Can we ‘reform’ the City Charter without addressing economic inequality?

Former Supervisor and Assemblymember Tom Ammiano has been talking for years about the need for City Charter reform. The San Francisco charter, which is the city’s Constitution, hasn’t been reviewed as an entire document since the 1990s. Everyone agrees it’s a bit unwieldy, changed more than 100 times in the past decade with piecemeal amendments.

Many of those were good policy ideas that belong in the charter. But there’s also a lot of old language, and by many accounts, the charter gives the mayor way too much power.

For example, former Mayor London Breed was able to ignore a mandate from the voters and the Board of Supes and refuse to spend money that the board allocated for affordable housing. “I would say we need to address the power of the mayor,” Ammiano (who said this even when he was running for mayor) told me.

Powerful neoliberal mayors have run this city for decades, often blocking progressive policies while the national news media says that progressives have ruined the city.

Now the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association has taken up the cause, and is proposing a series of sweeping changes that could go on the November 2026 ballot. Those will be part of the discussion as Board President Rafael Mandelman and Mayor Daniel Lurie move forward with their plans to create a Charter Reform Task Force.

The good news is that SPUR is not trying to change the way we elect supervisors. The district elections system is the only, the only, the only (can I say that again) bulwark against the total domination of the city by billionaires and corrupt operatives. Before district elections, Mayor Willie Brown had appointed and controlled almost every member of the board. There was no oversight, no accountability—and no hope for any neighborhood or progressive politics. If we lose district elections, we lose everything.

The proposals the group, which has long been the voice of downtown, are offering would give the mayor, the city administrator, and the Board of Supes more power, and make it harder for activists to put measures directly before the voters.

San Francisco has a long history of using direct democracy to address issues the mayor and the supes won’t support.

Under the current charter, four supervisors can put a measure on the ballot for the voters to decide. So can the mayor. So can the voters, with a relatively modest number of signatures. Often, this has helped create lasting progressive reforms.

Prop. M, the definitive law that limited office development in 1986 (and saved the city’s economy from the late 1980s office crash) was placed on the ballot by four supervisors. If it didn’t go to the ballot, it would never have happened: There is no way that six supervisors, under Mayor Dianne Feinstein, would ever have supported Prop. M’s limits on office development. Feinstein would have vetoed any bill that did anything to control growth.

The late Sup. Harry Britt created the Office of Citizen Complaints, now the Department of Police Accountability, in 1982 through a voter initiative. There’s no way the supes would have approved of such a thing, and the police-friendly Feinstein would have vetoed it. Almost everyone (outside of SFPD) now thinks it’s a good idea, and it’s been a model for dozens of other cities.

Breed would never have approved plans to tax big corporations and the wealthiest real-estate investors to provide housing for the unhoused. The voters did.

SPUR, like a lot of neoliberal groups, argues that this kind of direct democracy is cumbersome, and that many of these issues are best addressed by elected officials. SPUR CEO Sean Elsbernd told me that the voters will always have a direct say—by voting for the people who run the city. Those people should be accountable, and if the voters don’t like what the elected officials are doing, they can vote for someone else in the next election.

In theory, that’s how things should work.

But it minimizes the role that big money has played in every mayor’s race since the 1970s. Progressive candidates for the executive office have been consistently swamped with piles of cash from real estate, tech, finance, and now, individual billionaires.

The reason California has the initiative process is that Southern Pacific Railroad once controlled the entire Legislature; nothing good would happen without direct democracy.

I know, times are different now, and some things that go on the ballot don’t need to. But when you undermine the ability of the voters to do what elected officials won’t, you need to tread carefully.

A lot of agencies that are now in the City Charter could probably be moved into the Administrative Code without creating any problems. I actually think that Muni should be directly under the mayor and the supes; the SFMTA was created as a way to “de-politicize” decisions like fares and route changes. It’s created instead a lack of accountability.

Elsbernd told me that the mayor needs the authority to hire and fire department heads. I agree. And I can’t think of a time in my 40 years as a reporter that the mayor has wanted to hire or fire a department head and has been blocked by a commission; the commissions are controlled by the mayor. (Note the process for hiring a new planning director.)

But “streamlining” often means getting rid of charter commissions that give the public more input. The Public Health Department was once controlled by the city administrator; creating a commission to oversee public health was widely accepted as a progressive reform.

The city contracting process is, indeed, a mess, and a simpler system would be better for anyone. Plenty of other reforms, including some of SPUR’s suggestions, make sense. In some areas, the city could be run a lot more efficiently.

But here’s what worries me. Elsbernd wrote in the Chron:

San Francisco is staring down one of the largest budget deficits in decades. Federal cuts to emergency management and health care will make that challenge even harder. Tough decisions will need to be made over the next few years to ensure that the city can build a sustainable fiscal future and continue to meet the growing needs of the community.

To do this, San Francisco must change the way it operates. This means fundamentally rethinking how the city governs itself. And that begins with an honest look at the foundation of the city government.

I hate terms like “tough decisions will need to be made.” Passive voice, of course, denies agency: Who will make those “tough decisions?” More important, “tough decisions” is another term for major budget cuts, for what the politicians like to call “tightening our belts” (another term that infuriates me, since it suggests people who rely on public programs and jobs will have to eat less, go hungry, and lose so much weight that their pants no longer fit).

The reality is that San Francisco doesn’t have to make “tough decisions” to balance the budget. This city can have nice things: functional Muni, affordable housing, quality child care, excellent public schools, clean and well-maintained streets, a strong health care system, and a lot more.

We could do all of that by just taxing the 10,000 richest people in the city at a very modest rate. We’re talking about, literally, the one percent, who make vastly more money and control vastly more wealth than the lower 50 percent combined. The mayor-elect of New York City ran on that platform, and won decisively.

SPUR isn’t discussing taxes. I asked Elsbernd why, and he said that taxes “aren’t in the City Charter.” True enough, but none of the changes to the charter are going to matter in the long run if we can’t get the finances—and that includes the tax system—in order.

If SPUR made a point of urging the state Legislature to allow local income taxes—to replace a lot of other confusing, regressive taxes—maybe we wouldn’t need a parcel tax to fund Muni, or a sales tax for regional transit.

Maybe we could have nice things, and address economic inequality, right here at home. Maybe the first “tough decision” we have to make is taxing the rich.

Wouldn’t that be a welcome reform?