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San Francisco’s political leadership has squandered a fortune (2019)

145 points by undefined1 6y ago

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
> The city employs 31,830 people, one for every 28 residents and six employees for every city block. You see, you and I know such a large public workforce is a problem and a burden on private citizens, but the San Francisco government views a large public workforce as an important goal. The reason San Francisco is in bad shape is because the bureaucrats who run it actually think it’s in good shape.
- baggy_trough 6y ago
  For the bureaucrats, it's fantastic!
- 0xB31B1B 6y ago
  before the pandemic, the city doubled in size every day to 1.6m folks, during working hours which would reduce the ratio by 1/2 The city also includes the airport, which alone employs a mix of 30k public and non public workers. Finally, SF is unique in that is both a city and a county, so all of the sherifs/jail workers/county transit workers are employed by the city itself, which inflates numbers relative to other cities. I do not know what the true number of residents per public worker is, but my point is that the numbers are a lot more complicated than what you present here.
  - nullc 6y ago
    > SF is unique in that is both a city and a county, That isn't unique to SF. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_city-county https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_city-county
    - SllX 6y ago
      It is in California. Of the 58 counties, San Francisco is the only consolidated City and County and has all the requisite overhead of both under California law.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    Large airports are private/independent in the US, and are funded with massive landing fees (over $10,000 per landing, depending on airplane size.) Often construction bonds are backed by local governments, which almost ruined the economy of San Jose when they built Temrinal 3. The city found a hired gun to manage the costs from $3 billion down to $1.2 billion, but alas, nobody except the occasional JAL flight uses that terminal. Smaller airports available for public use get FAA airport improvement funds, which is why the US has more airports than the rest of the world combined, and why Walmart can use private jets to fly managers from store-to-store, sometimes 3 in a day. https://www.faa.gov/airports/aip/ https://www.faa.gov/airports/aip/
shallowthought 6y ago
I don't get how articles like these get reposted so often - this article is from 2019, for god's sake. If you're interested in the state of the city budget, Covid-19 combined with the passage of a year means that you really need to double-check everything in this article, so at best, it's a waste of time. At worst, you're being pushed toward a very biased, incomplete view of things - I'm not saying every article published by a "think tank" is factually wrong, but ignoring such articles is a handy lifehack.
Zhenya 6y ago
Anecdote: almost every family with kids that I know has the same story: Lived in SF, had kids and gtfo because the city is not great for kids. That can easily be contrasted to Manhattan that was cleaned up by "broken windows policy". In SF the petty crime was rampant. Cars broken into, vandalism, drug use, theft and vagrancy(too bad it's not illegal in SF). There are no borders and nothing stopping people from moving their tax base down to the Peninsula (where the weather is better, schools are great and no one shits on your doorstep). Good luck sf, you'll need it.
- baggy_trough 6y ago
  How dare you insult the highest form of humanity in San Francisco, the defecators-of-freedom?
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't do this here.
- throw9872349872 6y ago
  SF needs a Rudy Guiliani type.
- cobookman 6y ago
  Let it sink in that East Palo Alto, former murder capital of USA has less crime per-capita than San Francisco. East Palo Alto is a shining example of how a township/city can clean up its streets in a short time period, by investing in the community. SF = 2018 was 690.89 per 100,000 population EPA = 2018 was 470.14 per 100,000 population Src: EPA = https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ca/east-palo-alto/crime-rate-statistics https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ca/east-palo-alto/crim... SF = https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ca/san-francisco/crime-rate-statistics https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ca/san-francisco/crime...
  - throw9872349872 6y ago
    Wow.. so violent crime in SF has the same rate as death by covid19? Puts things into perspective..
jdkee 6y ago
San Francisco is a failed state, when it comes to caring for the citizens.
seibelj 6y ago
The inevitable reversal of fortune will be a very interesting drama. Will it be like Chicago, where any attempt to shrink government is stymied and taxes are ratcheted upwards every year just to tread water on bloated pensions? Or will it collapse into bankruptcy like Detroit? The amount of inefficiency and waste of resources in SF is unfathomable. Eventually the chickens come home to roost.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Chicago and Detroit also look pretty different economically. Detroit was overbuilt and depended too heavily on car manufacturing, which left it vulnerable to collapse. Chicago meanwhile is still a pretty decent sized transit hub, and it has the financial markets used to stabilize the price of a bunch of important commodities like grains and pork, which provided a diverse enough economy to stumble forwards despite nakedly corrupt and incompetent leadership. The question is, how much wealth will leave SF? If some startups leave, it’ll probably look more like Chicago. Clearly bankrupt, but still functioning to some degree. If most startups and their employees leave, it’ll be the Detroit route for SF.
