A vote on a San Francisco supervisor's plan to convert neighborhood corner stores into publicly subsidized markets has been placed on hold.

Supervisor Bilal Mahmoud announced the idea late last month and is now accusing Mayor Daniel Lurie of interfering with the Board of Supervisors' legislative process.

"What happened is that the mayor called the budget chair and asked her to pull this to even before it could be voted on," Mahmoud said. "This has never happened in the history of the board in recent history."

Mahmoud's plan is modeled after New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani's executive action to create government-owned supermarkets.

The proposal is in two parts, with the first including a public fund. The second part is a proposal to tax vacant supermarket sites in the city.

Mahmoud said companies still have leases on those sites even though they are not using them that is creating what is called "food deserts" in some neighborhoods. He said the tax would be an incentive to have those companies either give up those leases or sublease them to other operators who will open businesses there.

NBC Bay Area asked Lurie about his opposition to the proposal.

"I think one reason is taxing things to get them to come in doesn't seem like that has worked for us as a city in the past," Lurie said. "So, no I don't agree with the policy. I think it's bad policy."

A San Francisco supervisor's proposal aims to address supermarkets closing in the city and the price of groceries climbing. Sergio Quintana reports.

Super Connie Chan, who serves as the budget committee chair, was not available for comment Friday. Her legislative aid and spokesperson said Chan also supports the idea of affordable city supermarkets, but said "Supervisor Mahmoud has a number of amendments he is still working on that he wants to make to his legislation. With that, she came to the conclusion that this measure was not ready at this time."

If Mahmoud's proposal is not approved by enough of his colleagues by Tuesday, it will not make the deadline to be added to the November ballot.

"The mayor and I campaigned on not doing the politics of the past, where you have petty backroom deals and where you don't even allow votes to happen," Mahmoud said. "And I thought we moved past that.”

Board President Rafael Mandelman could make the unusual move to allow a vote by the full board on Tuesday, even though the proposal did not make it out of the budget committee. Neither Mandelman nor members of his office replied to NBC Bay Area's inquiry on Friday about any decision to do that.