The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 7-4 to pass an ordinance that makes sweeping changes to the city’s municipal codes. The ordinance, sponsored by Board President Rafael Mandelman, originated at the City Attorney’s office, whose staff partnered with a lab at Stanford University to use AI to identify redundancies in the city’s codes.

Concerns Over Reporting Requirements

Supervisors Myrna Melgar, Connie Chan, Jackie Fielder, and Shamann Walton voted against the legislation. Many of the proposed changes reduce or remove requirements that mandate reports about certain aspects of city government. Supervisor Fielder raised concerns about how the ordinance changed the frequency of the city’s audit of its use of surveillance technology from every year to every five years.

“I think the frequency of this report is crucial to honoring civil liberties and the intent of our city’s strong surveillance technology policy,” said Fielder. Supervisor Walton echoed Fielder’s comments. “These reporting requirements are in place for a reason,” said Walton, who added that the ordinance should have been broken down into smaller pieces of legislation.

Melgar agreed with the substance of the changes, she told the Board, but took issue with the process of combining so many of them together. “There are policy implications for streamlining and getting rid of reports — that I think are policy decisions,” said Melgar. “I don’t think that the process was sufficient to encompass the entire breadth of what’s happening here,” Melgar added.

Before the meeting, Melgar said she would look into introducing trailing legislation, which allows supervisors to follow-up with changes to existing legislation, at a later stage, to address concerns that weren’t addressed through amendments to the ordinance before it went up to a vote.

Original reporting: Mission Local — read the source article.