Proposition D on the Nov. 5 ballot is the worst piece of local public policy San Francisco has seen in at least the last four decades and will represent the largest transfer of power from the people to the bureaucracy in the history of The City by eliminating half of San Francisco’s commissions .
No surprise that this is such a flawed measure. It will forever be a model of the worst kind of policymaking: writing a major overhaul of the civic infrastructure in secret and spending millions to place it on the ballot through a process that ensures no one has read its 72 pages.
Everyone in San Francisco wants to find better ways to meet the challenges we are facing — homelessness, fentanyl, car break-ins. Prop. D’s “solution” to our problems is almost laughable — reduce and weaken our forums for public participation and oversight.
Proposition D is premised on the idea that San Francisco has too many commissions for public input — more than any other city in the state — and caps the total number of commissions in half to an arbitrary 65. It ignores the fact that we are the only city that is also a county with a major port, international airport, and its own water and power system.