Former Supervisor and Assemblymember Tom Ammiano has been talking for years about the need for City Charter reform. The San Francisco charter, which is the city’s Constitution, hasn’t been reviewed as an entire document since the 1990s. Everyone agrees it’s a bit unwieldy, changed more than 100 times in the past decade with piecemeal amendments.

Many of those were good policy ideas that belong in the charter. But there’s also a lot of old language, and by many accounts, the charter gives the mayor way too much power.

For example, former Mayor London Breed was able to ignore a mandate from the voters and the Board of Supes and refuse to spend money that the board allocated for affordable housing. “I would say we need to address the power of the mayor,” Ammiano (who said this even when he

See Full Page