Empty Chairs

San Francisco’s 24 charter commissions are required to post their minutes within 48 hours after they have been approved. How’s that working out? Not so well. In a CitiReport survey, only four charter commissions consistently met the deadline of posting minutes in compliance with the law’s requirements. Moreover, high-profile city charter commissions that took up [...]

POLITICAL CONSULTANT BALLOT MEASURE This measure seems to simply “clean up” some provisions of the law that requires political consultants to register and make disclosures about their clients and their work. And I think that’s why it was approved for the ballot by all 11 supervisors. But it takes a giant step beyond that. It [...]

Some city neighborhoods are more equal than others — a lot more equal. It might help partly explain why some neighborhoods get an abundance of attention from city hall, and others not so much. The city’s diversity, according to the city charter, is to be represented in appointments to city boards and commissions. The city [...]

San Francisco taxpayers are on the hook for millions of dollars in benefits for city commissioners but the mayor’s office doesn’t know if they are showing up for work. In fact, taxpayers are committed to pony up nearly twice as much toward the health care benefits of city commissioners than it does for full-time city [...]