We recommend voting for Joaquin Torres for Assessor-Recorder. This office assesses more than $350 billion in taxable property and keeps the city's official records.

Though Torres is running unopposed, he has earned the seat on the merits.

Torres inherited an in-progress $55 million replacement of the office's decades-old technology, started under his predecessor Carmen Chu, and carried it to completion. We don't want to diminish Chu's role in that important transition, she deserves all the credit for the hard work getting it rolling, but Torres does deserve the credit for ensuring it completed successfully.

In December 2024 he made San Francisco the first county in California to put its recorded documents online for free, more than 7 million of them going back to 1990, replacing a system that charged residents for copies of their own deeds. He did it while keeping assessments on schedule through the most volatile commercial real estate market in memory and, by his own account, the highest volume of assessment appeals since the Great Recession.

GrowSF's endorsement and analysis for this race are coming soon.

We recommend voting for Stephen Sherrill for Supervisor, District 2.

Sherrill brings real policy experience and a laser focus on responsive, effective government. He served as a senior policy advisor in the Bloomberg administration in New York, led the Mayor's Office of Innovation here, and as Supervisor has cut red tape while focusing on public safety, small businesses, and the cost of living. District 2 agrees: he won 69% of the vote in June, and he faces no serious opposition in November.

Without safe streets, parents won't let their kids walk to school, businesses can't keep their doors open, and people lose faith in the city. Rebuilding that trust starts with visible results like cleaner sidewalks, faster responses when people call for help, and better coordination across city departments to address public drug use and improve street conditions.

Stephen SherrillSupervisor, District 2

Why vote for Stephen Sherrill?

Public safety: Sherrill co-sponsored legislation to speed up 911 responses near schools and parks, co-sponsored Mayor Lurie's RV homelessness legislation, supported the Recovery First ordinance expanding sober housing, and led the city's new free firearm storage program with SFPD.

Small business: Van Ness from City Hall to Broadway has 53% ground-floor vacancy. Sherrill's plan to let stores fill those longtime-vacant spaces passed unanimously, and he helped extend the First Year Free program, which has waived startup fees for over 13,000 small businesses.

Making government work: When he ran the Mayor's Office of Innovation, his team built the technology that finally let San Francisco's nine street outreach teams across four departments share one view of the people they serve: better care, faster service, lower costs. He runs his own office the same way, measuring success by constituent satisfaction and follow-through.

Where Stephen Sherrill stands

Sherrill has done a great job as Supervisor, and we're excited to see him keep working alongside Mayor Lurie to get San Francisco back on track. That's why he has our endorsement.

We recommend voting for Alan Wong for Supervisor, District 4.

Wong was appointed by Mayor Lurie in December 2025, chosen from five finalists in an open process, and won the June special election with 46% of first-choice votes in a five-candidate field, nearly double his closest rival, and finished with 64.3% in the final ranked-choice round. He grew up in the Sunset, attended Lincoln High, and came to the job with a long record of public service: labor organizer, legislative aide to a former D4 Supervisor, policy lead at the Children's Council of San Francisco, Community College Board Trustee, and First Lieutenant in the Army National Guard.

The Sunset is the community I love and the only home I've ever known. Serving as Supervisor is the greatest honor of my life. I will approach this work with a public servant's heart. As a veteran, I will always put my community and my country first—above partisanship or ideology.

Alan WongSupervisor, District 4

What he's done in office

In just over half a year, Wong has built the record we hoped for:

• His first vote was for Mayor Lurie's Family Zoning Plan, breaking with the district's anti-density history. He said blocking it risked "losing local control, which is not acceptable."
• He co-sponsored doubling the maximum fine for sideshows after one took over Kirkham and La Playa, matching Oakland's and San Jose's penalties.
• He co-sponsored accepting a $6.25M federal grant that funds 50 police officer positions, a police retention agreement, and Supervisor Dorsey's drug-free supportive housing legislation.
• His office is helping Sunset residents petition SFMTA to convert streets to angled parking, adding spaces without slowing the buses.

The Great Highway

Wong's first act in office was submitting a ballot measure to re-open the Great Highway, reflecting the majority view in his district. It fell one Board signature short. That effort has since been superseded by the citizen-led Great Highway for Everyone Act, which would reopen the road to cars on weekdays while keeping it car-free on weekends. Organizers submitted more than 15,000 signatures in July, well above the roughly 10,600 required to reach the November ballot, and Wong supports the measure.

His priorities for a full term

A fully staffed police force, with recruitment aimed at bilingual officers who speak Cantonese, Mandarin, and Spanish, and desk jobs moved to civilians so sworn officers return to patrol. Responsive government: he dedicates half his staff time to constituent services and commits to answering any constituent concern within 24 hours. And a small business agenda that replaces the "byzantine maze" of permits with a straightforward checklist, plus easier childcare openings and better school information for Sunset families.

Where Alan Wong stands

District 4 asked for a supervisor who listens, and in eight months Wong has voted their priorities, delivered visible wins, and won their votes once already. That's why he has our endorsement.

We recommend voting for Matt Dorsey for Supervisor, District 6.

We endorsed Dorsey when he first ran in 2022, and he has spent the four years since passing laws to help people get off drugs and into treatment. Before joining the Board he spent 14 years in the City Attorney's office, where he worked on the nine-year legal fight for marriage equality and the lawsuit that saved City College from closure, and later served as SFPD's communications director.

It was my own journey in recovery from addiction that moved me to ask — first Mayor London Breed, and then District 6 voters — for a role on the Board of Supervisors.

Matt DorseySupervisor, District 6

Why vote for Matt Dorsey?

1. Recovery first

Supervisor Dorsey has done more to redirect San Francisco's drug policy toward treatment and recovery than any of his colleagues. His Recovery First ordinance passed the Board unanimously and was signed by Mayor Lurie in May 2025, making long-term remission the official goal of the city's drug programs.

This July, his Drug-Free Housing ordinance passed the Board 7-4, which requires the city to prioritize drug-free options in permanent supportive housing. That's a big change in city policy: today just 42 of the city's roughly 8,500 supportive housing units are drug-free, even though the Health Department reports that 26% of the city's fatal overdoses happened inside supportive housing in 2024, more than died on the street. People in recovery shouldn't be forced to live among drug and alcohol abuse just because they need housing assistance.

He also co-sponsored the RESET Center, which gives people arrested for public drug use an alternative to an ER visit or jail, both connecting people with recovery resources and saving taxpayers money. Dorsey calls it the most important policy shift since the fentanyl crisis began.

2. A fully staffed police force

Dorsey has relentlessly focused on solving SFPD's staffing shortage. The department's own November 2025 staffing analysis counts 1,565 sworn officers against the 2,257 it says the city needs, a gap of 692. His two ballot attempts to close it, in March and November 2024, both failed. He hasn't let up. This year the crisis has finally started to reverse: SFPD received 3,375 applications in 2025, up 40% from the year before, and posted its first net gain in officers since 2020. His second-term plan is a three-year push to full staffing, with civilianized desk jobs putting more sworn officers back on patrol.

3. Safer streets

Dorsey championed bringing speed cameras to San Francisco, and the results came fast: at camera locations, speeding by 10+ mph is down 79% a year after the March 2025 launch, roughly 40,000 fewer speeding drivers a day, and he has introduced a resolution urging the state to let the program expand. He also co-sponsored doubling fines for sideshows.

4. Build more housing

Dorsey voted for Mayor Lurie's Family Zoning Plan, has consistently supported building more homes in every neighborhood, and supports office-to-housing conversions downtown. And we appreciate his economic literacy: he says too-high inclusionary requirements (effectively taxes on new homes to fund subsidized homes) have made projects go "from penciling out to being thrown out."

Where Matt Dorsey stands

On other issues

Downtown recovery: As the downtown supervisor, he backs Vacant to Vibrant, Downtown First Thursdays, and tax and permitting changes to refill offices and storefronts. He wants to get office vacancy under 20% by 2030, down from a record 36.9% in late 2024. And his West SoMa Entertainment Zone ordinance, which passed in December 2025 and launched this July, lets bars and restaurants across a wide stretch of SoMa sell drinks to go.

Mental health: He supports expanding conservatorship tools and wants San Francisco to work with neighboring counties on regional mental health treatment centers, because streets and jails are the two worst places to leave someone in crisis.

We recommend voting for Manny Yekutiel for Supervisor, District 8.

You could argue that Manny is already doing the job of Supervisor: organizing trash clean-ups, organizing street festivals, advocating for small businesses and residents, and bringing more joy to the district.

He does most of that through the Civic Joy Fund, which he co-founded with Daniel Lurie (back before he became Mayor) and which pays for 17 trash pickups a week, night markets, and public art across the city. He has also served in important roles on the Small Business Commission and the SFMTA Board of Directors where he spent nearly three years voting on Muni service, street redesigns, and the agency's budget. But you may know him from his cafe and civic gathering space, Manny's, at 16th and Valencia. He turned a vision of community and conversation into a thriving small business where leaders, authors, and artists flock to from around the world. Running his cafe and leading the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association taught him what it costs, in fees and in patience, to keep a small business open in San Francisco.

