Yes on Proposition E
City Administrator's Authority and Changes to City Contracting
What is it?
Prop E changes city contracting rules and the City Administrator's role in them. It would centralize procurement authority in the City Administrator, who is appointed by the Mayor and confirmed by the Board of Supervisors.
Procurement rules control how the city buys goods and services, contracts for public works, and makes grants, but not union contracts, development agreements, or real estate.
Several of the changes are consolidations of existing law, but a few would shift how contracting decisions get made:
- The City Administrator would become the only official who can introduce most purchasing legislation. Either the Board of Supervisors (by majority vote) or the Mayor (by written notice) could reject a proposed ordinance within 60 days; otherwise it becomes law automatically. The Board could not amend it, and could not override the Mayor's rejection
- The Board of Supervisors will be less involved: Only revenue contracts and leases of $4.5M or more (up from $1M) and spending contracts of $25M or more (up from $10M) would need Board approval. (This will adjust for inflation starting in 2032)
- Purchasing at the MTA, PUC, Airport, Port, and the City's charitable trust departments would become subject to standards set by the City Administrator
- The City Administrator's term would go from five to ten years
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Why vote Yes?
San Francisco's tangled purchasing rules gave us the $1.7M toilet: a cheaper prefab model existed, but a City rule banned buying it from Nevada. That rule, which barred contracting with companies from 30 states, forced City departments to file 538 waivers in a single year, and it took seven years before the Board admitted failure and repealed it. Meanwhile, buying anything through City Hall still takes about $25,000 of process, six to twelve months, and up to 14 departments, under rules scattered across more than 100 sections of code. Nobody is in charge of the rules, so nobody can fix them.
Prop E puts one person in charge: The City Administrator will write one purchasing rulebook, every department will follow it, and either the Board of Supervisors or the Mayor can reject bad rules.
A 2024 law that simplified purchasing for small projects shows that better rules lead to better outcomes. Rec and Park renewed Bernal Heights Playground for $1.3M in 12 to 18 months instead of several years; comparable rebuilds under the old rules, like Stern Grove's, cost $4.1M and took years.
Vote yes on Prop E.