Improved public safety means streamlined public safety commissions.

Sign our petition supporting Public Safety Commission Reform

As you may know, the Proposition E Taskforce (the voter-approved body responsible for streamlining San Francisco’s burdensome citizen oversight committees, also known as commissions) is well into their work this summer; they’ve developed a framework by which to assess not just whether a commission is active, but also if it’s necessary. We’re now at the exciting (grab your popcorn!) part of this taskforce’s work: where they recommend which commissions to cut, modify, or maintain.

San Francisco has no shortage of commissions. Some do important work. Others… not so much. For years, this patchwork of boards and committees has muddied accountability in City Hall and made it harder for residents to know who’s really in charge. That’s why the latest staff memo on public safety commissions is worth paying attention to: while not flashy, it’s a set of sensible recommendations from the taskforce that could bring more clarity and consistency to how our city governs itself. Let’s explore a few of their recommendations.

As we’ve previously called out, the Police Chief is accountable both to the elected Mayor and to an unelected commission of citizens—a structure that sounds like oversight but in practice muddies reporting lines. Said more plainly: either the Mayor (elected by San Franciscans) or the Police Commission (unelected citizens) can fire the police chief. Even more simply: if you had two bosses, how would you be able to do your job effectively if your bosses don’t usually agree on how you should do your job? (For reference, this was exactly the dynamic between Mayor Breed and the Police Commission). 

The staff memo’s proposed reforms would resolve this conflicting dynamic by giving the Mayor both direct authority over the Chief. The Commission, in turn, can provide non-binding advice on Police Chief selection and removal to the Mayor and will serve as an appeals body for police disciplinary cases. These recommendations strengthen the role of our city’s chief elected officer (the Mayor) while right-sizing the scope of the police commission. To be clear: when we talk about good, responsive government, this is what it looks like in action.

The staff memo is also proposing eliminating the Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board. This commission has routinely struggled to even meet quorum. To bring this point home: at one meeting in February 2024, then-Inspector General Terry Wiley literally presented to a room of empty chairs because the commission simply couldn’t meet quorum. Also, contrary to popular belief (and confusing messaging from people like District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton), this Board doesn’t oversee the Sheriff at all—rather, it oversees a separate City department, the Office of Sheriff’s Inspector General. Bear in mind that the Sheriff’s Inspector General role has been unfilled in this department since January of this year. Keeping a commission alive simply for the sake of having one isn’t good governance - it’s virtue signaling at the expense of a well-run city.

Taken together, the memo proposes keeping seven public safety commissions, eliminating one, and allowing two to sunset over the next few years. That means the Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board would go away, the Sentencing Commission would end in 2026, and the Reentry Council would close down by 2029, both of whose functions the memo notes can be carried out through other means. The rest—like the Fire Commission, Juvenile Probation Commission, Disaster Council, and several state-mandated oversight bodies—would remain in place.

The temptation in City Hall will always be to slow-walk these kinds of reforms. Bureaucratic inertia, special interests, and the sheer weight of “this is how we’ve always done things” can make even the most reasonable changes hard to implement. But this is precisely why we should take the staff recommendations seriously and move forward on them. They are pragmatic, well-researched, and grounded in the simple goal of making our city’s government more effective. Letting inertia get in the way would mean preserving a status quo that almost everyone agrees isn’t working. 

It won’t make headlines in the way that splashier topics do. But if we want a safer, better-run city, these are the kinds of structural fixes that matter most. That’s why it’s critical that the Commission Streamlining Task Force votes to approve the staff recommendations in next Wednesday’s September 3rd public meeting. Sign the petition below urging the task force to approve these common-sense and necessary reforms for our public safety commissions.