SF Mayor Lurie Pushes Charter Reform Ballot Measures

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie and Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman filed notices of intent Wednesday to gather signatures for three charter reform measures targeting November’s ballot, setting up what promises to be a contentious fight over how power is distributed at City Hall.

The proposals, organized under a ballot measure committee called Clean Up City Hall, would overhaul the city’s contracting rules, tighten the process for qualifying citizen initiatives, and expand the mayor’s authority over city departments and commissions. Lurie has framed the package as a long-overdue fix for a charter he says has grown too complicated to function.

“Our city charter is so bloated that it slows down basic services, breeds corruption, and wastes taxpayer dollars,” Lurie said in a statement. “San Franciscans elected me to clean up City Hall, and these reforms will strengthen accountability, deliver better results, and end the excuses.”

Labor leaders are not convinced. They say the measures would concentrate power in the mayor’s office and erect barriers that would effectively shut ordinary residents out of direct democracy.

The ballot initiative fight

The most contentious proposal would raise the signature threshold for citizen-led ballot initiatives from roughly 2 percent to about 8 percent of registered voters. It would also require six of the Board of Supervisors’ 11 members to place a measure on the ballot, up from the current four, and strip the mayor of unilateral authority to put initiatives before voters.

Supporters point to the November 2024 ballot, which included 15 local measures. San Jose had one that same cycle. Oakland had three. The argument from Clean Up City Hall is that San Francisco’s current system floods voters with measures, many of them contradictory, and that aligning with other California cities would reduce confusion and voter fatigue.

But San Francisco Labor Council Executive Director Kim Tavaglione told the SF Examiner the higher signature requirement would price grassroots campaigns out of the process entirely. Tavaglione called public access to ballot measures “an equity issue that is ingrained in our charter for a reason, because people in San Francisco believe they have a right to participate in government.”

“Anyone who tries to do that should be looked at with huge skepticism,” Tavaglione said.

That skepticism reflects a broader concern among labor and progressive groups that the reforms, packaged as efficiency measures, are fundamentally about who gets to shape city policy. Raising signature thresholds costs money. Campaigns with deep-pocketed donors can absorb those costs. Tenant groups, neighborhood coalitions, and labor-backed efforts often cannot.

Power flows toward the mayor

The second major proposal would expand mayoral authority over city departments and commissions. Details on the full scope of those changes were not available in the filings Wednesday, but the direction is clear. Critics argue the city already lacks sufficient checks on the executive branch, and that expanding mayoral control without corresponding accountability mechanisms would make that problem worse.

Lurie won election on a platform of cutting through bureaucratic gridlock, and his allies argue that gridlock stems in part from a governance structure that diffuses authority across too many bodies. The logic has appeal after years of high-profile failures on homelessness, permitting, and public safety. But the same consolidation of power that can produce faster decisions can also produce less scrutiny of those decisions.

What comes next

The Clean Up City Hall committee now needs to gather enough signatures to qualify the measures for the November ballot. That process will play out against an already active political environment, with labor, progressive supervisors, and civic groups expected to push back hard.

The signature-gathering phase is itself a test of the measures’ political viability. And if the proposals do qualify, voters will face a set of questions that cut to the heart of what San Francisco wants its democracy to look like: more streamlined and mayoral, or more participatory and messy.

Lurie is betting that after years of dysfunction, residents are ready to choose the former. Tavaglione and her allies are betting the opposite. Both of them will spend the next several months trying to prove it.