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Law and Government
San Francisco is both a city and a county, and is the only one
of California's 58 counties to possess that distinction. It is governed
by a mayor, who runs the executive branch of the city, and a Board
of Supervisors, which comprises the legislative branch. The eleven
members of the Board are elected to represent eleven districts in
the city; current elected members are listed in the table on the
right.
While most cities in California are General Law Cities, San Francisco
is one of a few Charter Cities, theoretically giving the city's
voters additional control over governmental structures and allowing
the city to exercise considerable control over some lands not located
in the city such as those associated with San Francisco International
Airport and the Hetch Hetchy water and power system.
A recent electoral innovation that was to be implemented for the
November 2003 elections, but was not prepared in time, is the use
of ranked preference voting, also known as instant runoff voting.
In the Board of Supervisors race in November 2004, Instant Runoff
Voting worked well, with many winners known on election night and
all winners within a couple of days. Due to its implementation,
there was no December runoff election. (Although the city offices
are, by state law, non-partisan, there are still considerable political
differences among candidates that may generally be identified as
being aligned with various parties.)
One good place to read about San Francisco politics is at The Usual
Suspects, at (http://www.SFUsualSuspects.com).
The current mayor is Gavin Newsom. The current President of the
Board of Supervisors is Aaron Peskin.
The headquarters of the United States Court of Appeals for the
Ninth Circuit, the Supreme Court of California, and the First Appelate
District of the California Courts of Appeal are in San Francisco.
|
Supervisors |
1
|
Jake
McGoldrick
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2
|
Michela
Alioto-Pier
|
3
|
Aaron
Peskin
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4
|
Fiona Ma
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5
|
Ross
Mirkarimi
|
6
|
Chris
Daly
|
7
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Sean
Elsbernd
|
8
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Bevan
Dufty
|
9
|
Tom
Ammiano
|
10
|
Sophie
Maxwell
|
11
|
Gerardo
Sandoval
|
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