San Francisco election spending, much of it driven by billionaires, has peaked in recent years. But the city’s ethics regulators, who are supposed to regulate that money, are growing thinner.
The San Francisco Ethics Commission, which fields corruption complaints and ensures officials and candidates comply with local campaign finance laws, has seen a steady decline in staff since 2023.
Mayor Daniel Lurie, who promised during his 2024 campaign to support the commission and root out corruption, continues that trend: This year, the commission is losing two employees under Lurie’s proposed budget and expects to drop to 23 positions next year.
According to a June report from Executive Director Patrick Ford, the commission’s workforce will be 25 percent lower by 2027 than its peak of 31 employees in 2023. The city’s overall workforce, many of which will continue to file ethics reports with the commission, has declined by less than 5 percent over the same period, the report said.
“The commission has at least the same workload to do, with significantly fewer staff,” Ford said Mission on site.
The city’s flood of political money isn’t waiting for his agency to catch up.
According to an analysis by, total spending across all candidate and ballot campaigns increased from $20 million in 2020 to $29 million in 2022 and then to $76 million in 2024 Mission on site.
The Ethics Commission called 2024 a “record year” for total spending on the city’s mayoral and supervisory elections, with $26.8 million, not counting ballot measures that typically involve much larger sums.
This year, a notable cadre of ultra-wealthy venture capitalists and CEOs, including Michael Bloomberg, Michael Moritz, William Oberndorf, Chris Larsen and Mayor Daniel Lurie, heir to the Levi Strauss & Co. fortune, pumped a total of $17 million into local races.
The amount of third-party spending by political action committees in San Francisco elections also rose sharply, from $13 million in 2020 to $25 million in 2022 to $43 million in 2024, a study found Mission on site Analysis.
Mayor Lurie has proposed cutting the Ethics Commission’s overall budget this year from $7 million to $6 million. This will force the Commission to eliminate two positions: a payroll clerk and a program administrator, the latter position currently vacant.
An inability to fill that role would mean reduced in-person ethics training and longer wait times for candidates and city employees seeking advice, Ford said in his report. He added that in the last two budget cycles, two out of five workers who help city officials comply with ethics rules have been cut.
Mayor Lurie’s proposed cuts would require an already overburdened staff to take on even more work, Ford said, making it harder to address ongoing campaign misconduct.
The commission has imposed record fines in recent years. In 2024, mayoral candidate Mark Farrell was found to have failed to report payments, misreported expenses, and improperly recorded donations, violating state and local campaign finance laws. It fined him $108,000.
The commission also fined Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, a wealthy public interest group and one of the top donors in local elections, $54,000 for several violations.
The city watchdog is also expected to deliberate on whether Lurie violated city and state law by refusing to provide recordings of his conversation with President Donald Trump in October 2025.
Ford said the cuts would also require rolling back a program that helps officials such as department heads and city commissioners file state-mandated conflict of interest forms.
He said the program resulted in over 99 percent compliance, according to his June report. Starting in 2024, city officials routinely missed required deadlines. Mission on site previously reported.
The mayor’s office argues that the commission’s budget actually increases to $9 million, compared to $6 million last year. That increase comes from $3 million Lurie proposed for the commission’s campaign fund, which is distributed to candidates and received $0 last cycle.
Commission officials, however, said the campaign fund does not finance operations; It simply provides public financing funds to local candidates running for office. It is said that the organizational budget is declining.
“As Mayor Lurie holds the government more accountable to work for San Franciscans and not insiders, we are proud to have increased the Ethics Commission’s budget by 42% this year – especially after the last administration tried to defund the commission,” said Lurie spokesman Charles Lutvak Mission on site.
“Every candidate for office should be held to the same high legal and ethical standards, and we will continue to work with the Board of Supervisors to ensure the Ethics Committee has the resources to enforce them.”
Lurie is expected to sign the budget, which includes the commission’s cuts, by August 1.
“Why should we reduce Commission staff when much more money is being put into local campaigns than less?” Paul Melbostad, He served on the Ethics Commission from 1995 to 2003 and helped establish public campaign financing for city candidates.
“When there are fewer staff, ethics complaints are investigated and presented to the commission long after they are relevant to the particular election, and the public loses trust and thinks the process is worthless,” Melbostad said.
Nevertheless, the Commission has made progress in recent years. Last month it was reported that more than 95 percent of enforcement cases were resolved within a year. That’s a far cry from the average 530 days it took to resolve a case in 2016.
Some city officials are cautious.
“We should all be concerned that the Ethics Commission is losing budget to adequately staff its operations,” said District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder Mission on site. “Your funding is critical to protecting San Francisco voters from politicians who seek to circumvent the rules for their own benefit.”
https://missionlocal.org/2026/07/big-money-in-san-francisco-elections-is-growing-but-city-watchdogs-are-getting-cut/