If I had to choose just one metric, it would be the number of new homes actually built.

— Manny Yekutiel, GrowSF questionnaire

Why vote for Manny Yekutiel?

1. Build 10,000 homes

Manny has the most ambitious housing agenda in this race: 10,000 new homes in District 8 within eight years. For reference, the district built just 1,212 new homes from 2015 through 2024. He will achieve this by enacting a "housing priority district" on Market Street from Castro to Octavia that strips away barriers to building new homes, which he expects to result in about 6,000 homes. Another 3,000 will come from larger sites and 1,000 from ADUs. He wants guaranteed approvals for code-compliant projects and called Mayor Lurie's Family Zoning Plan a great first step. He answered our questions like someone who has actually read the economic research.

2. Safety and treatment

He supports full SFPD staffing, civilianizing desk roles so sworn officers patrol, and regular day and night beat cops on the Castro, 24th Street, and the district's plazas. On drugs, his positions match ours: arrest and prosecute fentanyl dealers and their suppliers, end the distribution of pipes and other paraphernalia without legitimate public health benefits, and expand sober housing and treatment capacity so every enforcement contact comes with a real offer of care. He also wants the Department of Public Health empowered to treat people in mental health crisis rather than waiting for a court order.

3. Free and easy to run a small business

His small business platform is straightforward: "It should be free and easy to start and run a small business in the City." He would make a willing landlord the only approval most businesses need, whether that is a salon, a corner grocery, a restaurant, or a neighborhood office, and would end the Planning Commission hearings that a bar taking over an empty restaurant still has to sit through. He would also reduce or eliminate the annual fees that cost small operators thousands, and simplify permits for basic storefront work. His goal is to fill every vacant storefront in the district within four years.

Where Manny Yekutiel stands

McCoy refused to answer our questionnaire, so his positions above come from his campaign platform and press coverage of him. He dismissed the questionnaire, which asks candidates about specific policies, as a "litmus test." We think Gary McCoy's refusal to answer basic questions about his positions on housing, policing, and drug policy is disqualifying and disrespectful to voters.

On other issues

Homelessness: Yekutiel's goal is zero unsheltered homelessness through more shelter, transitional housing, and tiny cabin villages, paired with accountability and enforcement to keep streets clean and safe.

Transit: He backs bus-only lanes with real enforcement, a citywide protected bike lane network, and Vision Zero, while pushing Muni to earn the trust of riders with service that is safe, fast, and reliable.

Manny Yekutiel has spent a decade building things in this city: a business, a civic institution, street festivals, night markets, and cleaner streets. We can't wait to see what he can do as Supervisor.

We recommend voting for Theo Ellington for Supervisor, District 10.

Ellington has spent more than fifteen years working on District 10's problems. As a City Commissioner at the Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure, he oversaw the redevelopment plans for the Shipyard, Mission Bay, and Transbay. As the Warriors' Director of Public Affairs, he managed the Chase Center partnership that delivered 3,000 jobs. As homelessness director at the Salvation Army, he built a 50-bed mental health respite center and recovery housing. Today he runs the Bayview Opera House.

I'm not running to study these problems. I'm running to solve them.

— Theo Ellington, GrowSF questionnaire

GrowSF didn't exist yet when Theo ran for Supervisor the last time, but our co-founder endorsed Ellington in 2018 as the most pro-housing candidate in that race. Eight years later, he still is.

Why vote for Theo Ellington?

1. Get the 20,000 homes built

District 10 has roughly 20,000 homes approved but unbuilt. They're stuck in the "planning pipeline" at Pier 70, the Potrero Power Station, India Basin, the Hunters Point Shipyard, Candlestick Point, and the former Schlage Lock factory, and Bayview's Third Street corridor has not seen a new home built in over a decade.

Ellington's number one commitment is turning that pipeline into actual homes. "Not approved. Not entitled. Built," as he put it in our questionnaire. He wants public timelines with consequences for developers who get approval and don't build. At Candlestick Point, where the Board approved the final map in June and infrastructure work finally breaks ground this summer after more than a decade of delay, he says that if the project stalls again the city should enforce penalties and look at recapturing or reassigning the land.

He supports letting small apartment buildings up to six stories be built with one staircase instead of two to make them cheaper to build, setting fees at levels that maximize homebuilding, and negotiating local hiring and community benefits up front instead of letting them become excuses to block development. He also wants round two of the Family Zoning Plan to include District 10, which was left out of the first round, and to add housing capacity along Third Street, Evans, and 16th Street.

2. Public safety

District 10 has the highest gun violence rate in the city, and for Ellington it's personal: his 13-year-old cousin was shot and killed in Bayview. He wants both enforcement and prevention. He supports full SFPD staffing and consistent foot patrols on commercial corridors, which the district does not have today. Unlike his opponent DJ Brookter, Theo Ellington supports arresting and prosecuting fentanyl dealers and the leaders of theft rings. And he wants violence prevention and youth programs fully funded, with D10-specific response times, clearance rates, and trust metrics published so residents can see it's working.

3. Finish the Shipyard cleanup

Decades of power plants, freeways, and contaminated Shipyard land have left Bayview-Hunters Point with some of the city's highest rates of cancer and asthma. This hit Ellington's family personally. After he and his wife bought a home at the Shipyard, they learned the soil was not safe, because the contractor hired to certify it had lied. The Ellingtons were one of the two families who brought the 2018 case, which won a $6.3M settlement from the developers for failing to warn buyers. Claims against the contractor itself ended on August 4, 2026, when a federal judge ruled that a nuclear-liability law bars homeowners from recovering for lost property value. As Supervisor he wants full retesting of the fraudulently certified parcels with independent oversight, a proper clean up, permanent public air-quality monitors in Bayview and Visitacion Valley, and real enforcement against illegal dumping.

4. Treatment that leads somewhere

At the Salvation Army, Ellington built the kind of recovery infrastructure the city keeps saying it needs: a 50-bed mental health respite center and recovery-based transitional housing. His rule is simple: never release someone from treatment back onto the street without a stable next step. He would end the distribution of pipes and foil while keeping evidence-backed public health interventions like clean needles, and he supports citations for public drug use paired with a treatment offer at every point of contact.

Where the candidates stand

On other issues

Transit: He wants the T-Third running every 10 minutes at peak with signal priority, a fix for the Islais Creek Bridge closure, restored late-night service for workers, and an additional Caltrain station with expanded water transit. He is honest that Bayview and Visitacion Valley remain car-dependent, and says bike infrastructure should be built where it genuinely connects people to destinations rather than as a blanket mandate.

Small business: His plan for Third Street and Evans includes guaranteed permits for code-compliant businesses, letting multiple small businesses share storefronts, pop-ups in vacant spaces, and a District 10 Small Business Investment Fund. As he told us, "Opening a business should not feel harder than running one."

Why not the other candidates?

J.R. Eppler is trying to sell himself as a pro-housing candidate, but his record tells the real story. As president of the Potrero Boosters he appealed a 127-home building at 88 Arkansas on a unit-mix technicality the Board of Appeals rejected 4-0. He opposed 450 homes at 300 De Haro, objecting that the project used state pro-housing law. He would also exempt shelters and affordable housing from CEQA but not market-rate housing, which leaves the appeals process intact for most of what District 10 needs. In a district with 20,000 approved but unbuilt homes, a supervisor who supports housing in principle and appeals it in practice is the wrong fit.

We recommend voting for Phil Kim, Autumn Brown Garibay, and Tim Tung for Board of Education.

Voters may cast votes for up to 3 candidates in this race, and we think these three should earn your vote.

Our full write-ups for Autumn Brown Garibay, an SFUSD parent and PTA leader, and Tim Tung, a finance professional and city commissioner, are coming soon. In the meantime, here is our endorsement of Phil Kim from the June 2026 election, which we think still holds true:

Phil has both the experience and the track record that SFUSD needs. Phil is a former public school student and teacher, and a lifelong educator. He led STEM education and policy at K-12 public schools across 20+ states and 300+ schools. He has a Masters in Education, and is currently pursuing his doctorate in Education. Since he joined the Board in 2024, Phil has used his deep understanding of how other school systems have improved student outcomes to begin the process of improving SFUSD's. He was unanimously elected President by his fellow commissioners in January of this year.

We think Phil has done a great job working with the Board and our Superintendent over the last year and a half to get SFUSD back on track, and would like to see him continue his work.

"We are seeing literacy and math outcomes improving for the first time in years, even as we underwent significant budget reductions last year. As a Board, we must stay focused on effective progress monitoring of our student outcome goals, and holding the superintendent accountable to our guardrails."

Phil KimBoard of Education President

Why vote for Phil Kim?

