Inc.
Kylli Inc.
L37 Partners
Lennar Multifamily Communities
Lockheed Martin
LPA Inc.
Lubin Olson & Niewiadomski LLP
MBH Architects
McCarthy Building Companies
Mill Creek Residential
MNS Engineers
New Deal Advisers
Nibbi Brothers General Contractors
One Vassar LLC
Paul Hastings
Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects
Perkins Coie LLP
Petrinovich Pugh & Co LLP
PGAdesign
Pinger, Inc.
Platinum Advisors, LLC
PYATOK Architects
Related California
RELM
RMW Architecture & Interiors
San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA)
San Francisco Public Works (SF DPW)
San Francisco Recreation and Park Department
San Francisco State University
Sares Regis Group of Northern California
SERA Architects
Silicon Valley Bank
Spin (Ford Mobility)
Sprinkler Fitters Local 483
Square Inc.
srmERNST Development Partners
Studio Current
Studio T-SQ, Inc.
STUDIOS Architecture
SummerHill Housing Group
Sunrun
Superpedestrian
SVA Architects
TCA Architects
Technology Credit Union
Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation (TNDC)
The Boldt Company
The John Stewart Company
The Morley Bros.
The Schoennauer Company
The Unity Council
Tidewater Capital
TMC Financing
TransitCenter
Tri-Valley – San Joaquin Valley Regional Rail Authority
UA Local Union 393
University of San Francisco (USF)
Urban Catalyst
Urban Community
Valley Oak Partners, LLC
Wendel Rosen LLP
Woods Bagot Architects
WRNS Studio LLP
Zanker Recycling
Small business and community supporters
AARP
Alameda Health System Foundation
ARC Alternative and Renewable Construction LLC
Architectural Resources Group
Arcsine
Arnold & Porter LLP
BCV Architects
Brereton Architects
Buttrick Projects Architecture and Design
California Apartment Association
Caltrain
Center for Elders’ Independence
City of Fremont
Civic Edge Consulting
Coalition for Better Housing (CBH)
Cubic Transportation Systems
D.N. & E. Walter & Co.
DCI-Engineers
Degenkolb Engineers
Eden Housing
Enterprise Community Partners
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
First Community Housing
FMG Architects
Fougeron Architecture
Handel Architects, LLP
Hargreaves Associates
Harsch Investment Properties
HASSELL
Hearst Corporation
Heather Young Architects
Hoge Fenton Jones & Appel
Housing Trust Silicon Valley
Hunter Properties
Hyatt Regency San Francisco
Jones Hall
Keyser Marston Associates, Inc.
Laborers Employers Cooperation and Education Trust Southwest (LECET)
Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects
Mark Cavagnero Associates
Martin Building Company
McCarthy Ranch
Meyer Capital Partners LLC
Mineta Transportation Institute (SJSU Research Foundation)
Moscone Emblidge & Rubens LLP
Oakland Museum of California
Office of Charles F. Bloszies, Ltd.
Old Republic Title Company – San Francisco
OpenScope Studio
Oryx Capital Partners, LP
Pacific Waterfront Partners, LLC
Pound Management, Inc.
Ramboll
Royston Hanamoto Alley & Abey (RHAA Landscape Architecture + Planning)
Rutherford + Chekene
San Francisco Electrical Construction Industry Local 6
San Francisco Parks Alliance
San Jose Earthquakes
San Jose Sharks
San Mateo County Transit District (samTrans)
San Mateo County Transportation Authority
Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority
Seifel Consulting, Inc.
SF Firefighters Local 798
SITELAB urban studio
SSL Law Firm
TEF Design
Transbay Joint Powers Authority
Union Square Business Improvement District
Uptown Downtown Community Benefit Districts
Urban Economics
UrbanBloc
WP Investments
Yerba Buena Community Benefit District (YBCBD)
Zipcar
Rec and Park and DPW donated to SPUR? That’s a problem. Thank you for posting the list.
Government giving nonprofits money to use to lobby government to give resources and consideration to private businesses, both non- and for-profit.
The Council of Community Housing Organizations is the poster cartel for this kind of ethical bankruptcy. Member nonprofit developers rely almost exclusively on city money, pool those proceeds into a lobbying cartel where they lobby for public policies that are tailored to their members’ business models and then demand that those policies are funded to their favor. The combination of policy making and policy execution is where the conflict lies.
Public policy should be written by disinterested parties with a wall keeping away from the policymaking table those with particular interests, which should compete for public resources allocated to fulfill those policies.
This “AIPAC” model is how most of the corrupt grift happens in San Francisco politics.
BOYCOTT EVERY SINGLE ONE.
So why are these government agencies donating our precious and scarce tax dollars to fund a developer lobbyist shop?
San Francisco International Airport
San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA)
San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC)
Port of San Francisco
San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA)
San Francisco Public Works (SF DPW)
San Francisco Recreation and Park Department
San Francisco Office of the Treasurer & Tax Collector
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
And is anyone surprised?
San Francisco Parks Alliance
The purpose of government isn’t to serve the public, it’s to maintain order and grease the skids for the ruling classes.