Mayor Daniel Lurie's tech-funded ballot committee spent the weekend arguing that disturbing allegations against a San Francisco oversight official prove why voters should hand the mayor the power to remove commissioners without cause. Opponents call that exactly the problem.

Proposition F, one of a slate of November charter measures backed by Lurie's multimillion-dollar "Clean Up City Hall" committee, would let the mayor and supervisors fire most of their own commission appointees at will and seize control over who leads most city departments. The campaign is now selling that power on the back of William Palmer — the Sheriff's Department Oversight Board president accused by multiple women of violence and coercion — casting the city's high bar for removing him as proof the system is broken. Critics from the left and the small-business right say the remedy invites politically motivated purges of the very whistleblowers oversight bodies exist to protect.

Mayor Daniel Lurie's Clean Up City Hall committee seized on a grim news cycle on Friday, arguing that fresh allegations against Sheriff's Department Oversight Board President William Palmer are one more reason to pass Proposition F. The measure, according to KQED (external source, opens in a new tab), would broaden the authority of the mayor and supervisors to strip most commissioners of their seats without cause, and to decide who runs most city departments.

The scandal the committee is invoking is real and ugly. A San Francisco Chronicle investigation (external source, opens in a new tab) reported that Palmer approached a woman in distress, supplied her with drugs and pressured her into sex. Appointed by the Board of Supervisors in 2021 to a panel that monitors jail conditions, Palmer has drawn accusations of violence from four women (external source, opens in a new tab) over his tenure — including a rape allegation — and a fifth woman secured a restraining order. He denies wrongdoing, was not arrested, and faces no charges. Supervisor Stephen Sherrill has pushed the city's inspector general to open a probe (external source, opens in a new tab) and says he wants removal proceedings underway within weeks.

Dolezal put it more bluntly, dismissing the charter slate as "blatant power grabs" and accusing the committee of exploiting the scandal in bad faith.

Unseating Palmer is deliberately hard. The charter demands a finding of official misconduct, followed by a three-fourths supervisor vote to remove. To opponents of Prop F, that friction is a feature, not a defect — the cost of keeping government honest. Justin Dolezal, who runs the advocacy group Small Business Forward and is campaigning against the measure, argues the difficulty is the point.

Lurie's side sees the same bar as proof of rot. In the committee's statement, the mayor branded the current arrangement "broken and corrupt" and built "by insiders to protect insiders," and said residents deserve clear responsibility and genuine accountability. Campaign spokesperson Max Szabo argued that the existing rules mostly manufacture excuses, and that Prop F would produce a more accountable government.

The opposition's fight is less about one commissioner than about what a mayor could do to the rest of them. In the official ballot argument against the measure (external source, opens in a new tab), the Democratic Socialists of America SF, Supervisor Jackie Fielder and former Supervisor Dean Preston contend that corrupt officials can already be removed, and warn that the measure would let a mayor fire employees who have committed no wrongdoing — opening the door to politically driven purges of whistleblowers. Dolezal put it more bluntly, dismissing the charter slate as "blatant power grabs" and accusing the committee of exploiting the scandal in bad faith. Commissions, he said, should check the mayor rather than rubber-stamp him.

Backers say the alarm is misplaced. Jason McDaniel, a San Francisco State political scientist who supports Prop F, emphasized that the authority reaches only an official's own picks — the "appointing authority," in the charter's language — not the government at large. That cuts both ways: under an at-will standard, the supervisors who seated Palmer could remove him tomorrow, no Prop F required.

Less prominent in the pitch is the money behind it. The Clean Up City Hall committee had banked roughly $8.6 million by mid-July (external source, opens in a new tab) — $9.4 million by KQED's more recent tally — from a bench of tech financiers that includes Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen and former Sequoia chief Michael Moritz. Moritz also chairs The San Francisco Standard, one of the outlets covering the campaign. Board President Rafael Mandelman and Nancy Pelosi are among the endorsers. Whether voters read Prop F as accountability or as a well-financed consolidation of mayoral power is the November question — and the Palmer case is the frame both sides are now fighting to own.