Phil's top policy goals are:

1. Student Outcomes

Phil believes school systems exist to improve student outcomes, and has shown relentless focus on bringing 3rd grade reading, 8th grade math, and college and career readiness markers to a competitive level. For the first time in years, we're seeing improvements. Most recently, Phil was one of only four commissioners who voted to bring algebra back to 8th grade — ending a 12-year ban that had denied SF students access to the math course that most of the country considers standard. The vote was 4-3. There's a lot of work to be done to get SFUSD where we all want it to be, but we think Phil is uniquely positioned, and experienced, in driving all parts of the school system towards the right outcomes.

2. Safety & Stability

Phil believes that a safe school is one that is properly resourced with highly competent and trained educators and school operators. He worked with the Board and Superintendent to prioritize and protect teachers' jobs during budget cuts. Phil states that steadiness in personnel is also important towards students feeling safe, and that training, coaching and development are needed to ensure great teachers stay. He is also committed to partnering with the Board and Superintendent to ensure school security staff are better trained and coordinated to prevent and respond to incidents.

3. Access

San Francisco has one of the largest percentages of students enrolled in private schools. Phil believes we must offer language immersion and other sought-after programs in San Francisco to attract more families to SFUSD, and drive enrollments up.

On other issues

1. Data Transparency

Phil is committed to making data publicly accessible. While SFUSD does report its data biannually, it's hard to find, and harder to understand. This is unacceptable. Phil Kim aims to fix that by aligning the Board and Superintendent on goals, the strategies to achieve them, and the data to measure progress. We look forward to seeing clearer, more digestible, public facing dashboards in the future.

2. Fiscal sustainability

One of Phil's first actions as President of the Board of Education was to ensure our Superintendent was evaluated on metrics that would align SFUSD with fiscal sustainability. As a result, the district has gone from "negative" fiscal certification to "qualified" and is aiming for the highest, "positive" certification by July of next year, completing the rapid transition out of state oversight.

GrowSF's endorsement and analysis for this race are coming soon.

GrowSF's endorsement and analysis for this race are coming soon.

Candidate filing is open through August 7, 2026; we'll update this guide once the field is final.

What is it?

Prop A is a cleanup measure for San Francisco's boards and commissions. It consolidates duplicative commissions, shuts down outdated and unused commissions, and makes the rest easier for the Board of Supervisors to modify.

Fewer commissions

Prop A reduces the number of boards and commissions in the City Charter from 55 to 38, by moving 9 into the Municipal Code and eliminating or merging 8 others.

Boards and commissions with overlapping duties are merged into one.

Commissions that have sat idle for years are eliminated, like the Special Strike Committee, which a state labor board ruled can no longer legally convene. So are commissions that still meet but no longer serve a purpose, like the Sanitation and Streets Commission, which oversees a department that no longer exists.

The 9 commissions that move into the Municipal Code, like the Human Services Commission, keep operating as they do today, but the Board could later change or dissolve them by ordinance instead of by ballot measure.

Finally, it will run this same process every ten years, so that the Board can keep the number of commissions down and make sure they are still serving a useful purpose.

History

Prop A is the outcome of 2024's Prop E, which created the Commission Streamlining Task Force. The task force assembled the city's first full list of all commissions, studied their duties, outcomes, and impacts, and ultimately made a set of recommendations to the Board of Supervisors. The task force recommended many more changes than the Board of Supervisors ultimately adopted, but the Board voted to place their pared-down measure on the ballot.

The task force recommended shrinking the number of boards and commissions to 87 (plus 41 not in scope of their work) by eliminating 36 inactive bodies, merging 2 duplicative bodies, and eliminating 24 active bodies that were no longer needed. Ultimately, it would have shrunk the number or Chartered bodies from 55 to 24, and administrative code bodies from 76 to 63.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop B would authorize SF to create a City-owned Municipal Finance Corporation (MFC) now, and a Public Bank later. It provides no money for either one. The MFC would only be created if the Treasurer-Tax Collector determines there is enough funding and the City secures the capital it requires. The Public Bank would only be created after the MFC has been running for at least three years and obtains state and federal regulatory approval.

The MFC would be able to lend money to the City, nonprofits, and private businesses for affordable housing, homeownership, small business, and environmental projects. The Public Bank would do the same, but could also hold deposits.

Both bodies are not allowed to invest in "predatory lending, fossil fuels, tobacco, weapons, prisons, and businesses that break labor law." It does not define any of these terms, so the commissions would decide what counts.

Governance

Each institution gets a public oversight commission and a corporate board, and the corporate boards, not the City, will run daily operations. The Board of Supervisors appoints four of the nine commission seats, more than any other branch or elected official. The Mayor appoints two, and the Treasurer-Tax Collector, Controller, and City Attorney one each. Current and recent politicians are not eligible.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop C will increase the City's investment in its Housing Trust Fund, which funds below-market-rate home construction, preservation, and acquisition as well as infrastructure and some downpayment assistance. Voters first created the fund in 2012.

Today, the City puts $50.8M into the Housing Trust Fund every year. This measure would increase that yearly contribution starting in Fiscal Year 2028-29 until it hits $125M per year, in line with either the growth of general fund revenues or property values, whichever rises faster. When the yearly appropriation hits $125M, the contribution growth is capped at 3% per year.

The Board of Supervisors may freeze contributions when the City projects a deficit over $250M, and cut contributions by up to 10% in a year the City taps its Rainy Day Reserve.

The measure also raises the income cap for downpayment assistance loans from 120% to 200% of the Area Median Income and removes the current spending cap on housing-related infrastructure.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop D is designed to reduce the number of local ballot measures San Franciscans vote on by:

• Raising the signature threshold for citizen initiative ordinances from 2% to 8% of registered voters, still below Oakland's 10% and Los Angeles's 15%
• Raising the signature threshold to call a special election on an initiative from 10% of votes cast for Mayor in the last election to 10% of registered voters
• Removing the Mayor's ability to unilaterally put a measure on the ballot
• Removing the ability of any four supervisors to bypass a Board majority, so six votes are required

Today a citizen initiative cannot be pulled off the ballot once its signatures are in, even if the sponsors changed their minds. Prop D lets all of a measure's proponents together withdraw it up to 102 days before the election. California gave statewide proponents a similar option in 2014.

Compared to other cities

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop E changes city contracting rules and the City Administrator's role in them. It would centralize procurement authority in the City Administrator, who is appointed by the Mayor and confirmed by the Board of Supervisors.

Procurement rules control how the city buys goods and services, contracts for public works, and makes grants, but not union contracts, development agreements, or real estate.

Several of the changes are consolidations of existing law, but a few would shift how contracting decisions get made:

• The City Administrator would become the only official who can introduce most purchasing legislation. The Board could reject an ordinance within 60 days, but could not directly amend it, and could not override a Mayoral veto
• The Board of Supervisors will be less involved: Only revenue contracts and leases of $4.5M or more (up from $1M) and spending contracts of $25M or more (up from $10M) would need Board approval. (This will adjust for inflation starting in 2032)
• Purchasing at the MTA, PUC, Airport, Port, and the City's charitable trust departments would become subject to standards set by the City Administrator
• The City Administrator's term would go from five to ten years

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop F gives the Mayor more direct control over City government, subject to oversight by the Board of Supervisors. The Mayor would gain the power to reorganize most City departments, hire and fire department heads, and remove them without a vote of the Board of Supervisors. Separately, most commissioners would serve at the pleasure of whoever appointed them, so the Mayor could remove the Mayor's own appointees at will, and the Board could remove the Board's. The measure also deletes a 1990s era ban on the Mayor hiring "deputy mayors" (akin to chiefs of staff or cabinet members) to supervise the administration of departments.

Today, most departments are written into the City Charter, so making any changes to them requires a vote of the people. Prop F would let the Mayor move duties between departments, or merge whole departments; Charter duties could move but not be eliminated. The Board could block a change within 30 days, or 60 days if an implementing ordinance is needed. Some departments would retain existing rules, including the Controller, City Administrator, Board of Appeals, Port, Airport, the Asian Art and Fine Arts Museums, and the police and sheriff oversight bodies.

Today, for most departments, an unelected commission gives the Mayor a list of at least three candidates to choose from and holds the power to fire whoever gets the job. The Police Chief is a partial exception: the Police Commission still assembles the list, but the Mayor can already remove the Chief without the Commission. F changes that for departments generally, giving the Mayor direct hire and fire authority over the heads of Planning, Building Inspection, Public Works, Homelessness and Supportive Housing, Small Business, and Entertainment. At the Municipal Transportation Agency and the Public Utilities Commission, the commission would still supply candidates, but the Mayor could remove the department head and would approve the employment contract and set the pay. Additionally, commissioners could be removed at will by whoever appointed them, rather than requiring written charges, an Ethics Commission hearing, and a three-fourths vote of the Board of Supervisors; though the Board of Appeals, Civil Service Commission, and Ethics Commission keep the current process.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop G would close Sunset Dunes Park and reopen the Upper Great Highway to cars for most of the week. It restores a version of the weekend compromise that ran from 2022 to 2024: the road will be closed to private vehicles from Friday at 6:00 p.m. through Monday at 4:00 a.m., and on holidays.