  - dpoochieni 6y ago
    Funny how those 3 cities are similarly managed politcially speaking.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      If you’re trying to go for a trite left vs. right comment, I’d like to point out that a lot of the cities that people in CA are moving to are also managed by Democrats. The nature of current US geographic politics means that most cities will be run by a very specific party, both the well run and the poorly run ones. This is one of those situations that escapes easy and convenient narratives, especially ones that happen to support a partisan side.
  - pengaru 6y ago
    "If most startups and their employees leave, it’ll be the Detroit route for SF." News flash: SF only relatively recently became a startup hub with the web 2.0 and smartphone/apps eras and the advent of free shuttle buses to the likes of Google/FB. If the startups and their employees leave, it'll be slightly more like the diverse and more affordable SF that it previously was. If you honestly think it's the Detroit route for SF should most startups and their employees vacate, you are horribly misinformed. There's a practically unlimited number of people hoping SF prices fall enough for them to move back and/or buy property there. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the startup scene. If most the tech people moved out of SF I'd be far more interested in living there myself. The startup/tech monoculture has ruined the city in many ways.
jariel 6y ago
The inability of modern states to operationally keep up is deeply distressing. I have no political orientation with respect to the 'size' of government so much, but at very least, it needs to be effective for whatever it is doing. The massive backlogs in the justice and immigration system, the lack of innovation in so many areas, ultra powerful unions, lack of material investment in anything other that known quantities like 'roads and highways' the seeming inability to have coherent identity solution for elections. Yesterday, large swaths of Canadian government stats site 'Stats Canada' - a federal agency was just down and completely broken. It's 'COVID', hey, we're not going to fix that. Can you imagine of Amazon.com just 'went down' for a few days? SF and California in particular lose all credibility when trying to 'lead' the country in any capacity really - Gavin Newsom's words about 'California is the future of America' are toxically arrogant in this regard. Dysfunction is just another form of corruption. This is an existential problem for some modern nations.
- baggy_trough 6y ago
  The problem is that government is a low-accountability sector, but many people have a quasi-religious belief that due to elections, it isn't.
  - jariel 6y ago
    I think people's belief about 'government not needing true accountability' is one of civic mindset, and a kind of naivte to how inefficient things can truly get. The word 'incentives' triggers the socialist crowd with 'capitalist speak'. I for one value good governance, and I don't think it's all about incentives, but that's definitely part of the issue and we don't have any popular measurable accountability for the bureaucracy.
- seibelj 6y ago
  The problem is incentive. No one in the government has any incentive to do anything. In fact not rocking the boat is far safer than doing something new, which is risky. While I do wish the government would shrink heavily, another idea I have is to pay department heads a percentage of every dollar saved each year. As it stands, agencies want to increase their budget and headcount every year as that leads to prestige. If 10 cents of every dollar saved went straight to the head of the department, you would magically see millions and millions cut each year as they install better software, streamline, etc.
ashtonkem 6y ago
To make matters worse, wealth is pretty easily moveable within legal borders. It’s extremely trivial for those in SF to move anywhere else in CA without having to even change their tax status (Edit: for withholding. Crossing state lines is more of a paperwork hassle for some companies), depriving SF of rents and taxes. And that’s not even counting the people willing to leave California for the various PADS (Portland, Austin, Seattle, Denver) cities. This coming decade is going to be bad for SF. Shame they didn’t spend all that money making the city more desirable for reasons other than FAANG jobs.
- seibelj 6y ago
  It’s quite easy for the wealthy to move their domicile and assets between states and even countries. The tricks lawyers, accountants, and estate planners can do run circles around tax authorities. They can’t close the loopholes as fast as new tricks are created. The “if we only just seized money from the rich to solve all our problems” theorists are wrong on two major counts. First they expect to be able to seize the money, which as I described above is very unlikely. The second is that once they seize it once, they will be unable to seize it again as the wealthy don’t have any more assets or wise up. The proper way out of the fiscal mess is to reform government and, if needed, increase taxes broadly and sustainably. I am not a Bernie Sanders supporter but he was the only one who straight-up said he would raise taxes on everyone, unlike every other candidate that was promising utopia by taking the money from billionaires. But everyone wants easy answers nowadays, no one wants to sacrifice, if it’s not something for nothing immediately then it’s a non-starter.