Proposition A
Charter Changes Affecting Various City Departments and Commissions
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 It consolidates duplicative commissions, shuts down outdated and unused commissions, and makes the rest easier for the Board of Supervisors to modify.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.
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