Reopening the road to cars would require a coastal development permit from the California Coastal Commission, and possibly other approvals.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop H would create a new annual tax on most property in San Francisco to fund Muni, running 15 years, from July 2027 through June 2042. The tax is based on building square footage rather than property value, and rises with inflation after the first year.

The measure's findings cite an SFMTA deficit of over $300M per year once pandemic relief funding runs out.

New tax rates

• Single-family homes
  • $0 if you're 65 or older and live in the home you own; for everyone else...
  • $129 up to 3,000 square feet
  • $0.42 per square foot between 3,000 and 5,000 sq. ft.
  • $1.99 per square foot above that, with no cap
• Multifamily buildings
  • $0 if you're 65 or older and live in a unit you own under 5,000 square feet; for everyone else...
  • $249 up to 5,000 square feet
  • $0.195 per square foot above that, capped at $50,000
• Non-residential
  • $799 up to 5,000 square feet
  • $0.76 per square foot between 5,000 and 50,000 sq. ft.
  • $0.84 per square foot between 50,000 and 250,000 sq. ft.
  • $0.99 per square foot above 250,000 sq. ft., capped at $400,000
• Mixed-use
  • $799 up to 5,000 square feet, above which the residential and commercial portions are taxed separately and added together, capped at $400,000
• Empty lots:
  • $0 if 2,000 square feet or less
  • $392 if 2,001 square feet or more

Because commercial and multifamily rates are capped, the biggest buildings in those categories pay the lowest rate per square foot. A 449,000 square foot commercial building hits the $400,000 ceiling at about $0.89 a square foot, while a 1.4M square foot tower pays that same $400,000, or about $0.29 per square foot. Single-family homes are the exception: that rate has no ceiling, so the largest houses pay the highest rate in the measure.

Parcels that pay no property tax are exempt. Homeowners 65 or older living in a home they own pay nothing on a single-family parcel and get a $249-per-unit reduction in a multifamily building, and SRO square footage comes out of the calculation entirely. Both exemptions must be applied for with the SFMTA.

Landlords of rent-controlled units can pass through up to half the tax, capped at $65 per unit per year, but not on units whose square footage is exempt and not on tenancies starting on or after June 1, 2027.

After collection costs, all revenue goes to the SFMTA for transit operations, subject to annual appropriation, and a citizens' group must review the spending at least every two years. The Board of Supervisors can amend or repeal the tax by majority vote without returning to voters, though it cannot increase or extend it without them. Nothing in the measure requires the City to keep its current General Fund support for Muni at today's level.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop I would reallocate the City's transfer tax on property sales of $10M or more. The tax rate doesn't change, staying at today's highest-in-the-state 5.5% and 6%. Prop I just changes where the money goes: roughly half would no longer flow into the City's "general fund," where it can be allocated through the normal budgeting process, and would instead be restricted to subsidized housing and homelessness prevention.

It would also prevent the Board of Supervisors from lowering the tax without a vote of the people.

New buildings with 4 or more homes, sold within 5 years of initial construction, are exempt from half of the tax on that first sale. It is a modest tax cut for developers.

How the restricted money would be spent

• At least 60% would go to building new subsidized housing, with half of that reserved for "social housing" projects where residents share in management and, where feasible, ownership through structures like community land trusts and limited-equity co-ops, which cap resale values
• At least 25% would go to preservation, with most of that buying rent-controlled buildings and SROs and the rest rehabilitating existing subsidized housing
• At least 10% would go to eviction legal defense and emergency rental assistance
• Up to 5% can be used for administration, with refunds paid separately and not subject to that cap

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop J would end the transfer tax exemption for foreclosures, except on small residential buildings.

San Francisco charges a transfer tax every time property changes hands. The rate depends on the value and applies to all of it, reaching 5.5% from $10M to $25M and 6% at $25M or more. Since 1984 one of its exemptions has covered the deed a lender receives when it takes a property back through foreclosure. That exemption is capped at the amount still owed on the loan, so a lender who recovers no more than the debt pays nothing. It was written to protect a lender eating a loss, not to hand a building to a new owner tax-free.

How a buyer uses the exemption

Prop J aims to fix a modestly technical way for a new buyer to avoid paying the transfer tax:

Rather than the lender foreclosing and selling the property to a prospective buyer, which would be taxed, the buyer instead buys the loan from the lender, which conveys no property and so is not taxed. Now holding the loan, the buyer forecloses on the old owner and takes the deed, which is exempt from the tax.

The building has transferred to a new owner but the City has collected no transfer tax. The sale that would normally be taxed, from the old owner to the new one, never happens on paper. The exemption was meant to spare a lender recovering a bad debt, but it ends up sparing the buyer at the end of the chain.

What would change

Starting with transfers on March 1, 2027, the exemption would cover only small residential buildings. A foreclosure of anything else would be taxed, and the bill would be based on what the property is worth rather than the price on paper. In these deals the price on paper is the unpaid loan balance, not the true fair market value of the building.

The measure also reaches foreclosures on the company that owns a building, not only on deeds. Some loans are secured by the owner's stake in the LLC that holds the building rather than by the building itself. Foreclosing on that stake delivers the building without any deed being recorded, so the measure taxes those transfers too.

What remains exempt

Small residential buildings keep the exemption. Qualified residential properties are: single-family homes, condos, co-op units, single live/work units, buildings with four or fewer homes, and mixed-use buildings with four or fewer homes and one floor of space that is not housing. One unit built for travelers or other short-term guests disqualifies the whole building. Everything else loses the exemption, including offices, shops, hotels, and apartment buildings with five or more homes.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop RTM, the Connect Bay Area Transit Initiative, is a sales tax across five Bay Area counties to pay for transit operations. There is no single division of the money: the measure allocates each county's revenue separately, and the shares differ from county to county.

What the tax would fund

Here is how the money raised in San Francisco would be allocated:

• 62.87% to Muni, 29.14% to BART, and 3.97% to Caltrain for operations
• 1.40% to fare programs, including free and reduced-cost transfers and expanding Clipper START
• 0.97% to San Francisco Bay Ferry and 0.40% to Golden Gate Transit
• 0.56% to accessibility and 0.56% to mapping, wayfinding, and transit priority
• 0.13% to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission to administer the tax

In the other four counties, a share goes to the county transportation agency, which may spend it on roadway repaving as well as transit.

Here's how each county's revenue would be allocated:

Percentages apply to the revenue generated within each county, so they are not comparable as dollar amounts.

San Francisco would pay the highest rate: 1%, double the 0.5% charged in the other four counties, which the measure attributes to "the heightened need for transit funding in the City and County of San Francisco."

The tax would run for 14 years, from April 1, 2027 to April 1, 2041, and the measure is estimated to raise about $980M per year across the five counties.

Here's that same table above, but with estimated dollar amounts:

Estimated first full year (FY2028). GrowSF calculation applying the allocation percentages in Section 12 of the ordinance to county revenue implied by MTC's published per-agency projections.

Administration and oversight

This is a regional measure covering Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara. All five counties vote on it, but the results are combined into a single district-wide tally rather than counted county by county, so San Francisco cannot pass or defeat it on its own.

The district's governing board, which is the same board that governs the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, may amend the ordinance without returning to voters so long as the change furthers its purposes (including changing how much each transit system receives), but it cannot raise the tax or extend it without another vote. An independent oversight committee checks that the district distributes the money as the ordinance requires, but has no say over how the transit agencies spend what they receive.

Read the full annotated legal text →

We recommend voting for Xavier Becerra for Governor.

Our full analysis of this race is coming soon.

We recommend voting for Fiona Ma for Lieutenant Governor.

In June we endorsed Josh Fryday, who unfortunately finished third and didn't advance. The general election is now Fiona Ma, a Democrat, against Gloria Romero, a Republican, and Ma is the clear choice.

The Lieutenant Governor sits on the State Lands Commission, holds voting seats on the UC Regents, CSU Trustees, and Community Colleges Board of Governors, and chairs the Commission for Economic Development. Most candidates treat this office as a stepping stone. Ma has specific plans for its actual tools.

Why vote for Fiona Ma?

Fiona Ma started her public service career in San Francisco, serving as the Sunset's Supervisor from 2002 to 2006, and has since held office at every level of California government: six years in the Assembly, where she had more than 60 bills signed into law and served as Speaker pro Tempore, a term on the Board of Equalization, and two terms as State Treasurer. We endorsed her for Treasurer in 2022 and called her the safe and stable choice. She was.

I have never lost a race for office, and that is not by accident. When I set out to accomplish something, I commit fully and I deliver.

