FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 23, 2026
Contact: press@cleanupcityhall.org
Newsom backs November measures to modernize contracting, make city government accountable, and fix San Francisco’s broken ballot system
SAN FRANCISCO — Today, the Clean Up City Hall campaign announced the endorsement of Governor Gavin Newsom. A former San Francisco mayor, Newsom is backing Mayor Lurie’s three Clean Up City Hall measures, making historic changes that will ensure city government is more accountable, delivers better results, and end the city’s longstanding era of excuses and finger-pointing.
“San Francisco’s broken system has failed everyday San Franciscans for far too long. Propositions D, E and F cut through the bureaucracy, restore accountability, and stop dishonest ballot box games,” said Governor Gavin Newsom, who served as San Francisco’s 42nd Mayor. “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fix what’s broken, restore trust in government, and Clean Up City Hall.”
Governor Newsom joins a broad and growing coalition backing the three reform measures, including Mayor Daniel Lurie, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, a majority of the Board of Supervisors, labor, and small businesses across the city.
“Governor Newsom knows firsthand what it takes to lead this city and the obstacles our broken system puts in the path of progress,” said Mayor Daniel Lurie. “This is a critical effort to cut through the dysfunction, restore accountability, and end the excuses that have held San Francisco back for decades.”
The Clean Up City Hall package includes three parts:
Prop D - Empowers voters and prevents insiders from gaming the ballot.
San Francisco has the loosest rules of any city in the state for getting initiatives on the ballot. The result: voters weighing in on more measures, many of them confusing and competing, with special interests weaponizing the ballot with dishonest measures. In 2024 alone, San Franciscans faced 15 ballot measures — compared with just one in San Jose.
Prop D provides more transparency to give voters a stronger check on power, and it brings San Francisco closer to the standards set in the rest of the state: raising the supervisor threshold from a minority to a simple majority, eliminating the mayor's unilateral authority, and increasing the signature threshold to a number still below, but closer to, the state standard. It would also let proponents withdraw their own measure after signatures are submitted, encouraging compromise and a way to pull flawed measures from the ballot.
Prop E - Ends corruption and waste in city contracting.
San Francisco’s contracting system is politicized and inefficient. The status quo rewards insiders and special interests, and, at its worst, it breeds corruption. About $6 billion in annual contracts are governed by a maze of rules scattered across more than 100 sections of code. Prop E creates transparent, centralized contracting standards to stop corrupt special interest deals by giving the City Administrator sole authority over changes to the City's purchasing laws, with any rule changes taking effect unless rejected by the Mayor or a majority of the Board of Supervisors. The measure would also raise the dollar threshold for City contracts requiring Board approval to keep pace with the consumer price index — a threshold that hasn't been adjusted for inflation in nearly 40 years and adds weeks of delay to routine contracts. Prop E is expected to cut tens of millions of wasted taxpayer dollars every year.
Prop F - Faster city services and permits
As written, the City's Charter locks in bureaucracy, weakens accountability, and protects the status quo. Prop F allows department reorganization to deliver faster permits and better services. It would also allow the Mayor to hire and remove most department heads he or she oversees, providing clear accountability. With these tools, the Mayor can end the era of departments operating as independent fiefdoms, and ensure agencies are working toward shared goals. This would eliminate the conflicting guidance that residents and small businesses too often receive from multiple departments, while improving accountability, delivering measurable results, and providing consistent communication to all San Franciscans.
At more than 500 pages, San Francisco's City Charter is the longest municipal charter of any major American city. Its tangle of rules drives up costs — producing absurd outcomes like the $1.7 million public toilet in Noe Valley — and makes it far too difficult to hold city officials accountable, even going so far as to interfere with the removal of corrupt officials who betray the public's trust.
To learn more about the effort to make San Francisco’s government more accountable, click HERE.
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