Dean Preston, a lawyer and District Five resident, is asking city attorney Dennis Herrera to rule on whether London Breed can act as both mayor and supervisor – and he puts out a strong legal argument that no one person can hold both jobs for anything but a very short period of time during an emergency.
Herrera – who may also be a candidate – advised the board upon the untimely death of Ed Lee that the Board of Supes president – Breed – would assume the job of acting mayor while holding her current board seat until such time as the board choses an interim mayor.
There is, Herrera said, no time frame for that decision and no requirement that the board act at all. Under his initial advisory, Breed could hold both roles until a June election.
However, Preston notes, the City Charter bars the mayor of San Francisco from holding any other job – including the job of supervisor. So if Breed has all the duties and responsibilities of the mayor, she can’t also be on the board.
“In that case, because the Acting Mayor is barred by the Charter from fulfilling the duties of a supervisor, a vacancy results as a matter of law, and a new supervisor [for D5] would need to be appointed.”
The charter provides for the board president to become acting mayor if there’s a vacancy in the top office. But Friends of Ethics, a good-government advocacy group, noted today that “the charter never contemplated any period of time when events would place the same person as Board President and Acting Mayor for any period of time, much less for months.”
Among other things, that would give Breed the ability this spring to draft a city budget, appoint the chair and the members of the boards Finance Committee, and have almost complete control over the budget. Friends of Ethics calls that “one-person rule and an end to political accountability.”
Preston cites Charter Section 3.100, which provides that the SF mayor “shall devote his or her entire time and attention to the duties of the office, and shall not devote time or attention to any other occupation or business activity.”
He notes: “The residents of District 5 deserve a supervisor who is legally permitted to do the job of supervisor, and one who is focused on fulfilling the duties of that full-time job.”
Herrera’s Office had no immediate comment.
The question of Breed’s role is becoming both legal and political. Four sitting supervisors have endorsed Mark Leno for mayor. Sup. Mark Farrell is widely considered a candidate. And now Sup. Jane Kim is in the race.
That makes six supervisors who have a strong interest in not seeing Breed run for mayor as an incumbent while also sitting at D5 supe.
If she could somehow get six votes to become interim mayor – tough, since she can’t vote for herself – she would have to resign her D5 seat.
Breed, it appears so far, is the candidate who has the backing of the Ed Lee crowd, including Ron Conway. If she runs, as everyone thinks she will, she faces a challenge: Lee’s popularity as mayor was radically low, and while his personal popularity was and is high, a candidate who runs as a supporter of the former mayor’s policies and an ally of his supporters will have a hard time convincing voters that the status quo is an acceptable platform.
It’s no surprise that Leno’s slogan is “a new direction for San Francisco” or that Kim told me today that she will be “the candidate who will promote the most different vision from how this city has been run for the past 17 years.”
Kim told me that the “income and wealth gap underlies every single issue” that faces the city.
She also told me that she supports the idea of appointing a caretaker mayor – having Breed in both jobs, she said, “is a clear conflict of interest.” And while we all got tricked by Ed Lee promising to take the role and then running, this time around it’s actually possible. The filing deadline for the June election is Jan. 9th, which is also the next Board of Supes meeting. If the board waits until 5pm to appoint an interim mayor, that person won’t be able to run in June.
Leno told me he also supports the idea of an interim mayor, and said that the idea of a legislator – Sup. Breed – also acting as the chief executive was not a good idea. (Leno agrees with me that the mayor should not have the authority to appoint supervisors, either.)
So it seems entirely likely that, one way or the other, the board will at least consider filling the job of mayor with a short-term appointment, possibly as soon as Jan. 9. It could, of course, even be sooner: Six supes can call a special meeting. And while it’s the holiday season, the governance of the city doesn’t stop – and the political campaigns are already starting.
No, @Kraus is unlike either Marx. Your comment makes no sense.
Kraus = Karl Marx. Or Groucho.
