Mr. 14-months-on-the-job Daniel Lurie thinks it's high time he be given some more sweeping powers currently held by the SF Board of Supervisors and various City Hall commissions.
There have been rumblings at City Hall that Mayor Lurie's next big project will be will be something called "charter reform," a term that is quite nebulous to most normal people., The City Charter is effectively San Francisco's Constitution. And considering San Francisco has the longest and most complicated City Charter in the US, this vague concept of charter reform sounds like something we can all get behind.
Though as Mission Local reports, all of Mayor Lurie’s new, so-called charter reform efforts just hand Lurie more power. And in most cases, the power is handed to Lurie at the expense of SF Board of Supervisors and City Hall commissions, in three ballot measures being introduced by Lurie and Supervisor Rafael Mandelman.
Mandelman and Lurie say that the current charter “locks in bureaucracy, diffuses accountability, and protects the status quo.”
The three charter reform measures Lurie and Mandelman have proposed are 1) giving the mayor powers currently held by independent City Hall commissions, 2) making it harder to put ballot measures on San Francisco election ballots, and 3) making the City Administrator's term ten years instead of five years, and giving the Administrator moe authority over contracts.
Mandelman and Lurie push all of these measures as promoting "accountability," but what happens to this vaunted accountability when Lurie makes mistakes, or steers contracts to his donors and buddies?
Do recall Lurie’s major fuck-up with the Beya Alcaraz District 4 supervisor appointment, The man makes mistakes. He’s still relatively new at government. So giving Mayor Daniel Lurie more power may be a risky move for San Francisco, regardless of Lurie’s opinion of his abilities.
Image: Rafael Mandelman via Facebook
