On Tuesday, District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder, whose district includes the Mission and Bernal Heights, asked for permission to step away from the city’s Board of Supervisors until June 30.
For the last few weeks, Fielder has asked for privacy to deal with an as-yet-unidentified mental health problem, leading to whispered speculation by fellow San Francisco politicos and in the press.
The crisis appears to have begun with a series of mid-March absences from Fielder’s usual meetings. She missed board meetings on March 17 and March 24, and was absent from a March 19 meeting of the board’s Government Accountability and Oversight committee, which she chairs.
Fielder’s staff has made assurances to constituents that business will continue as usual while Fielder takes her break. What follows is a timeline of this unusual turn of events, with some added context from former Supervisor and board president, Aaron Peskin.
Friday, March 27: Fielder checked into a hospital without prior notice. Her staff released a statement to the media identifying an “acute personal health crisis” with no further details.
“We appreciate the support people have given us and are proud of her for taking care of herself,” the statement concluded.
Fielder told Mission Local on a phone call that she was planning to resign after 14 months into the job. She also told reporters from Mission Local and the San Francisco Standard that she would speak to them further in-person at the hospital, but they were stopped from visiting by hospital staff.
Sunday, March 29: With no formal resignation papers submitted to the city, community leaders in District 9 rallied in support of the supervisor, praising her tenure to the press.
“For us in the Mission, we’re supporting Jackie. We’re waiting for her recovery, and she has not resigned,” Tracy Gallardo Brown, an executive committee member of the Latino Task Force, told Mission Local.
“There’s just no denying how hard-working she is,” added Yensing Sihapanya, executive director of the nonprofit Family Connections Centers.
Other community members described their concerns about Mayor Daniel Lurie appointing a more moderate supervisor to District 9 if Fielder does resign. However, on Sunday evening, Fielder’s staff released a lengthy statement on Instagram confirming that Fielder would not resign, but rather be taking a leave of absence.
Speaking to Gazetteer, Peskin noted that there is plenty of precedent for supervisors taking an extended leave, including former District 2 Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier, who took more than three months off after an accident. There is no difference between a physical condition and a mental one when it comes to a supervisor needing time off, he noted.
“Bottom line: this government is big and complex enough that it will still function when 1/11th of the board is on a leave of absence,” Peskin said.
Friday, April 3: The San Francisco Chronicle ran a story suggesting that Fielder’s absence could be influenced in part by the City Attorney’s investigation into a potential leak by her office. The alleged leak was of a memo regarding the “very high” legal risks of the city’s upcoming RESET “sobering center.”
Fielder’s staff denied the allegation.
“The District 9 office did not provide the city attorney’s memo related to the RESET Center to the press, and we have also informed the mayor’s office of this,” legislative aide Sasha Gaona said in a statement to the press. “As has been reported, the City Attorney’s Office is currently conducting an investigation and we are unable to provide further comment at this time.”
Peskin stressed to Gazetteer that there are only four ways for a supervisor to be removed from the board: Resignation, death, recall, or official misconduct subject to a trial by the board. A trial would need a conviction by a super-majority (three-quarters) of members; the burden of proof is “extremely high” for an incident to be deemed official misconduct.
“If the leaking of a city attorney memo rose to the level of official misconduct… I mean, that’s only been used a couple of times in a hundred years to [remove an elected official]. Mostly for felony crimes, like a member of the Board of Supervisors who took cash bribes,” he said, referring to former District 4 Supervisor Ed Jew, who was sentenced in 2009 for attempting to extort $80,000 from constituents.
“If the mayor got rid of any official for leaking a memo, you’d have a hollowed-out government.”
April 7: Fielder formally filed a request for a leave of absence to Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman and the board clerk. In it, she also asked to eventually return to her position as chair of the Government Audit and Oversight Committee and chair of the Local Agency Formation Commission, which includes members of the public and regulates local government activities.
The board voted 10-0 on Tuesday to approve the absence.
Peskin observed that her committees would operate as usual, with the vice chairs creating agendas and board president Mandelman assigning a different supervisor to the committee if it is needed to maintain a quorum. It’s unlikely that anyone would try to stymie Fielder’s previous efforts on the committees, Peskin said, noting that San Francisco politics are different from the Democrat-Republican knife fight in Congress.
“It’s not like ‘Oh, I’m a Dem and I refuse to schedule a Republican’s item.’ That’s not how it happens here on the board. If you introduce something, the committee chair schedules it. That’s been true for as long as I’ve been around, which is 25 years,” he continued.
What’s next: If Fielder does return after June, she may revisit a number of significant initiatives she began working on in 2025 and earlier this year.
In March, she pursued a formal audit of the San Francisco Sheriff’s Office to review potential unethical activities and scandals, drawing the ire of Sheriff Paul Miyamoto.
Earlier this year, Fielder proposed a tax that could fund the creation of a public municipal bank to provide low-cost loans for affordable housing and small businesses.
In October, she also called for a probe into the city’s nearly $6 million contract with OpenGov to overhaul the permitting system; multiple leaders of OpenGov, including its CEO and co-founder, had contributed to Lurie’s mayoral campaign.
