Dennis Herrera is leaving the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission in December, closing a 25-year run in city government — and handing Mayor Daniel Lurie a succession pick that could quietly determine whether San Francisco ever breaks free from PG&E.

Herrera's departure is being greeted with bipartisan praise and nostalgia, and the tributes are earned. But the more consequential question isn't backward-looking: Herrera spent his tenure at the SFPUC as the commission's internal champion for "Expanding Public Power" — the agency's formal initiative to acquire PG&E's local distribution infrastructure and build a city-owned utility. Sacramento already kneecapped that agenda earlier this year when it killed SB 875, the legislation that would have cleared the path for municipalization. With the institutional champion gone and the legislative route closed, whoever Lurie nominates will determine whether the public power push has any future at all.

Herrera announced Tuesday that he would step down from his role as general manager of the SFPUC, the city agency that oversees San Francisco's electrical grid, water infrastructure, and sewer system. He was first elected city attorney in 2001 and served six consecutive terms before Mayor London Breed tapped him to lead the commission in 2021, replacing Harlan Kelly, who had resigned amid a federal bribery investigation. Kelly was convicted in 2023.

The résumé is substantial. Herrera was the first Latino elected as San Francisco's city attorney. He defended then-Mayor Gavin Newsom's decision to issue same-sex marriage licenses in 2004 — a case that eventually wound its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. He filed the first lawsuit against the Trump administration in 2017, challenging threats to defund sanctuary cities. He spent two decades developing a generation of city officials, among them state Sen. Scott Wiener, state Attorney General Rob Bonta, and former Vice President Kamala Harris, all of whom passed through his office.

"In his two capacities and across the six different mayors he worked with, he understood that his job was to deliver for the people, rather than get caught up in political feuds," Wiener told the SF Standard.

Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who spent 14 years in the city attorney's office, described Herrera as a mentor who set a high standard. "Dennis Herrera is the kind of city leader who really demanded excellence from the people who worked on his team and usually got it," Dorsey said, according to the Standard.

Those tributes, however, are already in the rearview. The harder story begins with Lurie's next move.

The SFPUC's "Expanding Public Power" initiative — a formal program documented on the agency's website — represents San Francisco's most serious institutional bet on replacing PG&E with a city-run utility. San Francisco already operates Hetch Hetchy Power, which supplies electricity to city buildings and some residents through a municipal system. The public power push would take that much further, potentially acquiring the transmission and distribution infrastructure PG&E currently controls in the city.

That vision has been Herrera's project. It also has powerful opponents: PG&E, the state legislature, and now, potentially, time. SB 875 — a bill that would have simplified the legal pathway to municipalization — died in a Senate committee in May. With the legislative route blocked for at least another year, the SFPUC's internal momentum matters more than ever.

Lurie has not indicated who he plans to nominate or what posture he expects from the new general manager on the public power question. The mayor's office did not respond to a request for comment. That silence is itself a data point: a mayor actively committed to the public power agenda would have every incentive to make that clear.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, who spent nearly a decade under Herrera before his federal appointment, put the loss in personal terms when speaking to the SF Standard. "No matter the situation, he always cared first about being a lawyer for the city," Chhabria said, pausing to compose himself. "I'm sorry, I'm actually getting kind of emotional right now."

The emotion is understandable. So is the uncertainty. Twenty-five years of continuity is hard to replace. The public power initiative is harder still.