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    While I largely agree, I’d raise some limits about the basic principle that people will move their domicile to avoid taxes. People do move to avoid taxes all the time, but it’s nowhere near as simple as saying that people will quickly move to wherever taxes are the lowest; people will tolerate some level of higher tax if they feel that it’s worth it for whatever reason. At the low income end, that’s been CA for decades. CA is a higher tax state than other places, but they could get away with it because people wanted to live in CA, and were willing to pay for it. It helps that the really desirable areas of CA are a long way away from other states, making leaving the state kind of a pain in the butt. It’ll be interesting to see how Covid changes that around. Even at the higher level, we don’t see a ton of millionaires and billionaires renouncing their citizenship and moving to wherever the taxes are the lowest. Some do, but a lot stay in the US because living in the US is a really nice place to be if you’re rich. They might move to the lower tax states, but that’s as far as they’re willing to go. The issue for SF specifically is a bit like the issue for NYC; it’s relatively small and really close to a bunch of places within commuting distance that have lower tax rates. Compared to leaving even CA, leaving SF specifically is really easy. And FWIW, I think that the tax thing is a bit overblown; I think housing costs are the real problem. I’m leaving CA (Los Angeles) next month for another state, and while I’ll save a bit on taxes, it’s nothing compared to what I’ll save on housing costs. Four months of owning a home will save me enough over my 2bd LA apartment to obliterate any difference in income taxes for the year.
jackfoxy 6y ago
A one party city in a one party state, endorsed by the local media establishment. You get what you vote for.
- CamperBob2 6y ago
  When the Republicans insist on nominating unelectable kooks, a one-party state is indeed what you end up with. That's what we see happening here in Washington, in any case. There's no one I can vote for who isn't a Democrat, so I guess I'm a Democrat by default, whether I wanted to be one or not. Super frustrating.
- youareostriches 6y ago
  Did you read the article? It laments a lack of investment in: * Affordable housing * Public transit * Green energy Can you show me any of these items in the current Republican party platform, or even point to any local Republican-run government which has invested significantly in any of these?
  - garmaine 6y ago
    I think you are misinterpreting the post you are replying to. Any single-party system devolves into graft and cronyism as the politicians aren't held accountable for their actions. After all, what are you going to do, waste your vote on the other side?
  - whatanattitude 6y ago
    Why haven’t the Democrats who have ran this city done any of that is the point of the article. Your looking to republicans. It’s a liberal run city.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - deepakhj 6y ago
      On housing - Nimbys.. folks that fight change.
cft 6y ago
I believe that behind the veneer of the official progressivism there's deep monetary corruption in San Francisco government. Here is my data (all within last 24 months): 1. SF Public works director arrested by the FBI: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-Public-Works-Director-Mohammed-Nuru-arrested-15010510.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-Public-Works-... 2. SF Building Inspector Commissioner arrested by the FBI: https://www.kqed.org/news/11817788/former-sf-building-inspection-commissioner-arrested-and-charged-with-bank-fraud https://www.kqed.org/news/11817788/former-sf-building-inspec... 3. SF health director Garcia forced to resign over conflict-of-interest https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/SF-health-director-Garcia-forced-to-resign-over-13178653.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/SF-h... 4. SF DPH official arrested by the FBI: https://sfdistrictattorney.org/press-release/former-sf-public-official-arrested-for-contract-that-netted-husband-65k/ https://sfdistrictattorney.org/press-release/former-sf-publi...
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  This is good data but hard to imagine financial corruption being the only reason the city is a toilet. Take for example the fact that open drug use and public defecation isn’t even a crime here.
- thatguy0900 6y ago
  Out of curiosity, I wanted to see how unusual this is. According to https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezaucr/asp/ucr_display.asp https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezaucr/asp/ucr_display.asp about 150000 people were arrested for fraud and embezzlement in 2014 out of 328m Americans, or .0004% of the population, with 31830 employees that should be 12 a year if there's a even distribution of fraudsters in the country. Granted it's 2 am here and I'm really tired, so this might not make much sense.
  - cft 6y ago
    A better stat would be the % of arrests of other cities' officials. The majority of population does not have access to the FBI scale embezzlement, even if they wanted to do it.
throwaway8989 6y ago
This "article" is from the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.
- seibelj 6y ago
  When the letter is full of bad news, just shoot the messenger.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Is there something in the article that’s untrue? It’s not like the state of the city is a secret.
  - throwaway8989 6y ago
    Because it's 2020, election season, and "hackers" should know how to recognize when an agenda is being pushed. I stated the source of the article. And, look at that, my comment was flagged.
jameslk 6y ago
It seems all too frequent that this is the outcome of many things in the US. Like universities and healthcare. More and more money becomes less and less effective. When there's so much demand and so little supply, it seems the suppliers of things (e.g. effective governing) care lesser the more it's demanded.
ENOTTY 6y ago
> Municipal employment has eaten up a large share. Salaries and benefits account for almost 45 percent of the budget, averaging $175,004 per employee, in a city where median household income is $96,265. This is not fair. Comparing salaries + benefits to income is an apples to oranges comparison.
