San Francisco Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie has plans to change issues up a bit within the mayor’s workplace, reverting to a system that voters within the metropolis did away with nearly 30 years in the past.
Daniel Lurie and his transition group introduced plans Wednesday to create 4 new “policy chief” positions that reply on to him within the Mayor’s Workplace, dividing oversight duty of town’s many departments and commissions amongst them.
The 4 new positions, which can operate like deputy mayors, shall be Chief of Housing and Financial Growth; Chief of Infrastructure, Local weather and Mobility; Chief of Public Well being andWellbeing; and Chief of Public Security. The brand new chiefs shall be assigned departments, with Chief of Public Security overseeing the police, fireplace, and sheriff’s departments, and the housing chief overseeing the Division of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, together with the Division of Financial and Workforce Growth, as an example.
“The current way of doing business at City Hall is outdated, ineffective, and lacks focus on outcomes,” says Lurie in a press release. “I am restructuring the office of the mayor so that your government is coordinated and accountable in delivering clean and safe streets, tackling the fentanyl crisis, rapidly building housing and ensuring a full economic recovery.”
He provides, “The changes we’re making at the top will help break down barriers to effective governance that impact every San Franciscan.”
For the final three a long time, a lot of the duty Lurie shall be dividing amongst 4 individuals fell on only one particular person, the mayor’s chief of employees. On this new construction, the facility of that position seems shall be considerably diminished, although the chief of employees will oversee the director of communications and the director of public affairs.
Chart by way of Daniel Lurie transition group
Lurie’s announcement additionally notes that no present org chart exists for the Mayor’s Workplace with which to check his new org chart.
Advising Lurie on the transition is former Metropolis Controller Ben Rosenfield, who could also be in line for a task within the new administration.
“Reorganizing the mayor’s office to have a flatter structure ensures greater accountability through a more manageable operation that will enable the city to better coordinate,” Rosenfield mentioned in a press release. “Our status as a City and a County makes San Francisco uniquely situated to solve our drug and mental health crisis — as city leaders have direct authority over policy and spending for both public safety and public health. The current structure gets in the way of departments working together. I’m confident these common sense changes will make a big difference for San Franciscans.”
San Francisco used to make use of deputy mayors, as Mission Native notes following Lurie’s announcement. However voters ended the observe with Proposition H in 1991, largely as a result of the deputy mayors have been seen as ineffective and overpaid.
Transferring again to that system, Lurie might must reply for the knowledge of including again these no-doubt well-paid roles amid a price range disaster.
Rosenfield clearly helps the thought.
“For the last 20 years, we have organized [the city’s] 50-plus departments in a very specific way: They are direct reports to the mayor, and they work day to day through a chief of staff,” Rosenfield tells Mission Native. “How can you have 50 direct reports and do more than manage the very top?”
Lurie’s announcement suggests that he’s taking the advice of SPUR (San Francisco Planning and City Analysis), which had the division of duty within the mayor’s workplace as one in every of its coverage suggestions in an August report.
As Nicole Neditch, SPUR’s Governance and Economic system Coverage Director, beforehand defined, San Francisco at the moment has 34,000 staff, which is greater than many state governments. And there may be loads of room for merging departments and restructuring how town works, to keep away from duplication and waste.
“Although the public believes that the mayor serves as the city’s chief executive, the reality is that dozens of charter amendments have diffused management and decision-making across the city’s sprawling network of boards and commissions,” Neditch says. “The result is a lack of clarity on roles and responsibilities and a blurring of lines of authority and accountability, leading to policies that don’t always translate to effective services.”
SPUR additional helps the streamlining of metropolis commissions, which is one thing that voters accepted with Prop E — the Board of Supervisors’ response to Prop D, which failed, and which might have unilaterally slashed the variety of commissions in half.
In a press release accompanying Lurie’s announcement SPUR’s Preisdent and CEO Alicia John-Baptiste says of the coverage chief proposal, “This new structure will help break down the silos and bridge across the complexity that has held San Francisco back.”
Beforehand: Daniel Lurie Names OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to His Mayoral Transition Group
Photograph: Patrick Perkins