“Do Something Nice” = Marie Antoinette
“I want to live in London but it is way too expensive. So it must be someone’s fault and we need to bulldoze historic buildings, exile longtime residents and businesses and call people names in order to build more, “urgently needed” housing so I can live there.”
Or something. GROW UP.
You are a handmaiden of wealthy homeowners and landlords and your disastrous, selfish, NIMBY, anti-housing policies have stymied the creation of adequate amounts of housing over the past 4 decades and thus driven its cost through the roof and accelerated displacement and poverty throughout communities.
The regressive, anti-housing-creation policies that you advocate for — and continue to double-down on — are the single greatest reason that the rate of poverty in California — at 20% — is the highest in the nation (higher than Mississippi!) and increasing.
But if that is the standard, what right to the other declared candidates have? Mr Leno ran a small sign shop; Ms Kim has not managed any operations; DA Herrera’s shop is in the millions, not billions. Are we to wait for Mr Trump to step in and make San Francisco great again?
Ms. Breed previously ran the AA Cultural Center. If one looks at their declarations on Charity Navigator, the AA Center claims a total budget under $50,000 a year. Can this be? Seems fishy. Can a person who ran a 50K a year operation move that easily to a $9 billion budget operation? More than fishy…
Real estate troll Kraus calling someone a troll? Thanks for the holiday ho ho ho!
lol! Attempting to take over the Sierra Club without giving a shit about the environment and only wanting to remove height limits, having the most despicable advocates including one who was arrested for voter fraud, taking money from tech companies and developers, not giving a shit about those individuals and businesses being ejected from San Francisco and being so clueless as to name a YIMBY organization celebrate ‘vomit’, YIMBYs are the very definition of “regressive.”
🙂
So there goes vote #6 to have someone else be interim mayor.
New movement I started .. MAPIMBY. It’s gaining traction quickly – maybe and possibly …
Gang’s all here! Happy holidays squirrel, Kraus, Kaluak, RuMAD, Y., and all the other anonymous weirdos we all argue with together and sort of don’t like but still engage with incessantly.
Mark Farrell is not running.
lol
Kraus – this is beneath you.
As for Squirrel, par for the course. All in service of a ‘good cause’, I suspect. Just, a narrow one.
Likewise.
Well we’re just a small city and there is no perfect solution. I remember John Avalos saying that we should have a caretaker and then a special election ASAP. So we would have one special election in one district between candidates that nobody ever heard of. The voter turnout would be microscopic. Meanwhile, there would be a temporary voting Supervisor with absolutely no incentive to please the electorate.
Yes, you keep saying that, like a magical chant, hoping to make it true. You play dirty with your lies and act surprised when anyone pushes back.
The YIMBYs are the true progressives — whereas NIMBY tolls such as “sfsquirrel” are nativism-spouting, anti-housing, reactionaries.
P.S. You’ll notice that Peskin isn’t attempting to run for Mayor — ultimately he’s too limited politically –i.e., too beholden to the narrow self-interest of the Telegraph Hill Dwellers — and therefore incapable of garnering sufficient citywide support.
I would suspect the “chatter” would not consist of a single comment, but of a bunch of you progressive-hating YIMBY trolls going nuts — even worse if the POBOS were Aaron Peskin. Oh my!
Oh, you’re right. Thanks. But it would still be bad with the appointee running as an incumbent; just not as bad as I was thinking.
What? Everyone wants to deny Breed the office, but no one wants to change the Charter?
And apparently the voters don’t either.
I wonder what the chatter would be if jane Kim were the POBOS?
Make San Francisco Great Again!
If nothing else, this situation gives voters and political spectators a chance to see how Breed and other candidates act under unexpected pressure.
That’s not the way the city charter works. For example Sheehy has to face the voters this June. He is not automatically serving the rest of Weiner’s term.
Too bad we were unable to pass Prop D last November, then if Breed were in a position to appoint a new D5 Supervisor, that person would not serve the entire 2.5-3 years remaining of the term. Breed becoming mayor AND appointing someone is a truly terrible scenario.