SPUR Charter Reform Study

The Facts

Urban planning think tank SPUR released 10 recommendations to reform San Francisco's charter (akin to our constitution).

A key recommendation is to restore the mayor's ability to manage staffing in key roles, like regaining the ability to hire and fire department heads without the legislature or commission being involved. Other suggestions include lengthening the City Administrator's term from five years to ten (to minimize politics and maximize stability in a key operational role), making it more difficult for Supervisors to bypass the legislative process by requiring a majority of 6 Supervisors, rather than a minority of 4, to put a measure on the ballot, and raising the signature threshold for ballot measures.

Additional recommendations include moving departments from charter to administrative code for flexibility and reducing mandated spending set-asides for specific services.

The Context

As we've written, San Francisco has the longest city charter in the country, at well over 500 pages. For comparison, the US constitution including all 27 amendments is about 15 pages.

Former SF Controller and PUC general manager, and current SPUR adviser Ed Harrington told Xueer Lu at Mission Local that stronger mayoral authority actually improves accountability: "If you want the mayor to be held responsible, you have to give them authority to make decisions."

The GrowSF Take

We had been hearing rumors about this report for months and we're excited to finally see it out in the wild! These recommendations align closely with GrowSF's long-standing advocacy for a more accountable Mayor, streamlined governance, and right-sizing the charter.

Giving mayors authority to hire and fire department heads creates direct responsibility for city services (don't like a department? Vote the mayor out!), while higher ballot thresholds reduce governance-by-initiative that clogs the system.

We'll be digging in to all of these recommendations over the coming weeks. Stay tuned!