This November, Mayor Daniel Lurie is asking voters to give him more control over city departments and commissions. Titled “Changes to Executive Branch Management,” Proposition F would give the San Francisco mayor direct authority to fully reorganize and transfer functions within most city departments, appoint department heads without input by the Board of Supervisors or commissions, and fire them without cause. The proposition also seeks to restore the deputy mayor position, which was eliminated by voters more than 30 years ago.
Proposition F is part of a trio of reforms by Lurie that seeks to make City Hall more efficient by altering the city charter, the guiding document that can be amended only by voters. As it stands, the charter contains various checks and balances that address executive branch management and commissions. The mayor ran his campaign on a promise of making City Hall more effective, and he says centralizing his authority over departments is required.
Currently, the mayor has purview over departments established by city ordinance, known as local laws. This includes the Mayor’s Office for Victim Rights, the disputed Sunshine Ordinance Task Force and the Office of Cannabis. However, most departments fall under the city charter, preventing the mayor from reorganizing them or directly appointing directors.
If Proposition F passes, the mayor can reorganize or consolidate departments as he sees fit. The Board of Supervisors has 30 days to oppose each action before it goes into effect. The measure would also empower the mayor to create ordinances to accompany reorganization changes. These will be enacted by default unless the board disapproves them within 60 days — an inversion of the usual process requiring a majority vote of the supervisors to pass an ordinance.
Most departments require that the mayor choose a director from a suggested list offered by the Board of Supervisors or a committee. Proposition F would allow the mayor to choose these department heads independently and without input from the board or relevant committees, which is often a lengthy and complicated process.
The current charter also states that department heads cannot be removed unless they are found guilty of misconduct or certain felonies. Under Proposition F, the mayor would have the power to unilaterally terminate them.
But this power goes beyond the mayor. The proposition would also authorize appointing authorities to remove their appointees to most boards and commissions without cause, meaning they can be fired for any reason within legal limits. Boards and commissions that would not be affected by this change are the Board of Appeals, the Civil Service Commission and the Ethics Commission.
Departments not proposed to come under the mayor’s control, in terms of realignment of duties and functions, include the Charter of the City Administrator, the Office of the Controller, the Board of Appeals, the Port of San Francisco, the Airport, the Asian Art Museum and the Fine Art Museums.
The mayor, however, removes his own authority to appoint a nominee for the director of the Department of Police Accountability in Proposition F. The Police Commission would become solely in charge of nominating and appointing the department’s director. The move also removes language from the charter surrounding the Board of Supervisors’ authority to reject the Police Commission’s nominee.
Lurie wants to bring back deputy mayors
Lurie has experimented with new ways of managing the numerous departments he oversees since first coming into office. Previously, each of the city’s 56 departments would have to go through the mayor’s chief of staff to access the mayor. In 2024, Lurie proposed a new system of “policy chiefs” who oversee certain cross-departmental functions, such as public safety, housing and economic development. Currently, there are five policy chiefs reporting to the mayor. The role appears strikingly similar to the deputy mayor position. Measure F revives that designation.
Voters eliminated deputy mayors in 1991, amid claims that they were earning too much money. Voters also capped mayoral staff salaries at 70% of what the mayor makes. Lurie says appointing deputy mayors would increase accountability by making them responsible for specific departments and their needs.
Support
Lurie’s trio of propositions to voters, D, E and F, has a long list of proponents, including U.S. House Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi, Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman, the San Francisco Democratic Party and several unions. They argue that the current system has developed “independent fiefdoms” within city departments, where corruption can linger.
They also argue that checks and balances remain intact under Proposition F, since the board will retain oversight power over departments and can veto the mayor’s decisions with a majority vote.
Opposition
Christin Evans, the Homelessness Oversight Commission Chair, is the sole official opponent. She argues that it goes too far in allowing the mayor more power in hiring and firing, and calls the ability to rearrange and eliminate departments problematic.
“Even if you do like this mayor,” the opposition statement reads, “you may not like or trust the next one after that.”
Who’s paying
This proposition’s campaign is organized under Mayor Daniel Lurie’s “Clean Up City Hall” committee, which is also supporting Proposition D (the measure that would limit the public’s access to placing questions on the local ballot) and Proposition E (which would grant more power to the city administrator over contracts and other matters). The trio of propositions represents a significant reshuffling of City Hall.
The campaign has massively outspent the other measures on the ballot, with $9.5 million raised so far. The campaign is largely funded by wealthy investors and tech money, including Chris Larsen, Michael Moritz, OpenAI and Anthropic. The second-highest accumulation of campaign donations this season is $4.2 million, for the Muni-funding measure, Proposition H.
Votes needed to pass
Proposition E requires a simple majority of “yes” votes to pass.