FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 4, 2026
Contact: press@cleanupcityhall.org
SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco voters have sent a clear message that it's time to Clean Up City Hall. Collectively, Propositions D, E, and F represent the most significant reform of San Francisco’s governing system in thirty years. Mayor Daniel Lurie promised to take on the corrupt system in his insurgent 2024 campaign for mayor, and he has taken a significant step towards fulfilling that promise.
“I ran for mayor because I believed this city could do big things again. San Franciscans have chosen progress over the politics of the past, and accountability over excuses,” said Mayor Daniel Lurie. “I am grateful to every volunteer, advocate, and voter who came together around a shared belief that our government must work better for all San Franciscans.”
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 will 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 will 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 will 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 will 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.
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