- tyrust 6y ago
  The article was filled with apples and oranges comparisons. I'm sure that there are legitimate points to be made, but it's hard to take seriously when then piece is so slanted.
- jxramos 6y ago
  They're kind of in the orbit of one another. One quantifies the near total cost of funding an individual public employee from that municipality vs the entire household income of a family living in said municipality who presumably contributes towards funding that one individual. That household certainly doesn't pay for that municipal individual's total compensation from their benefits dollars but rather from their income.
- cissou 6y ago
  It's at least directional. In the other direction, a household is typically more than one income, whereas $175k is a per employee figure.
olivermarks 6y ago
This article is from August 2019, the coronapocalypse will play havoc with what's left of the city's finances...
ENOTTY 6y ago
For all the article’s whining about the Transbay Transit Center, the city only provided financing for about ten percent of the phase one costs. (Phase two not yet started.) The other 90% of the cost was financed through other means, mostly land sales by the state, special tax increases, and toll increases. [1] The expected lifespan of this building at least a hundred years. Frankly $200m from the city is not bad at all. [1]: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ipd/project_profiles/ca_transbay_transit.aspx https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ipd/project_profiles/ca_transbay_tr...
- apexalpha 6y ago
  If the State sells land, raises taxes and increases tolls on its roads how if that different from 'financing' the project? Sure the City doesn't pay for all of it but the building still cost as much and seems to be useless, according to the article at least.
  - ENOTTY 6y ago
    If the article compared the state’s contribution to its budget that would make the point relevant. Instead the article is about the city and I claim it is raising irrelevant points of evidence.
    - tupputuppu 6y ago
      The sources of the funding don't matter, the spending does. If you spent too much money on a thrashed up apartment, it wouldn't matter whether you did that from your salary, selling your previous house or taking a loan.
justinzollars 6y ago
I've lived in 5 cities, across 3 states. I've lived in SF for 10 years and this is by far the worst, least responsive government I've experienced. From my experience in interacting with San Francisco politicians they all want one thing: Nancy Pelosi's job. I don't think they care about anything else. What I see is grown adults spitballing the worst, often national policy platforms/ideas to attract voters and constituency groups for a future campaign. I really do not get the impression they care about the community because the outcomes are so bad.
d_burfoot 6y ago
SF's population is about 800K, so a $12 billion budget could fund a $15K/year universal basic income.
throwawaysea 6y ago
I do agree that the political leadership has squandered a fortune, but if there is a root cause, it ultimately comes down to the voters. It is the voters who repeatedly vote for the same leaders who implement the same policies emphasizing the same values with the same outcomes over and over. And when confronted with those problems, the response from voters is to shame dissenting voices for a lack of empathy instead of recognizing the reality around them and applying common sense. SF shows problems on almost every facet of city governance from businesses unable to set up shop (https://youtu.be/SQo6UZzyR3Y https://youtu.be/SQo6UZzyR3Y) to feces on the streets (https://youtu.be/VEOkX9dp85I https://youtu.be/VEOkX9dp85I) to BART subway stations that are open drug markets (https://youtu.be/5gT5NULvRSk https://youtu.be/5gT5NULvRSk) to mismanagement of massive budgets (https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-record-241-million-on-homeless-6808319.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-recor...) to rampant property crime (https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/The-Scanner-San-Francisco-ranks-No-1-in-13267113.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/The-Scanner-San-Fr...) to the city worsening the used needles problem (https://www.hoover.org/research/why-drug-addicts-outnumber-high-school-students-san-francisco https://www.hoover.org/research/why-drug-addicts-outnumber-h...)... I could go on, but if I had to pick a few basic things that are broken and need attention: - Unequal enforcement of the law. Residents who follow the rules and care about their city are subject to the law. If they break the law, for instance by littering or not paying for parking or not being properly permitted for something, they'll be subject to fines or other penalties. But drug addicted homeless vagrants can break every last law with impunity, and face no consequence for it. - Incredible bloat in governance, with massive public agencies that are really just job creation schemes for those who are looking to lazily coast through a 'career'. We see the same issue at the state level in California. - Woke politics that focuses on pandering to a few loud activists over serving tax paying residents. The city's leaders are willing to devote time, energy, and resources to social justice causes disproportionately, at the expense of other real problems the city faces. This is because of politicians' own personal political biases but also because the voters incentivize them this way by voting based on alignment to a far left progressive agenda instead of goals and results. - Lack of accountability. SF spends hundreds of millions a year on the 'homelessness crisis' and has nothing to show for it. Those breaking the law are released back on the streets and the lack of law enforcement only incentivizes