Measure E: E - City Administrator’s Authority and Changes to City Contracting
San Francisco County · San Francisco County · November 3, 2026
The question on your ballot
Shall the City amend the Charter to give the City Administrator more authority by centralizing the City’s purchasing rules and processes, changing how the City approves purchasing rules, changing when contracts and leases require Board of Supervisors approval, and extending the City Administrator’s term?
In plain language
Measure E would change San Francisco's Charter. It would give the City Administrator more power. A YES vote does four things. It puts the City Administrator in charge of city purchasing rules. It changes how those rules get approved. It changes when the Board of Supervisors must approve contracts and leases. It also extends the City Administrator's term in office. A NO vote keeps the current rules and term length.
Impartial analysis
The Way It Is Now: The City Administrator’s Office is responsible for most of the City’s purchasing. However, authority for the City’s purchasing and technology is shared among the City Administrator’s Office, the Board of Supervisors, the Mayor, and some City departments. • Rules Regulating Purchasing: The Board of Supervisors (Board) may adopt ordinances that set the rules about how the City selects contractors and enters into contracts for goods, services, construction, and grants (referred to below as Purchasing). • Board Approval of Various Agreements: With some exceptions, the City’s Charter requires the Board to approve: • Contracts and leases that bring in $1,000,000 or more in revenue to the City, and • Contracts that cost the City $10,000,000 or more. The Board must also approve certain amendments to these agreements. • City Administrator’s Term: The Mayor appoints the City Administrator to a five-year term, subject to Board approval. • City Administrator’s Authority: The City Administrator sets Purchasing rules and processes governing goods and services except for some goods and services of the Municipal Transportation Agency, Public Utilities Commission, Port Commission, and some arts departments. The City Administrator also oversees technology policies and manages disposal of City personal property for most departments. The Proposal: Proposition E would: • Rules Regulating Purchasing: Give the City Administrator exclusive authority to propose ordinances that change how the City selects contractors and enters into contracts for goods, services, construction, and grants (Purchasing). The Board and Mayor may not amend the ordinances, but they can: • Approve or reject the ordinances within 60 days, or • If no action is taken within 60 days, the ordinances would be approved. Proposition E does not change the current Board authority for Purchasing ordinances that mainly address wages, workplace health and safety, utilization of local business, or labor agreements. • Board Approval of Various Agreements: Increase the dollar amount requiring Board approval to: • Contracts and leases that bring in $4,500,000 or more in revenue to the City, • Contracts that cost the City $25,000,000 or more. Starting in 2032, the City’s Controller would adjust these dollar amounts every five years for inflation. Proposition E would require Board approval for major amendments to these agreements. • City Administrator’s Term: Increase the City Administrator’s term from five to ten years. • City Administrator’s Authority: The City Administrator would set Purchasing rules and processes for all goods, services, construction, and grants that all City departments must follow, except as limited by other laws. Most departments would now be subject to the City Administrator’s authority regarding technology policies and the disposal of City personal property. These rules would override those departments’ conflicting rules and policies. A “YES” Vote Means: If you vote “yes,” you want to give the City Administrator more authority by centralizing the City’s Purchasing rules and processes, changing how the City approves Purchasing rules, changing when contracts and leases require Board approval, and extending the City Administrator’s term. A “NO” Vote Means: If you vote “no,” you do not want to make these changes.
Official ballot arguments
Filed for the official voter guide by each side, printed as submitted.
Argument in favor
Over decades, San Francisco’s governing system - or city charter - has increasingly grown to reward city insiders. Mayor Lurie is leading a citywide coalition to make the system more accountable to everyday San Franciscans. Clean Up City Hall is a package of Props A, D, E and F to improve neighborhood services, speed up permitting and reduce wasteful spending so we can invest in our great city. PROP E SLASHES WASTE IN CITY CONTRACTING. It can cost more than $25,000 to run a single contracting process. Basic purchases take years to deliver. Costs balloon out of control. That’s because every year San Francisco hands out more than $5 billion in contracts with no limited oversight or accountability. The system creates waste at every level and is easily exploited. STOPS CORRUPT DEALMAKING. Investigators have caught six department heads running contracting schemes in the last five years. Multiple department heads have gone to prison. E empowers a professional City Administrator to set transparent standards so contracts are awarded based on who is best for the job, not who is best connected. MORE ACCOUNTABILITY FOR BETTER RESULTS. “San Francisco pays thousands of businesses and nonprofits but doesn’t have a contracting system built for results. E ensures public dollars are invested in better and faster city services instead of lost to waste and delay.” - Ben Rosenfield, former San Francisco Controller STRONGER CHECKS AND BALANCES. The mayor or a board majority can reject proposed contracting changes within 60 days, ensuring accountability runs through the entire system. San Francisco works best when we work in coalitions together. Please join the citywide coalition to make the system accountable to all! Mayor Daniel Lurie Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi Nancy Tung, San Francisco Democratic Party Former SF Ethics Chair Ben Hur Former Deputy City Attorney Jim Lazarus SFSU Associate Professor of Political Science Jason McDaniel Former City Controller Ben Rosenfield Former Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White Firefighters Local 798 SF Building Trades Dan Calamuci, Carpenters Local 22* Anthony Travis Jr., Laborers Local 261* Charles Lavery, Operating Engineers Local 3* Teamsters Local 665 Council of District Merchant Associations Chinatown History and Culture Association *For identification purposes only; author is signing as an individual and not on behalf of an organization.
