San Francisco’s City Charter is its governing constitution. It was meant to establish fundamental powers, rights and responsibilities. But the city has repeatedly used it instead to memorialize microscopic details of how the government operates: which advisory bodies must exist, how many members they should have, what reports they must prepare and which departments must consult with which other departments. Once these provisions are placed in the charter, changing them is difficult and generally requires a citywide vote.

Consequently, the City Charter has become an accumulation of commissions, reporting requirements and procedural rules for a San Francisco that no longer exists.

Proposition A attempts to deal with that problem.

It would clean up San Francisco’s bloated charter to better serve city residents. Prop A is a product of the passage of 2024’s Prop E, authored by then-District 3 Supervisor Aaron Peskin. Prop E authorized a task force to study and recommend ways to improve the city’s unwieldy commission system.

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Prop A gives San Francisco voters an opportunity to approve some of those recommendations.

Mayor Daniel Lurie and a supermajority of the Board of Supervisors support the measure and agree on its 110 mostly small fixes.

Prop A would move some commissions and advisory bodies from the City Charter into the municipal code; others would have their membership or reporting requirements changed; several would be renamed, consolidated or eliminated. The Sanitation and Streets Commission, which oversees a department that no longer exists, would be eliminated. Several bodies with overlapping responsibilities — such as the Our Children, Our Families Council and the Our Children, Our Families Initiative —........

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