more drug addicted nomads to pour in. No ones seems to talk about tracking the effectiveness of spending with metrics and goals. - A lack of diversity. Yes SF has people of many racial backgrounds. But they're welcome only if their true culture and religion is the SF progressive political culture. Diversity is very literally skin-deep in SF, and there is almost no diversity of thought. This reflects in the city's politics - SF (also CA) is a one-party state and of course, it displays all the classic problems of a one-party state. The city has become so hostile to any differing views that there's no one left who's willing to actually take a stand. The saddest part of all this is that as California and San Francisco bleed residents to other locations, those voters seem to be bringing their same values/politics to those new locations, causing those places to also deteriorate, instead of retrospecting and realizing that they are recreating the very problems they are fleeing from. To me, this is a form of deep arrogance - the inability to learn from the culture of the place they move to, and the blind faith in their own cultural superiority. Unfortunately many formerly beautiful and well-managed cities like Portland, Austin, Denver, and Seattle are starting to show the same problems SF faces - they just seem to be lagging SF by a few years as their local politics gets taken over by SF/CA transplants.
29athrowaway 6y ago
SF transit sucks. - Street parking allowed in high traffic streets instead of public parking. - Pedestrian crossings allowed in high traffic streets instead of pedestrian overpasses. - Popular conferences allowed to completely saturate the city. - Construction jobs in high traffic streets allowed to take months or even years. - Inadequate public transport, and rideshares everywhere. - If there's a non-zero amount of precipitation everyone instantly forgets how to drive and the entire city collapses.
w6fu 6y ago
Lived and worked in San Francisco for over 25 years. The last decade I lived in the East Bay, we wanted to buy property and felt the most financially responsible place was there. We left in 2018. Having lived there for so long I thought I had seen everything. There was always an atmosphere of drugs in the air, homeless people, crazies on the street... but San Francisco was the city I had grown to love and you took the good with the bad. I'm not exactly sure when it started but you kind of iterate here and there and somehow we got to the point that is just wasn't safe any longer. I had to walk that line at Civic Center BART at 6:30am and there was nothing but bad things happening on either side of you. Needles all over the street. EVERYWHERE. People on the street bend over for half hour at a time high on heroine or fentanyl or whatever. Anyway, you've all seen it... it became too much for even a pretty forgivable long term resident to put up with and we ended up in Austin. Well, outside Austin in the suburbs (our equivalent of the East Bay I guess). FWIW Austin is starting to head in the same direction so we chose to stay outside of Travis County, but that's just me having felt burnt once and not caring to have it happen again. Anyways, digressing... I worry about San Francisco. 54% of businesses have been closed for months, and there's no end in sight. https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Half-of-all-San-Francisco-storefronts-have-closed-15513726.php https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Half-of-all-San-Fran... 2,000 of those businesses have closed for good. There will be more. https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/More-than-2-000-SF-businesses-closed-permanently-15468195.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/More-than-2-000... Lots of tech companies are going fully remote. https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/companies-switching-remote-work-long-term/ https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/companies-switching-remot... Tech companies are starting to pull out of high dollar SF leases. https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Pinterest-terminate-SF-office-lease-88-Bluxome-15525421.php https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Pinterest-terminate-... Most people live in San Francisco because there is a lot of fun stuff to do (not the case right now) and there are tons of job in tech (these are all starting to leave, or go remote first anyway). So there's no real reason to live in San Francisco any longer. Not right now anyway. Don't take my word for it, SF rents have "cratered" 31% over the past year. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-13/san-francisco-studio-apartment-rents-plunge-31-most-in-u-s https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-13/san-franc... Sales tax income is crashing because people are straight up leaving. https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/S-F-sales-tax-data-shows-likely-population-15632448.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/S-F-sales-tax-d... So given the dynamic of more crime (due to lack of prosecution), more homeless because the City allows tents everywhere, less workforce from companies going remote, less income from sales tax, less income from commercial real estate, and a rental market that's crashing... Well, it's not looking great, now is it. There's another crisis that will hit after this, and that's the real estate market. All of these variables will play into that, and if they don't turn it around real soon it's going to be apocalyptic. The good news, that's not happening yet. https://www.bayareamarketreports.com/trend/san-francisco-home-prices-market-trends-news https://www.bayareamarketreports.com/trend/san-francisco-hom... I'm not saying I'm an expert or anything, but you look around and you have to wonder how long that will be the case. Best of luck, San Francisco. You're going to need it.

