The mayor’s big lie on Prop. F

I m used to lies in political campaigns. It s part of the system: The First Amendment protects political speech, even when it s demonstrably false, and that s fine: We don t want legislators and courts controlling what people running for office or pushing ballot measures are allowed to say. The check on political lies is, and should be, the news media. Far too often these days, that system fails, in part because the old legacy news outlets don t want to challenge candidates their owners support, and in part because so many newsrooms have been devastated by cuts that there s hardly anyone left to look at the data. Mayor Lurie isn t telling the truth about independent commisssions. But now and then it gets so bad that even the Chronicle can t ignore it, and that s what s happened with Mayor Daniel Lurie s Proposition F. Lurie s team has been spending millions to convince the voters to give the mayor more power. In that past, that s been a recipe for corruption. So to soften t