San Francisco supervisors return to committee this week with a full menu of consequential legislation, but one fight may center on a ballot measure that isn’t even officially on the ballot yet. Plus one member looks into making Muni more family-friendly, another wants to ask Mayor Daniel Lurie a question that may raise even more questions for both of them, and others will mull a belly-busting bill ironically designed to streamline current laws.
Monday’s Rules Committee agenda features a possible initiative ordinance that has garnered associated controversy before it even cleared the gate. District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood’s Affordable Grocery fund ballot measure is meant to be a companion to his Abandoned Pharmacy and Grocery Tax Ordinance, which has been under fire from multiple quarters at City Hall.
While the Abandoned Grocery Tax would impose a new levy on large companies that leave former grocery stores or pharmacies vacant, the Affordable Grocery Fund would assist local bodegas in stocking more nutritious food and also assist those who wish to open neighborhood grocery stores in underserved corridors that have become “food deserts” due to the lack of mainstream grocery stores.
It has been described as a mundane housekeeping measure but has nevertheless raised concerns among colleagues and the clerk’s office due to its sheer volume, at over 360 pages.
The Abandoned Grocery Tax has taken flak from both Mayor Lurie, who sees any new tax as a deterrent to opening new storefronts, and, perhaps surprisingly, Budget Chair Connie Chan, who says the measure needs more work. As a result, Chan yanked the measure from this week’s Budget Committee agenda. Business groups like the Chamber of Commerce and AdvanceSF are also wary of the measure, and Mahmood told the San Francisco Chronicle that Amazon, which has been sitting on a vacant Whole Foods site at Trinity Place on Market Street since 2023, has been aggressively lobbying against it.
Meanwhile, the Affordable Grocery Fund has attracted little attention, but can it work without the other measure? We may see some discussion about that on Monday morning.
Also on the Rules Committee agenda is the rescheduled consideration of the appointment of banker Vanessa Hartigan to the Port Commission, as she was not present at last week’s meeting.
Later in the day, at the Land Use and Transportation Committee, District 3 Supervisor Danny Sauter will preside over a hearing on policies to make Muni more family-friendly. Sauter requested the hearing back in May, along with his STROLLER Act, which boasts a number of initiatives, ranging from liberalized family leave to expanding the number of diaper-changing stations and support for nursing mothers.
In addition to asking the Municipal Transportation Agency about issues such as station escalators and stroller-friendly access, Sauter will likely raise the idea of family fares at the hearing.
Mayor Lurie will make his regular policy discussion appearance at Tuesday’s full Board of Supervisors meeting, and he’s expected to field a question from returning Supervisor Jackie Fielder on “strategies and metrics of success at the Mission Street BART plazas.” The plazas at 16th and 24th streets have long struggled with rampant open-air drug markets, public drug use, brazen sales of stolen goods, and violent crime. Lurie has increased foot patrols and other initiatives around the locations since February.
Among other items of interest at the meeting are final votes to place the Housing Trust Fund expansion charter amendment on the November ballot, as well as pass the latter measure’s companion legislation to reform and lower inclusionary housing fees, a resolution urging expansion of the city’s traffic safety cameras, and an omnibus bill meant to clean up obsolete and superfluous language in more than a dozen city codes.
This last bill is sponsored by Board President Rafael Mandelman and District 6 member Matt Dorsey at the request of the City Attorney David Chiu. It has been described as a mundane housekeeping measure but has nevertheless raised concerns among colleagues and the clerk’s office due to its sheer volume, at over 360 pages. Mission Local quoted District 7 member Myrna Melgar as having had to “run it through Claude” in order to get a grasp on it, and further reports that the ordinance itself is a product of AI research and collaboration between the city attorney and a Stanford University project.
Finally, on Thursday, the Government Audit and Oversight Committee looks at Sauter’s parental leave expansion legislation, and a bill from Mandelman that would streamline several of the city’s ethics rules by shifting some reporting responsibilities while eliminating others. Campaign consultants would no longer have to register with the Ethics Commission but would be required to provide clients with the information needed to fully disclose campaign spending.
The measure would also end the requirement that city commissioners report recusals stemming from financial conflicts of interest and eliminate developer registration requirements, instead requiring developers of certain large projects to disclose donations to lobbying nonprofits so those organizations can accurately report the contributions.