145 points by undefined1 6y ago

> The city employs 31,830 people, one for every 28 residents and six employees for every city block. You see, you and I know such a large public workforce is a problem and a burden on private citizens, but the San Francisco government views a large public workforce as an important goal. The reason San Francisco is in bad shape is because the bureaucrats who run it actually think it’s in good shape.

baggy_trough 6y ago
For the bureaucrats, it's fantastic!
0xB31B1B 6y ago
before the pandemic, the city doubled in size every day to 1.6m folks, during working hours which would reduce the ratio by 1/2 The city also includes the airport, which alone employs a mix of 30k public and non public workers. Finally, SF is unique in that is both a city and a county, so all of the sherifs/jail workers/county transit workers are employed by the city itself, which inflates numbers relative to other cities. I do not know what the true number of residents per public worker is, but my point is that the numbers are a lot more complicated than what you present here.
- nullc 6y ago
  > SF is unique in that is both a city and a county, That isn't unique to SF. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_city-county https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_city-county
  - SllX 6y ago
    It is in California. Of the 58 counties, San Francisco is the only consolidated City and County and has all the requisite overhead of both under California law.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Large airports are private/independent in the US, and are funded with massive landing fees (over $10,000 per landing, depending on airplane size.) Often construction bonds are backed by local governments, which almost ruined the economy of San Jose when they built Temrinal 3. The city found a hired gun to manage the costs from $3 billion down to $1.2 billion, but alas, nobody except the occasional JAL flight uses that terminal. Smaller airports available for public use get FAA airport improvement funds, which is why the US has more airports than the rest of the world combined, and why Walmart can use private jets to fly managers from store-to-store, sometimes 3 in a day. https://www.faa.gov/airports/aip/ https://www.faa.gov/airports/aip/

shallowthought 6y ago

I don't get how articles like these get reposted so often - this article is from 2019, for god's sake. If you're interested in the state of the city budget, Covid-19 combined with the passage of a year means that you really need to double-check everything in this article, so at best, it's a waste of time. At worst, you're being pushed toward a very biased, incomplete view of things - I'm not saying every article published by a "think tank" is factually wrong, but ignoring such articles is a handy lifehack.