— Fiona Ma, GrowSF questionnaire

The Treasurer's job turns out to be direct preparation for this one. Ma chairs the committee that allocates the tax credits that make affordable housing possible, sits on the California Housing Finance Agency board, issued the state's first-ever bonds for community college student housing, and launched the Dream for All down payment program for first-time homebuyers. As Lieutenant Governor she would sit on the boards of the very institutions she has been financing, and she is the only elected official who sits on all three. Her plan would put workforce housing on the 75,000 acres of land that school districts and colleges already own, funded through a zero-interest revolving loan fund, so teachers and college staff can afford to live where they work. On the State Lands Commission, she wants to push California's first commercial-scale offshore wind hub at Morro Bay and Humboldt into active construction.

She is also proposing a reform we've already endorsed in another race: abolishing the Board of Equalization. Ma served on that board, chaired it, and initiated the outside audits that exposed the mismanagement behind the 2017 reforms that stripped most of its powers. Now she wants to finish the job, which is exactly the position we took in our Board of Equalization endorsement. It says something when a politician proposes eliminating a body she herself sat on.

Shirley Weber has done the job competently, and we endorse her for another term.

The Secretary of State's primary job is running California's elections, and Weber has done it without drama — which is exactly what you want. Under her tenure, California hit a record 22.6 million registered voters in 2024, and over 5 million Californians signed up for ballot tracking through the "Where's My Ballot" system. She's also expanded same-day voter registration and grown the number of Voter Choice Act counties, which give voters more flexibility in where and when they cast their ballots.

When the federal government demanded access to California's statewide voter registration database, Weber refused and won in court.

We'd like to see her push harder on campaign finance transparency. The state's Cal-Access disclosure database is difficult to use and makes it too hard to trace certain types of electoral spending. Voters deserve full transparency around political money.

We recommend voting for Malia Cohen for State Controller.

Cohen knows public finance, and she knows San Francisco.

Before becoming Controller, Cohen chaired the Budget and Finance Committee and the Audit and Oversight Committee on the SF Board of Supervisors. After that, she ran the San Francisco Employees' Retirement System, a $35 billion pension fund. Now she sits on the boards of CalPERS and CalSTRS, the two biggest public pension funds in the country, with almost $1T in assets, combined.

She also went after California's largest-ever charter school fraud. Cohen led a task force that came up with 20 fixes for how the state checks school finances — tougher rules for auditors, faster reporting, and more disclosure. Her office also publishes pay data for over 2 million government workers across 5,000+ agencies.

We would like to see the Controller's Office return $15B in unclaimed property such as forgotten bank accounts and uncashed checks that belong to Californians. Other states send it back automatically — California still doesn't. Overall, Cohen has brought transparency and accountability to the state's spending.

We recommend voting for Eleni Kounalakis for State Treasurer.

The Treasurer chairs CDLAC (which decides how billions in tax-exempt bonds get spent) and CTCAC (which hands out the federal tax credits that make affordable housing possible). If those agencies move slowly, housing doesn't get built. Kounalakis is the only candidate in this race who has actually built housing, financed infrastructure, and managed large-scale investments in the private sector.

Kounalakis named three measurable outcomes voters should use to judge her after two years: more housing units financed through state programs with faster time to delivery, pension returns that meet or exceed benchmarks with improved transparency, and significant growth in CalSavers, CalKIDS, ScholarShare 529, and CalABLE enrollment — especially among working families and underserved communities. That kind of accountability is rare in a statewide race.

I will focus on lowering financing costs, unlocking capital, and partnering with local governments to move projects from approval to construction faster — because affordability depends on supply.

Eleni KounalakisLieutenant Governor of California

On fiscal discipline, she's specific: hold the state's debt-service-to-General Fund ratio at or below 6%, publish a public "California Balance Sheet" dashboard tracking bond debt, pension assets, and investment performance in plain language, and push for stable pension returns with downward pressure on fees. California's heavy reliance on capital-gains tax revenue creates boom-and-bust budget cycles — Kounalakis would align cash management with economic cycles, maintaining liquidity during downturns rather than borrowing at the worst time.

Before entering public life, Kounalakis spent nearly two decades as a housing developer at AKT Development, building master-planned communities in the Sacramento region where thousands of California families now live. She has firsthand experience with the bond financing, tax credit programs, and capital market tools that the Treasurer's office controls. As Lieutenant Governor, she sits on the governing boards of the UC, CSU, and Community College systems — including voting to approve construction of over 60,000 new student housing beds statewide.

The Treasurer's job is about managing the state's money: bonds, investments, pensions, and cash. Kounalakis is the only candidate in this race with private-sector experience doing exactly that. That's why she has our endorsement.

Rob Bonta has been an effective Attorney General, and we're happy to endorse him for another term.

For San Francisco voters, Bonta's most important work has been on housing. He co-sponsored SB 1037 with Scott Wiener, which gave the AG's office real teeth to fine cities that block housing, and he has used them. His office has forced compliance from cities across California that were illegally stalling housing plans, including settlements with Fullerton, Norwalk, Elk Grove, and Huntington Beach. When Woodside declared the entire town a mountain lion sanctuary to avoid SB 9, Bonta told the town it was breaking state law. Woodside rescinded the policy the same week and started accepting applications. Every home that gets built because a NIMBY city was forced to follow the law makes San Francisco's regional housing market a little less insane.

He's also gone after anticompetitive behavior in the rental market. His office got a $7M settlement from Greystar, the nation's largest landlord, for using software to coordinate rent prices with competitors, which is a cartel run through an algorithm. That kind of enforcement matters to every renter in the Bay Area.

Bonta has also been active defending California against the Trump administration, filing over 50 lawsuits on issues from immigration to environmental protections.

We recommend voting for Ben Allen for Insurance Commissioner. Allen has the experience, knowledge, and track record to fix California's broken insurance market.

In the June primary we endorsed Patrick Wolff while mentioning that Ben Allen was also a good choice. Unfortunately, Patrick Wolff lost, so the November election is a head-to-head matchup between Ben Allen and Jane Kim. We strongly recommend Ben Allen and strongly oppose Jane Kim.

California's insurance market is broken. Insurance companies are leaving the state, the state-run FAIR Plan has blown up to 610,000+ policies (up 154% since 2021), and homeowners in fire-prone areas are getting pushed into a bare-bones backup plan that just asked for a 36% rate hike. The next Insurance Commissioner needs to understand what's actually broken and how to fix it. Only one candidate in this race does.

Why vote for Ben Allen?

Allen has spent over a decade working on insurance, climate, and consumer protection. As a State Senator, he represents the communities devastated by the Palisades Fire, where he spent the aftermath helping hundreds of constituents fight for their insurance claims, an experience he calls "a front-row seat to our broken insurance system." He watched the FAIR Plan nearly collapse under $4 billion in losses from the LA fires, with the costs spread to policyholders statewide through a $1 billion emergency assessment, and he drew the right lesson: letting the FAIR Plan grow unchecked creates systemic risk for everyone.

Standing amid smoke, ashes, and uncertainty, I saw what failure looks like.

Ben AllenCalifornia State Senator

Allen didn't wait for tragedy before acting, though. In 2024, a year before the Palisades fires, he authored Proposition 4 to authorize a $10 billion bond for wildfire risk reduction and water infrastructure that voters approved. While other candidates talk in vague terms about affordability while dodging question about their relevant experience, Allen has already put $10 billion to work reducing the risk that makes insurance expensive in the first place.

His plan for the office pairs regulatory flexibility with hard accountability: insurers get more flexibility to price risk accurately so taxpayers won't be forced to bail them out after a disaster, and in exchange they must actually write and renew policies in California. He also wants an independent consumer advocate inside the Department of Insurance, public dashboards tracking insurer behavior, and a ban on Commissioners working for the insurance industry after leaving office. You can read his full plans in his answers to our questionnaire.

Why not Jane Kim?

Jane Kim is a career politician who went from being a San Francisco Supervisor, to losing her run for State Senate, to running a socialist political party (the Working Families Party), and now wants a state takeover of disaster insurance. She has no insurance experience, no insurance license, and no financial services background. She's running on a plan called "Disaster Insurance for All": a government-run program that would replace private disaster coverage. You'd pay a fee to the state, and the state would cover wildfires, earthquakes, and floods. Private insurers would have no reason to stick around. The next big wildfire or earthquake means either a massive taxpayer bailout or a wave of unpaid claims.

In theory, this could work, but it would depend on the state accurately pricing risk. But the private market is in a crisis precisely because the state has not let insurers price risk accurately. Kim's plan would make that problem worse, not better.

Her plan reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what insurance is. Insurance works by pricing risk and spreading it across a big pool. Kim won't commit to pricing risk. When pressed on it, she told Washington Monthly: "I imagine we would look at both value and risk, but one of the goals is to make sure that [coverage] is affordable." This hedging worries economists. Holding rates down for affordability is precisely how you end up not charging for risk. When fire-prone homes don't pay what their risk actually costs, people who live in fire-safe cities like San Francisco pay more. Insurance prices are supposed to make people think twice about building in dangerous places. When that signal is weakened, more people will move to fire-prone areas, more homes will burn, and San Franciscans will pay even more to cover it.

