I’m used to lies in political campaigns. It’s part of the system: The First Amendment protects political speech, even when it’s demonstrably false, and that’s fine: We don’t want legislators and courts controlling what people running for office or pushing ballot measures are allowed to say.
The check on political lies is, and should be, the news media. Far too often these days, that system fails, in part because the old legacy news outlets don’t want to challenge candidates their owners support, and in part because so many newsrooms have been devastated by cuts that there’s hardly anyone left to look at the data.
But now and then it gets so bad that even the Chronicle can’t ignore it, and that’s what’s happened with Mayor Daniel Lurie’s Proposition F.
Lurie’s team has been spending millions to convince the voters to give the mayor more power. In that past, that’s been a recipe for corruption. So to soften the image, the billionaire-backed campaign has been telling voters that key oversight commissions, including the Ethics Commission and the Police Commission, will remain “independent.”
That’s demonstrably false. From Michael Barba’s story in the Chron:
In a mailer circulated ahead of the Nov. 3 election, Lurie’s “Clean Up City Hall” campaign made three promises in all-capital letters. Among them: “Fully independent watchdogs.”
“Prop F keeps the Ethics Commission and Police Commission fully independent of the Mayor and Supervisors to ensure strong oversight,” reads the mailer, alongside a portrait of Lurie.
This isn’t true — and is one of at least five instances identified by the Chronicle when Lurie or his campaign incorrectly suggested that Prop F would not impact the police commission’s independence.
Lurie’s official argument for Prop F, submitted on his behalf in August and printed in the information guide sent to San Francisco voters, states, “Watchdog commissions like Ethics and police oversight remain fully independent.”
Under current city law, mayors cannot remove their own appointees to the police commission without approval from the Board of Supervisors. Prop F would change that.
Here’s what this means: The mayor could fire, with no process, an independent minded police commissioner who didn’t agree with everything the mayor wanted. Former Mayor London Breed tried to force all of her commissioners to sign undated resignation letters. She wanted to fire Max Carter Oberstone, who was an excellent Police Commission member, but he refused to leave.
When Lurie took office, he tried again to fire Carter Oberstone. Again, he got resistance. He ended up having to go to the Board of Supes, which ultimately backed up his decision.
If Prop. F passes, that system of checks and balances is gone. Any police commissioner who dares not to do the mayor’s full bidding could be gone, period.
If that’s what the voters want, if San Franciscans really believe that the commission system, which gives citizens some oversight at City Hall, is flawed, and the mayor should be a unitary executive with expansive powers, then we all have to accept that choice.
But if the mayor lies, repeatedly, about the measure, it’s hard to believe that the voters will really intend to give him what he wants.
If you support 48hills, and want to have a great time, don’t miss our 13th annual gala, Tuesday/27 at El Rio. A few tickets are still available. Sup. Shamann Walton and comedian Nato Green, plus a special guest, will give us some political standup. Get your tickets here.