Mayor Lurie scours the city with paid signature gatherers. He has not recruited pragmatist candidates to challenge ideologues and obstructionists on the Board of Supervisors, or built a working majority to pass his agenda legislatively. He treats checks and balances as the enemy, and seeks to concentrate power in his own hands through Propositions D, E and F. Similar patterns appear in his aggressive advocacy for Proposition H, the massive parcel tax to prop up MUNI. Rather than force real reform of a stultified, bloated agency, he asks voters to lock in $2.4 billion in new taxes to continue its bleeding pre-pandemic, pre-technology model of mostly empty steel cages. Proposition H subsidizes low-ridership service, weak fare enforcement and bureaucratic inertia. Look around! Autonomous vehicles promise radical cost declines and flexible mobility. While tired climate rhetoric demands everyone abandon their cars, automobiles have become cleaner, electric, driverless, shareable, robotic and able-assisting. The future is arriving. Mayor Lurie remains allergic to it. The mayor refuses to clean his own party’s house amidst rising extremism. He seeks permanent new executive power and sweeping new taxes harking back to glory days of big infrastructure. These are authoritarian, socialist impulses he should be fighting. Don’t be a piker. Vote No on D, E, F... and H! Larry S. Marso, Esq. Mr. Marso, a Nob Hill resident, was ballot opponent of the 2024 $400 million MUNI bond—rejected by voters in a tremendous victory for taxpayers!
Argument against
The current Board of Supervisors refuses to enact Mayor Daniel Lurie’s core priorities—to cut the deficit, trim bureaucracy, centralize contracting and hold department heads accountable. However Lurie, instead of challenging head-on the far-left socialists and obstructionist ideologues of his own party to get pragmatist Supervisors elected, treats the system of checks and balances itself as the enemy. He raised millions for paid signature gatherers to rewrite the City Charter and concentrate power in his hands. This is the authoritarian temptation. Fearing radicals inside their own coalition, leaders turn against institutional constraints that limit their personal power. SPUR stated the impulse with chilling clarity: a mayor should “resolve issues through leadership rather than at the ballot”—translation: by mayoral decree. Democratic procedure just gets in the way. That same impulse drives presidents who prefer executive orders to the harder work of defeating “in name only” members of their own party who block their agenda. One measure expands City Administrator authority, raising the dollar threshold for Supervisor approval of major contracts. Another revives deputy mayors—a patronage system exposed by Quentin Kopp and abolished by voters in 1991—while amplifying the mayor’s power to hire, fire and reorganize. The third quadruples the signature requirement for citizen initiatives, after Lurie himself used the low bar he now seeks to close, locking the door behind him. Most of what Lurie claims these changes would deliver could be achieved through legislation and regular order if he led his own party toward fiscal discipline, drove the most ideological members off the Board and fought the increasing far-left extremism infecting Democrat leadership. Instead, he flirts with the same breed of authoritarianism. Don’t be a piker. Vote No on D, E, and F. Larry S. Marso, Esq.
PROP E IS IS ABOUT ENDING WASTE AND CORRUPTION IN CITY CONTRACTING Under our current system, San Francisco became an international punch line when it was announced that one public toilet in Noe Valley would cost $1.7 million dollars to build. Under our current system, multiple city employees, including 6 department heads, were investigated for running contracting schemes that landed some of them in prison. Under our current system, it costs more than $25,000 to run a single contracting process, and simple purchases drag on for years. But the city continues to hand out $6 billion in contracts a year without the oversight and accountability that common sense demands. How the city buys staplers, builds public restrooms, or purchases software can’t be a political football. Prop E empowers a professional City Administrator to set clear, transparent rules for who gets city contracts. It’s a necessary step to end waste, fraud, and ballooning costs that frankly should have been done decades ago. City Hall insiders want to keep our current system because it works for them. But San Francisco voters have made it clear that it’s time for a change. Join us in bringing sanity back to purchasing and contracting. Mayor Daniel Lurie Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman Former Controller Ben Rosenfield — Mayor Daniel Lurie; Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman; Former Controller Ben Rosenfield
What supporters and opponents say — outside sources (not official ballot arguments)
Statements by campaigns, officials and news coverage, quoted with attribution and linked to the original. VoterDecoder did not write them and does not endorse either side.
Supporters say
No public statements in favor were found.
Opponents say
No public statements against were found.