In short, Jane Kim wants to end private disaster insurance and dump everyone into one state-run account that mis-prices the actual risks, then hope nothing bad ever happens.

We've already seen this movie in California. The FAIR Plan, the state's existing backup insurer, got hit with $4 billion in losses from the LA fires, ran out of money, and had to charge private insurers a $1 billion emergency fee just to stay alive. That's with only 610,000 policies. Kim wants to put every California homeowner on a plan like this.

The models she points to aren't success stories either: New Zealand's earthquake insurer was overwhelmed after the 2011 Christchurch quake, underpaid people for over a decade, and is now getting sued.

We are not alone in this read. The San Francisco Chronicle's editorial board endorsed Allen under the headline "One candidate is ready to be California's insurance commissioner. The other would be a disaster." It called Kim "as rash as they come," said her platform is "politically seductive" but "a recipe for disaster," and pointed to her 2016 Prop C, the inclusionary housing rates that supervisors had to cut three times because projects stopped penciling out. Its conclusion: "If Prop C is an example of how Kim would operate as insurance commissioner, voters should run screaming."

This race is a choice between a legislator who has spent a decade on the problem and a candidate whose plan would make it dramatically worse. Ben Allen understands how insurance works and has already done more than anyone in this race to fix it. That's why he has our endorsement.

GrowSF's endorsement and analysis for this race are coming soon.

We recommend voting for John Pimentel for the State Board of Equalization, District 2.

The Board of Equalization has a fairly narrow role, after most of its powers were stripped in 2017 following an audit that revealed missing funds and signs of nepotism. Governor Brown signed legislation stripping the Board of most of its duties, and the real work went to two new agencies the governor controls. What's left is setting the taxable value of railroad and utility property, overseeing statewide property tax assessment practices for consistency across county assessors, and hearing certain tax appeals. In fact, the office should probably be abolished. Legislators have proposed exactly that, and former board member and State Controller Betty Yee questions how the board "continues to have relevance".

Pimentel is the rare candidate who agrees that this elected office shouldn't exist. He campaigns on folding the board's remaining work into the state's other tax agencies, which would end the practice of paying four elected board members $184,000 a year to oversee a technical, administrative function. The San Francisco Chronicle endorsed him "for his willingness to eliminate his own job."

California does not suffer from a lack of good intentions. We suffer from a lack of follow-through, accountability, practical execution, and the discipline to say 'NO'.

— John Pimentel, GrowSF questionnaire

Why vote for John Pimentel?

But until the board is abolished, it needs someone who can run it well. The board has been plagued by scandal and mismanagement, and the Legislature has stripped it of most of its powers. The remaining duties are technical and administrative, and the board deserves someone who has actually run large, complicated things.

His platform is practical: modernize the board's oversight of county assessors with shared data tools, speed up assessment appeals and refunds, and use the office to push for ending the sales tax on groceries and prepared food.

Pimentel's record is heavy on execution. As California's Deputy Secretary for Transportation, he oversaw the emergency rebuild of Los Angeles freeways after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, using incentive-based contracts that finished the work in record time, and led the merger of the California State Police into the Highway Patrol. In the private sector, he built more than $1.5B of clean energy and water infrastructure.

As a San Mateo County Community College District trustee, he led the effort that made community college tuition-free for county residents, and enrollment rose 24%. When the district's former chancellor was fired amid a corruption investigation, Pimentel pushed to cancel his do-nothing emeritus contract, create an internal auditor position and a whistleblower hotline, and sue the contractors accused of paying him off. Both efforts landed. The chancellor was convicted in January on eight felony counts of perjury and tax fraud, and in June the contractors settled with the district for $20M, money that goes back to taxpayers. That anti-corruption record will serve Pimentel well on the Board.

Why we changed our endorsement

We endorsed Sally Lieber in the June primary, but we've decided to change our endorsement to John Pimentel for the general election.

Before the primary, Lieber was the only candidate who answered our questionnaire. We definitely didn't agree with all of her positions, but she had a scandal-free and competent record on the board.

But after the primary, Pimentel returned our questionnaire, and we found his answers very compelling. More compelling, in fact, than Lieber's.

Ultimately, this general election is a choice between two Democrats with opposite views of the office itself. Lieber defends keeping the board, describing it as a lean and effective forum for taxpayers. We think the 2017 scandal, the Legislature's own abolition proposals, and the doubts of the board's former members tell a different story. Pimentel's positions are more in line with ours and more aligned with good government.

When the central question in a race is whether the office should exist at all, we side with the candidate who wants to wind it down and has the record to run what remains well in the meantime. That's why John Pimentel has our endorsement.

We recommend voting for Matt Haney for State Assembly, District 17.

Haney has been one of the most productive SF legislators in Sacramento. His biggest win is AB 507, signed by Newsom in 2025, which makes it easier to turn empty office buildings into housing statewide. The law started as a San Francisco fix, since our downtown has millions of square feet of empty office space, and Haney got it expanded to the whole state. Projects that meet the rules now get approved automatically, no rezoning needed. He's also pushed hard on public safety: AB 2475 stops state hospitals from releasing patients with violent criminal histories without a plan for supervision, housing, and treatment.

In his questionnaire, Haney lays out an ambitious but grounded agenda for a second term. On housing, he wants to end exclusionary zoning, accelerate office-to-housing conversions, and move toward by-right permitting for infill projects. On the fentanyl crisis, he's working to expand treatment access and guarantee drug-free recovery housing, while supporting enforcement against trafficking networks. And he's championing downtown revitalization: modernizing nightlife rules, supporting small businesses, and making urban cores places people want to spend time again.

Haney works across party lines and gets bills signed. He's running unopposed, and he's earned another term.

We recommend voting for Catherine Stefani for State Assembly, District 19.

Stefani has had a productive first term. Newsom signed seven of her bills into law in 2025. Highlights include the Restitution First Act (AB 1213), which makes sure crime victims get paid back before other fines are collected; a license plate cover ban (AB 1085) that closes a loophole criminals used to dodge toll cameras; and Wyland's Law (AB 1363), which closes a deadly gap in how California enforces gun-restraining orders. Gun safety is her signature issue. She founded the SF chapter of Moms Demand Action and wrote SF's first-in-California ghost gun ban as a Supervisor.

We do have some concerns about Stefani's alignment with Sacramento special interests, particularly on issues where the priorities of state-level advocacy groups don't always match what's best for San Francisco. We'll be watching her second term closely. But on the merits of what she's done so far, she's earned our endorsement.

These justices are up for a yes/no retention vote. Analysis coming soon.

These justices are up for a yes/no retention vote. Analysis coming soon.

What is it?

Prop 1 is an $11.25B bond: $10B to finance subsidized housing and $1.25B for CalVet loans to help veterans buy farms, homes, and mobile homes.

The state repays the bonds from the General Fund over up to 35 years. The CalVet funds are different: veterans' loan payments pay those bonds back, and the General Fund covers any shortfall.

Fund allocations

Half of the $10B housing bond funds go toward the Multifamily Housing Program, totaling $5.1B to build and renovate affordable rentals. The other half will be divided across supportive housing ($1.15B), the CalHome Program ($600M) and Home Purchase Assistance Fund ($500M) to help people buy homes, infrastructure ($500M), and $1B for farmworker, student, and tribal housing, among others.

The Legislature can change these splits later without going back to voters.

Veterans' bonds

The remaining $1.25B for veterans funds the existing CalVet program to help veterans buy farms and homes.

Accountability

The state must publish a yearly report on how it spent the bond money.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop 2 doubles the cap on California's rainy day fund, the Budget Stabilization Account, from 10% to 20% of General Fund tax revenue.

Yearly deposits

The fund is fed by a base deposit of 1.5% of General Fund revenue plus a share of capital gains taxes, the most volatile money the state collects. Good years produce a surge the state can bank, and bad years produce almost nothing. Today, any capital gains revenue worth more than 8% of tax revenue goes to the fund. Starting in 2027-28, Prop 2 keeps that rule but counts the portion above 10% at one and a half times its value, so the bigger the windfall, the harder the state saves. Once the fund hits the 20% cap, money that would have gone in can only be spent on infrastructure.

The Gann limit

Starting in 2027-28, reserve deposits stop counting against the state's constitutional spending limit (the Gann limit) until the year the money is pulled back out and spent.

Taking money out

Taking money out still requires the Governor to declare a budget emergency, and the Legislature can withdraw no more than half of the fund's balance in one year, unless money was already withdrawn the year before.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop 3 makes California's extra income tax rates on high earners permanent by deleting their 2030 expiration date from the state constitution.

Above the regular 9.3% rate, the state adds three higher brackets: 10.3%, 11.3%, and 12.3%. Voters set those rates with Prop 30 in 2012 and extended them with Prop 55 in 2016; they expire after the 2030 tax year. Prop 3 deletes that expiration date, so the rates keep applying until another vote of the people ends them. Prop 3 does not change the rates or the incomes they apply to, and it does not create a new tax.

