Limits the number of commissions that the city can have, reduces the administrative powers of commissions, and restores the mayor’s authority to hire and fire most department heads.
Proposition D would make significant changes to the San Francisco City Charter as it relates to the roles and responsibilities of the city’s boards and commissions and mayoral powers. It would:
The measure creates a five-member task force, with one appointment each by the mayor, the president of the Board of Supervisors, the controller, the city administrator, and the city attorney. Members can be city employees and can be removed by the authority that appointed them. Within nine months, the task force would be responsible for preparing and submitting a report to the mayor and the Board of Supervisors with recommendations on which commissions should be dissolved, consolidated, or restructured as advisory boards.
Any commissions not reauthorized or restructured within 16 months would dissolve. The Board of Supervisors would have authority to re-establish them or create new commissions, so long as the 65-commission limit was not violated. Any reauthorized or new commissions, including those that once had decision-making power through the charter, would advise only the Board of Supervisors and the mayor and would have no decision-making authority except as mandated by state or federal law. Decision-making authority would transfer from commissioners to department heads. Authority to decide appeals and other proceedings would transfer to hearing officers. Authority to appoint and remove city department heads would transfer to the mayor.
San Francisco has 126 commissions, boards, and advisory bodies (also known as “commissions”) made up of 1,200-plus city residents who provide input to public officials on specific issues, such as health, policing, and planning.2 The Rose Institute of State and Local Government3, the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury4, and SPUR5 have all come out with reports calling for a comprehensive review of San Francisco’s commission system with the goals of defining the purpose of commissions and reducing their overall number.
Two competing measures to reform commissions made it onto the ballot this year: Proposition D and Proposition E. Prop. D was placed on the ballot by TogetherSF Action, a civic organization. Last year, TogetherSF commissioned a study by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government that called for reducing the total number of commissions; assessing their proper functions; combining commissions with overlapping jurisdictions; standardizing, where possible, rules for the selection and removal of commissioners; and rebalancing the power of the mayor and the Board of Supervisors to appoint and remove commissioners. Based on the findings of that study, TogetherSF also introduced — and later withdrew — a different ballot measure that focused on mayoral authority.6
According to TogetherSF, many of the specific elements of Prop. D, such as the total cap on commissions and the selection of commissions to eliminate, were developed in a subsequent analysis that has not been made public. In efforts to shift accountability back to the executive branch, Prop. D would make line-item changes to the commissions that remain in the City Charter. It would change the appointment structure for all commissions to allow the mayor to appoint two-thirds of the members of reauthorized, restructured, or new commissions and some retained commissions without the review of the Board of Supervisors. The board would have the authority to appoint the remaining third of the commissioners. In addition, the measure would put the power to remove a commissioner with the appointing authority.
Most of the line-item changes are consistent across commissions, but Prop. D would make specific policy changes to the powers of the Police Commission, removing its ability to adopt rules, regulations, or policies that impose any requirement or prohibition on the conduct of employees of the Police Department. These changes would eliminate the Police Commission’s ability to set policy for Police Department staff on issues like traffic stops.7
To pass, Prop. D requires a simple majority (50% plus one vote) and must get more votes than the competing charter amendment, Prop. E.
Prop. D and Prop. E both aim to streamline city commissions and mayoral authority, but they go about it in different ways. Prop. E was put on the ballot to defeat Prop. D.
| Prop. D Prop. D would make sweeping changes to the city’s commission system. The measure would cap the number of commissions that the city can have at 65 (half of the current number), eliminate many commissions from the City Charter, realign mayoral authority to appoint and dismiss department heads, and change the powers of the Police Commission. Any commissions that the measure eliminates from the charter could be re-established by the Board of Supervisors through an ordinance, but these commissions would need to be advisory only and to fall under the 65-commission limit. | Prop. E Prop. E would set up a short-term task force to conduct a comprehensive review of the city’s commissions. It would require a budget analysis outlining how much it costs the city to support each current commission and would allow the task force to draft ordinances to make changes to non-charter commissions that would automatically go into effect 90 days later unless the Board of Supervisors rejects them by a supermajority. To make changes to commissions established by the charter, a future ballot measure would need to go to voters. |
| Opportunity: Prop. D would make significant and immediate changes to the City Charter that could help create clear lines of authority and accountability while reducing the overall administrative burden associated with managing commissions. | Opportunity: Prop. E would create a process for conducting a comprehensive evidence-based review of San Francisco’s commission structure before making reforms to avoid unintended consequences. |
| Risk: Prop. D would dissolve or force a restructuring of voter-approved decision-making bodies into advisory boards without public research, dialogue, or a clear impacts assessment, which could result in unintended consequences. | Risk: Even if this measure were to pass and be enacted, it would not guarantee the desired streamlining of commissions. |
By prohibiting the City and County of San Francisco from paying or providing health benefits to commissioners in the future, Prop D. could discourage or prevent low-income people of color and other under-represented groups from serving as commissioners. How the proposed changes to commissions would impact equity outcomes or how Prop. D would change the composition of city commissions has not been evaluated.
Pros
Cons
SPUR believes that significant changes are needed to San Francisco’s commission system to create a more streamlined government with clearer lines of authority and accountability. Prop. D would provide a quick path to move that work forward. However, we are concerned that the evaluation process for commission changes did not incorporate input from the affected departments, stakeholders, and the general public and could have unanticipated consequences. The research that informed TogetherSF’s criteria for eliminating commissions has not been shared publicly. We believe that a charter revision of this magnitude should include a deliberative public process with a shared framework and set of criteria that includes an equity analysis to determine which commissions should continue to exist. Without this process, it’s hard to know whether the cap of 65 commissions is warranted.
1. San Francisco has 126 commissions, boards, and advisory bodies; 44 have been created through the city’s charter and the rest through ordinances.
2. City Attorney of San Francisco, “List of Commissions & Boards,” https://www.sfcityattorney.org/good-government/list-of-commissions-boards/.
3. Nicolas Heidorn, Kenneth P. Miller, and Bipasa Nadon, Re-Assessing San Francisco’s Government Design Is City Hall Well-Structured to Meet the Current Crisis?, The Rose Institute of State and Local Government, August 2023, https://roseinstitute.org/togethersf-report/.
4. City and County of San Francisco Civil Grand Jury, “Commission Impossible?” https://www.sf.gov/sites/default/files/2024-06/Commissions%20Impossible%20Report%20-%20FINAL%20VERSION%202024-05-30.pdf
5. Nicole Neditch, Designed to Serve, SPUR, July 2024, https://www.spur.org/publications/spur-report/2024-07-31/designed-serve
6. Gabe Greschler and Josh Koehn, “After Spending Millions, San Francisco Political Group Abandons Push to Empower Mayor,” The San Francisco Standard, May 1, 2024, https://sfstandard.com/2024/05/01/san-francisco-together-sf-ballot-measure-mayor-abandoned/.
7. SF.Gov, “Department General Order 9.07, ‘Curtailing the Use of Pretext Stops,” https://www.sf.gov/resource/2023/department-general-order-907-curtailing-use-pretext-stops.