There’s a growing consensus among moderates and progressives that San Francisco’s problems are bigger than any one political faction — they’re embedded in the structure of our government itself.
One thing almost all San Franciscans agree on these days: The city is on the wrong track.
Moderates and progressives love to bicker over who’s to blame. But there’s a growing consensus that our problems are bigger than any one political faction — they’re embedded in the structure of our government itself.
For instance, the city literally has more commissions than it can count.
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In a June report hilariously titled “Commission Impossible?”, a San Francisco civil grand jury was able to identify 115 active commissions — which is about twice as many as peer local governments. But since no authoritative central list exists, there could be more. It also found that up to 15% of the city’s 1,200 commission seats were vacant and 20% of meetings were canceled last year.
Commissions are intended to check the authority of the mayor and Board of Supervisors and serve as watchdogs for powerful departments. That clearly isn’t happening as it should.
In true San Francisco fashion, however, even proposed solutions to this problem are dysfunctional.
Instead of our leaders coming together to fix things, they’re forcing voters to do the dirty work of choosing between two complicated, competing commission streamlining ballot measures in November.
One measure, sponsored by Supervisors Aaron Peskin, Hillary Ronen, Dean Preston and Rafael Mandelman, would establish a task force to recommend ways to “modify, eliminate or combine” the........