Where the money goes

The money goes into the Education Protection Account that Prop 30 created, which is split 89% to K-12 schools and 11% to community colleges. If the account holds more than the school formula requires, half of the leftover, up to $2B in a year, goes to children's and family health care under Medi-Cal. Prop 3 does not change how any of that money is divided.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop 4 lifts California's ban on candidates taking public money to run for office.

Prop 4 does not create a public financing program and does not spend any money. It removes the ban and sets rules for any future program. Each city, county, or the state would still have to pass its own law to start one and decide how to pay for it.

Current law

The ban comes from Prop 73, which voters passed in 1988. In 1992 the California Supreme Court ruled it does not apply to charter cities, which set their own rules for city elections. Five charter cities run public financing programs today: Berkeley, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Francisco. That is why San Francisco's program can match small donations for local candidates, up to $255,000 for a supervisor race and $1.2M for mayor, while the state, all counties, and non-charter cities remain covered by the ban. The Legislature tried to lift the ban by statute in 2016, and a court struck that down in 2019 because changing a voter-passed law requires voter approval. That ruling is why Prop 4 is on the ballot.

Rules for public financing programs

A candidate who takes public funds must accept voluntary spending limits and show broad-based support in their district, for example by collecting donations of $10 or less from a set number of voting-age residents. Public funds cannot pay a candidate's legal defense fees or fines or repay a personal loan the candidate made to their own campaign, and the rules cannot discriminate by party or by whether a candidate is an incumbent or a challenger.

Foreign money

Existing law already bars foreign governments, foreign interests, and foreign nationals from giving to California campaigns. Prop 4's one change is the fine, which becomes a range: at least the amount given or spent, and up to three times that amount. The legal text carries two versions of this section because a separate bill, Assembly Bill 953, rewrote the same law effective January 1, 2026.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop 5 changes how California recalls a statewide officer, such as the Governor, Attorney General, or Controller.

Today, the California Constitution puts two questions on a recall ballot at once: whether to remove the officer, and who should replace them. The replacement needs only the most votes, even if that is well under half. The officer facing recall cannot run for their own seat.

Prop 5 drops the replacement race. Voters answer one question: remove the officer, yes or no. If a majority says yes, the seat is vacant and gets filled the same way as any other vacancy in that office. The recalled officer cannot be appointed back in, but can run in a later special election.

If the Governor is recalled

The Lieutenant Governor becomes Governor for the rest of the term. One exception: if the recall lands before the nomination deadline for the next statewide election in the first two years of the term, voters pick the Governor in a special election instead.

Prop 5 does not change how many signatures it takes to qualify a recall, or the deadlines for holding it.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop 37 is a $25B state down payment loan program for middle-class buyers of newly built homes.

If an eligible buyer provides a 3% down payment, the California Housing Finance Agency (CalHFA) will issue the buyer a second mortgage covering up to 17% of the home's purchase price, to bring the total down payment to 20%. Buyers will then obtain a traditional mortgage.

These are revenue bonds, not general obligation bonds, so the state's General Fund does not back them. Bondholders get repaid out of borrowers' loan payments, so investors (institutions and individuals who buy the bonds), not taxpayers, carry the risk if borrowers stop paying.

Who qualifies

A buyer must have lived in California for at least 1 year, earn no more than 200% of the area median income for their family size, and move into the home as their primary residence. The home must be brand new, with the buyer as the first owner, and priced at no more than 125% of the federal conforming loan limit for that county.

Construction defect lawsuits

Currently, builders can be sued for defects in new homes for 10 years after construction, but for just 4 years for rentals. Researchers at UC Berkeley's Terner Center and SPUR say this is a big reason developers build apartments instead of condos: condos were just 3% of California's new multifamily housing from 2011 to 2021, versus 38% in Canada, and insuring a condo project costs three to four times as much as a similar rental. Lawyers often approach homeowner associations about suing as the 10-year deadline nears, and the Terner Center notes that contingency fees of up to a third of a cash settlement discourage settling for repairs alone. Housing groups including the Terner Center, SPUR, and California YIMBY have recommended changing these rules.

Prop 37 changes them for homes built under its program. Builders can opt in: in exchange for taking on labor standards, they get a reformed construction defect process under the Right to Repair Act for those homes. A defect claim must name each homeowner and each alleged defect, the builder can work with homeowners directly and get a signed release once repairs are done, and a lawyer suing on contingency can take at most 30% of what homeowners win unless a judge approves more. A builder who sells a home for more than 25% above the price cap loses these reforms for that home.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop 38 is an $8.4B state bond for research in immunology and immunotherapy. Half of the funds will go to a single nonprofit research institute picked by the state Department of Public Health, and the other half will be distributed as grants for specific projects at California public and nonprofit universities and nonprofit research institutions.

At least $2.1B out of each half, or $4.2B of the $8.4B, must go to cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer's.

Strings attached

Taking this money carries two obligations, no matter how small the grant:

1. A recipient owes the state 10% of all revenue from any patent that comes out of the funded research, until the state recovers the full bond cost plus interest
2. Any drug developed with the money must be sold in California at least 20% below the national average price.

Robert Kaplan, a UCLA health policy professor and former NIH associate director, argues these terms could push drug companies away from taking the money or selling the resulting products in California.

Past programs

Voters approved $3B in 2004 and $5.5B in 2020 for stem cell research through CIRM, the state's stem cell agency, for a total of $8.5B. The first therapy with CIRM funding to win FDA approval came in March 2026, about 21 years in: a gene therapy for an extremely rare, often fatal childhood immune disorder.

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What is it?

Prop 39 requires voters to show valid government-issued ID when voting in person. Vote-by-mail voters instead write the last four digits of their ID number on the ballot envelope. The state must issue a free voter ID card to any eligible voter on request.

The measure defines government-issued identification as "documentation that allows conclusive verification of the voter's identity." It does not say which documents qualify, such as a driver's license, state ID card, or passport.

Citizenship checks

The state and counties must check voter rolls for citizenship against government data and report each year on how much of each county's roll has been verified.

Current law

Today, California asks for a driver's license number, state ID number, or the last four digits of a Social Security number when you register to vote, though you can register without one and the county assigns you a number instead. Voters are not asked to show ID at the polls. The exception: if you registered by mail and your number could not be verified, you may be asked for identification the first time you vote, and a broad list of documents qualifies, including a utility bill or bank statement.

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What is it?

Prop 40 is a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of California residents worth $1B or more, for the 2026 tax year only. It also taxes certain trusts a billionaire has put property into. All persons who were residents of California as of January 1, 2026 are subject to the tax.

The tax phases in at net worths between $1B and $1.1B, and applies to the entire net worth so it is not a progressive tax. A married couple counts as one person.

Every California resident filing a 2026 state tax return must declare that their net assets were $1B or less, or else file the wealth tax forms.

What counts as net worth

Everything the taxpayer and their spouse own worldwide, minus debts, except real estate, retirement accounts, up to $5M of art, or other property outside California, unless moved to dodge the tax.

Where the money goes

Revenue goes into a new fund held outside the General Fund, exempt from the state spending limit. It is split 90% to health care (Medi-Cal and other coverage for low- and moderate-income people) and 10% to K-14 education and food assistance (CalFresh and school meals).

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What is it?

Prop 41 does two things. Before voters decide on a new special tax, the State Auditor must audit the programs the tax would fund. And new state taxes can no longer be exempt from the state spending limit, the cap voters approved in 1979.

Audits

Once backers of a special tax initiative (a tax earmarked for specific purposes) certify they have gathered 25% of the signatures required to qualify, the State Auditor must start an audit of every program the tax would fund. If the initiative qualifies, the audit's summary is printed in the state voter information guide. Special taxes passed on or after January 1, 2026 also get a repeat audit every four years.

Spending limit

Any state tax enacted or taking effect on or after January 1, 2026 cannot be exempt from the spending limit; the state cannot impose, collect, or enforce such a tax.

Conflicting measures

Prop 40, the one-time 5% tax on billionaire net worth on this same ballot, routes its revenue into a fund that does not count toward the spending limit, and Prop 41's conflicting-measures clause deems a same-ballot measure with such a tax to be in conflict. If both pass and Prop 41 gets more Yes votes, all of Prop 40's provisions become null and void. Neither measure names the other; a court would decide whether Prop 40 falls inside the clause.

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What is it?

Prop 42 bans two kinds of new state taxes: taxes on simply owning retirement holdings and other personal savings, and retroactive taxes that reach back to before they took effect.

The ownership ban covers retirement accounts, investments, and essentially everything else a person can own. It blocks taxes on simply owning these things; earning, selling, or withdrawing money can still be taxed, so income and capital gains taxes are unchanged. Taxes already on the books before 2026 are untouched.

The retroactive ban means a new state tax could not reach back and bill you based on conduct, activities, or a status (including where you lived) from before it took effect. Both bans cover any state law or constitutional provision enacted on or after January 1, 2026, including statewide initiatives on the same ballot as Prop 42 itself.

