SAN FRANCISCO >> San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie notched an early victory in his crusade against the city’s twin crises of homelessness and fentanyl addiction, getting sign-off from the powerful Board of Supervisors to bypass bureaucratic hurdles that have slowed expansion of shelter capacity and treatment programs, and more leeway to pursue private funding to help finance those initiatives.

The measure, dubbed the Fentanyl State of Emergency Ordinance, marks Lurie’s first big step in fulfilling a campaign promise to visibly reduce homeless encampments and open air drug use within six months of taking office, in part by adding 1,500 shelter beds and expanding behavioral and mental health services. That pledge helped Lurie, a moderate Democrat and political newcomer, triumph in the November election against incumbent London Breed and three other City Hall veterans whom he accused of allowing homelessness, addiction and the companion ills of retail and property crimes to fester.

During a City Hall news conference Wednesday before signing the legislation, Lurie said the new authority will allow his administration to “act swiftly and effectively.”

“The fentanyl crisis is not a nine-to-five operation,” Lurie said. “It doesn’t take breaks, and neither will we.”

Lurie introduced the ordinance shortly after his January inauguration, and has spent the last month negotiating for its passage with San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, an 11-member body that acts as the city’s legislative branch. The supervisors gave the ordinance their final approval Tuesday in a resounding 10-1 vote.

That overwhelming support marks a dramatic shift in the power dynamic between the mayor and the board, whose leadership for years has been considered staunchly progressive. The board frequently opposed Breed — also a centrist Democrat — in her tough-on-crime efforts to crack down on drug dealers and bolster police powers.

The November election resulted in a turnover on the board, as voters weary of sprawling homeless encampments and brazen drug use looked to shake up local governance. The newly constituted board has five new members and a more moderate bent.

“Progressives are much reduced on the board, and the ones that have been sort of progressive before are more toward the center now,” said Jason McDaniel, a political science professor at San Francisco State University. “I do think that the board and the mayor have a common sort of goal of ... trying to solve some of these problems that the electorate seems to still be quite upset about.”

Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who was named president of the board last month, worked with Lurie on amendments to narrow the ordinance in ways that appeased the board’s more liberal members and secured a majority vote. Mandelman is among the supervisors who have moved toward the political center in recent years after he was elected in 2018 as a progressive representing the Castro district.

The ordinance cuts red tape in the city’s emergency response to homelessness and drug use by temporarily bolstering the mayor’s authority — and reducing the board’s role — in approving city contracts related to homelessness, addiction and mental health. It expedites the procedures for hiring outreach workers and public safety employees tasked with staffing shelters. It also exempts such contracts from the city’s stringent competitive bidding process until 2026.

The board still has the opportunity to weigh in on contracts worth from $10 million to $25 million, but the ordinance requires supervisors to act within 45 days of a contract proposal.

A critical component of the ordinance allows Lurie and certain members of his administration over the next six months to solicit private donations of up to $10 million for these efforts from individuals with business before the city, waiving a prohibition on behested payments from “interested parties,” a broad category that includes contractors, lobbyists and companies.

Distributed by Tribune News Service