What's on the Ballot in San Francisco

SPEAKER_2 (0:03)

Support for KQED Podcasts comes from San Francisco Opera. Manon is young, beautiful, and has a taste for the finer things. But when she suddenly falls in love, she must decide between what she values most, true love or a Parisian life of luxury. Massanets Manon on stage October 15th through November 1st. Support for KQED Podcasts comes from San Francisco Opera. Manon is young, beautiful, and has a taste for the finer things. But when she suddenly falls in love, she must decide between what she values most, true love or a Parisian life of luxury. Massanets Manon on stage October 15th through November 1st.

Alexis Madrigal (0:43)

Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Here we are with Mayor Daniel Lurie. Delighted he could make it in and talk with us about the San Francisco ballot measures he's backing. Welcome Mayor.

Daniel Lurie (0:54)

Alexis, it's good to see you. I know we are on the radio, but if the viewer, if your listeners could see you, he is decked out in violet. He looks amazing.

Alexis Madrigal (1:06)

Thank you. Go Valkyries tonight. Thank you Mayor. We, go Valks. We only have the top of the show with him. So if you've got a question for the Mayor, email us forum at kqed.org.

We, you know, you are the face of Clean Up City Hall campaign measures D, E and F. Why this packet of measures? Like let's assume they pass. What can our city government do that it can't do right now?

Daniel Lurie (1:29)

Well, Alexis, let me tell you what I told you off air. When I ran for Mayor, I told the voters that the system that was supposed to work for them was the problem. It's broken. It is run by insiders. It's gamed by special interests.

And frankly, it is corrupt. It's bloated and it needs reforming. And that's what D, E and F are going to do. It's a generational opportunity for us to clean up City Hall, deliver better results, save taxpayer dollars each and every year, and deliver faster services for the people of San Francisco. And I was committed to it three years ago when I started running. And I promised that I would work on it. And this is the result.

Alexis Madrigal (2:13)

You know, if you read, say, the San Francisco DSA on these measures, I mean, they point out it's like the biggest money in the city is backing the measures. I mean, the committee called Daniel Lurie is yes on D, and F committee has three individual donors who have given over a million dollars to the campaign. So I think when people hear you say, this is about making sure that people who aren't insiders have access to the system, they might say to themselves, but like who is plausibly more an insider than three people who could give a million dollars and the mayor?

Daniel Lurie (2:42)

Yeah, no, I listen, I understand what I would urge people to understand is we're the only city in the state that allows a minority of the Board of Supervisors to put something on the ballot. We're the only city in the state that allows a mayor to unilaterally put something on the ballot and we ask for 80 percent less signatures to get something on the ballot than any other city in the state in terms of the threshold. The threshold across the state of California is to get 10 percent signatures. We're asking to go up to 8 percent. We had 15 local ballot measures in 2024 San Jose had one.

Oakland had three. If this passes, we will still be less than our friends in Oakland. We will still be less than our friends down in Los Angeles.

Frankly, we've seen it. We've seen mayors and supervisors put divisive misleading ballot measures on competing, and it confuses the voters. I want a mayor and supervisors in the future. And I think we've done a good job in these first two years, or 20 months that I've been in office, of working together. But we haven't always seen this, and we've seen battles at the ballot box that should be done legislatively and worked out between our elected officials. Yeah.

Alexis Madrigal (4:02)

I mean, the counterargument people have made is that it won't necessarily cut down on the number of props, but it will make sure that the props that are on the ballot are interests that have more money.

Daniel Lurie (4:14)

Well, I think they'll be better written measures on the ballot.

I will remind everybody, it is very much free to get six supervisors to put something on the ballot. Let me tell you, Prop C, an affordable housing measure that I am all in on, worked with Supervisor Myrna Melgar, all 11 supervisors are supporting this. Affordable housing advocates, tenants groups, it will be the largest increase in affordable housing spending in our city. It was done thoughtfully, it was done in collaboration with each other, and we are so excited to see Prop C pass.