Competing measure

Prop 40, on this same ballot, would impose a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of Californians worth $1B or more. Under Prop 42's conflicting measures clause, a same-ballot initiative that taxes the ownership of these assets, or taxes conduct or status from before its effective date, is deemed in conflict. If Prop 42 gets more yes votes, all provisions of the other measure become null and void.

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What is it?

Prop 43 requires a two-thirds vote to pass a local special tax, no matter who put it on the ballot.

A "special tax" is a tax for a specific purpose, like a parcel tax for schools or a business tax that pays for homeless services. Prop 43 does not touch general taxes, which go into the general fund and still pass with a simple majority.

What changes

From 1978, when voters passed Prop 13, until 2017, every local special tax needed a two-thirds vote. A 2017 California Supreme Court ruling, California Cannabis Coalition v. City of Upland, changed that: courts now let a special tax pass with 50% plus one if voter signatures put it on the ballot. San Francisco used that route in 2018 to pass Prop C, the homelessness gross receipts tax, with 61%.

Starting January 1, 2027, Prop 43 restores the two-thirds rule for citizen initiatives. It covers cities, counties, charter cities, and special districts, including school districts. It also bars voter initiatives from imposing a tax based on a property's value; local governments already cannot, and the regular 1% Prop 13 property tax is unchanged.

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What is it?

Prop 44 penalizes certain nonprofit health clinics that spend less than 90% of their revenue on their mission. The penalty equals the shortfall.

It covers nonprofit clinics that are federally qualified health centers, or FQHCs, plus "FQHC Look-Alikes" that meet the federal rules without getting an FQHC award. Tribal and urban Indian organizations are excluded, and so are hospitals and private practices.

Each covered clinic would send the Attorney General two numbers every year: what it spent on its mission, and its total revenue, both starting from figures the clinic already reports to the IRS. The Attorney General divides one by the other to get a "Mission Spend Ratio," then publishes it.

The 90% penalty

If a clinic's ratio comes in below 90%, the Department of Public Health charges a penalty equal to the whole gap: 90% of the clinic's total revenue, minus what it actually spent on its mission. The measure never states the 90% figure as a spending mandate. It enforces it through this penalty.

Penalty money goes into a state escrow account, and a clinic can ask the Department of Public Health for a waiver of the 90% requirement.

The measure's findings talk about clinic executive pay, but the operative sections do not cap or regulate pay. Executive pay counts against the ratio the same way any other non-program expense does.

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What is it?

Prop 45 adds a new chapter to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the state law that requires agencies to study a project's environmental effects before approving it. The chapter sets deadlines and limits lawsuits for eight categories of projects.

The eight categories, which Prop 45 calls "essential projects", are housing, clean energy, water, public health, public safety, broadband, education facilities, and transportation. Using the chapter is the applicant's choice. An applicant, which can be a company, a public agency, or a utility, may use all of it, part of it, or none of it. Essential projects still go through environmental review, and agencies keep the power to approve or deny them.

The housing category covers any housing, including market-rate. There is no affordability requirement anywhere in the definition.

Deadlines

The longest clock is 365 days for an environmental impact report, then 180 days for a negative declaration, 90 days for an exemption, and 30 days to decide whether an application is complete. The main review clocks run in business days, not calendar days, so the 365-day EIR clock works out to roughly 1.4 calendar years, longer than CEQA's existing one-calendar-year deadline.

Only the applicant can extend a review deadline. If an agency misses a deadline, the applicant can demand a hearing where the agency must vote the project up or down using whatever environmental documents exist, and the applicant can sue to force it.

Lawsuits

Prop 45 also narrows what courts can do: a challenger's claims are limited to "objective existing laws", and a court that finds a violation may block only the part of the project affected by it until it is fixed, but may not order the agency to rescind its approval.

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We recommend voting for Scott Wiener for U.S. House of Representatives, District 11.

A note on this race: This is a federal race, but our questionnaire focused only on issues that directly affect San Francisco. Our expertise is in local, city-scale policy, not national or international affairs. We asked each candidate to answer with a San Francisco lens, as someone who would represent the City's interests in Washington.

Scott Wiener has spent the last decade as one of California's most persistent and effective pro-housing legislators. As a former San Francisco supervisor and now the state senator representing District 11 (San Francisco), he has built a record on the issues that most directly shape San Francisco's quality of life and cost of living: housing production, transit, and government's ability to actually deliver.

In this field, Wiener stands out because he has already passed big, controversial laws in hostile political conditions, and that matters in Washington, where rhetoric is cheap and follow-through is not. Like every candidate, there are things we don't align with Wiener on (his positions on AI regulation and public safety diverge from ours in places), but he's still the best choice for getting results.

Results over rhetoric. My job isn't to maintain ideological purity; it's to improve people's lives.

Scott WienerState Senator, District 11

Why vote for Scott Wiener?

Scott Wiener's top policy goals are:

1. Build more housing to lower the cost of living

Wiener's strongest argument in this race is simple: he has actually passed pro-housing law at scale. SB 35 forced cities that weren't building enough housing to approve qualifying projects automatically. SB 423 extended and tightened that framework. And SB 79, signed in 2025, legalized mid-rise apartment buildings near major transit stops throughout California. Those laws did not solve California's housing crisis on their own, but they changed the terms of the fight, making it harder for cities to dodge their housing obligations and easier to get badly needed homes approved.

But state law can only do so much. The country is short 8 million homes, and Congress controls the federal tools that decide how housing gets paid for and built: tax credits, Section 8 vouchers, and environmental review rules. Wiener wants to expand housing tax credits, fund rental assistance, reward cities that build, and cut through federal red tape. He treats housing as both a building problem and a rules problem. We need someone in Congress who gets how permitting, timelines, and financing keep homes from getting built.

2. Protect transit and urban infrastructure San Francisco depends on

San Francisco's affordability depends on whether people can get around the city and region reliably. In 2023, Muni and BART were staring down a multi-billion-dollar fiscal cliff that threatened service cuts across the region. Wiener built the coalition that kept both systems running by bringing together labor, environmental groups, suburban counties, business associations, and urban riders to secure $1.1 billion in emergency state funding.

That funding bought time, not a permanent fix. With federal COVID relief exhausted and ridership still well below pre-pandemic levels, Bay Area transit is now facing another fiscal cliff in 2026. BART alone is staring at a $376 million deficit, and Muni faces 50% service cuts without new revenue. Wiener's response was SB 63, the Connect Bay Area Act, which authorizes a regional sales tax measure on the November 2026 ballot that would generate roughly $980 million per year to stabilize transit across five Bay Area counties. He has done this work twice now, and he is not done.

In Congress, he wants to fix how the federal government funds transit, fight for money to keep trains running (not just build new things), and protect clean energy transit programs from getting cut. Too many politicians talk about transit as branding. Wiener has spent years doing the hard work of keeping it alive.

3. A record of governing, not just campaigning

The next Congress will be a difficult environment for a junior Democratic House member from San Francisco. Wiener's argument for why he can still get things done is credible: he has passed over 100 bills in the state legislature, often against powerful opposition. He has authored major laws not just on housing but also on mental-health and addiction treatment coverage (SB 855) and net neutrality (SB 822). That willingness to pick fights, including with his own party, and the discipline to come back with a revised version when a coalition falls short, is exactly what federal legislating requires.

Why not Connie Chan?

Connie Chan has built her political career around opposing things: blocking housing, fighting development, and siding with the most obstructionist factions on the Board of Supervisors. She actively tried to weaken San Francisco's housing plan at a time when the city desperately needed to build more. She has no meaningful legislative accomplishments to point to. Sending someone to Congress whose primary skill is saying no is not what San Francisco needs right now.

On other issues

Technology and AI: Wiener authored SB 1047, a first-in-nation AI regulation bill, which was opposed by SF-based tech companies big and small. Governor Newsom vetoed it in 2024. Wiener followed it up with SB 53, a much narrower transparency-focused bill that drew broader industry support. We think the Federal government has a role in setting up AI regulations and guardrails, and think Wiener's approach in California has been somewhat misguided. That said, voters in the tech sector should evaluate his track record on the merits rather than the headline, and importantly, compare him to the alternatives. Chan would sooner ban AI than regulate it.

Healthcare and treatment: SB 855 expanded mental-health and addiction treatment coverage, and his campaign platform continues to emphasize lower drug costs and broader access to care.

Civil rights and immigration: Wiener has made LGBTQ rights and immigrant protections a major part of his public record. San Francisco voters care about that, and they should.

Public safety: Wiener opposed Prop 36, which GrowSF supported and nearly 70% of California voters passed. His approach to the fentanyl crisis emphasizes treatment access and federal interdiction funding over the accountability measures GrowSF favors. That's a real difference, but it doesn't change the overall calculus in this race.

Scott Wiener has shown he can pass hard laws on the issues San Francisco most needs solved. Connie Chan has spent her career blocking; Wiener has spent his delivering. That's why he has our endorsement.

GrowSF's endorsement and analysis for this race are coming soon.