Zhenya 6y ago

Anecdote: almost every family with kids that I know has the same story: Lived in SF, had kids and gtfo because the city is not great for kids. That can easily be contrasted to Manhattan that was cleaned up by "broken windows policy". In SF the petty crime was rampant. Cars broken into, vandalism, drug use, theft and vagrancy(too bad it's not illegal in SF). There are no borders and nothing stopping people from moving their tax base down to the Peninsula (where the weather is better, schools are great and no one shits on your doorstep). Good luck sf, you'll need it.

baggy_trough 6y ago
How dare you insult the highest form of humanity in San Francisco, the defecators-of-freedom?
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't do this here.
throw9872349872 6y ago
SF needs a Rudy Guiliani type.
cobookman 6y ago
Let it sink in that East Palo Alto, former murder capital of USA has less crime per-capita than San Francisco. East Palo Alto is a shining example of how a township/city can clean up its streets in a short time period, by investing in the community. SF = 2018 was 690.89 per 100,000 population EPA = 2018 was 470.14 per 100,000 population Src: EPA = https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ca/east-palo-alto/crime-rate-statistics https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ca/east-palo-alto/crim... SF = https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ca/san-francisco/crime-rate-statistics https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ca/san-francisco/crime...
- throw9872349872 6y ago
  Wow.. so violent crime in SF has the same rate as death by covid19? Puts things into perspective..

jdkee 6y ago

San Francisco is a failed state, when it comes to caring for the citizens.

seibelj 6y ago

The inevitable reversal of fortune will be a very interesting drama. Will it be like Chicago, where any attempt to shrink government is stymied and taxes are ratcheted upwards every year just to tread water on bloated pensions? Or will it collapse into bankruptcy like Detroit? The amount of inefficiency and waste of resources in SF is unfathomable. Eventually the chickens come home to roost.

ashtonkem 6y ago
Chicago and Detroit also look pretty different economically. Detroit was overbuilt and depended too heavily on car manufacturing, which left it vulnerable to collapse. Chicago meanwhile is still a pretty decent sized transit hub, and it has the financial markets used to stabilize the price of a bunch of important commodities like grains and pork, which provided a diverse enough economy to stumble forwards despite nakedly corrupt and incompetent leadership. The question is, how much wealth will leave SF? If some startups leave, it’ll probably look more like Chicago. Clearly bankrupt, but still functioning to some degree. If most startups and their employees leave, it’ll be the Detroit route for SF.
- dpoochieni 6y ago
  Funny how those 3 cities are similarly managed politcially speaking.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    If you’re trying to go for a trite left vs. right comment, I’d like to point out that a lot of the cities that people in CA are moving to are also managed by Democrats. The nature of current US geographic politics means that most cities will be run by a very specific party, both the well run and the poorly run ones. This is one of those situations that escapes easy and convenient narratives, especially ones that happen to support a partisan side.
- pengaru 6y ago
  "If most startups and their employees leave, it’ll be the Detroit route for SF." News flash: SF only relatively recently became a startup hub with the web 2.0 and smartphone/apps eras and the advent of free shuttle buses to the likes of Google/FB. If the startups and their employees leave, it'll be slightly more like the diverse and more affordable SF that it previously was. If you honestly think it's the Detroit route for SF should most startups and their employees vacate, you are horribly misinformed. There's a practically unlimited number of people hoping SF prices fall enough for them to move back and/or buy property there. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the startup scene. If most the tech people moved out of SF I'd be far more interested in living there myself. The startup/tech monoculture has ruined the city in many ways.

jariel 6y ago

The inability of modern states to operationally keep up is deeply distressing. I have no political orientation with respect to the 'size' of government so much, but at very least, it needs to be effective for whatever it is doing. The massive backlogs in the justice and immigration system, the lack of innovation in so many areas, ultra powerful unions, lack of material investment in anything other that known quantities like 'roads and highways' the seeming inability to have coherent identity solution for elections. Yesterday, large swaths of Canadian government stats site 'Stats Canada' - a federal agency was just down and completely broken. It's 'COVID', hey, we're not going to fix that. Can you imagine of Amazon.com just 'went down' for a few days? SF and California in particular lose all credibility when trying to 'lead' the country in any capacity really - Gavin Newsom's words about 'California is the future of America' are toxically arrogant in this regard. Dysfunction is just another form of corruption. This is an existential problem for some modern nations.

baggy_trough 6y ago
The problem is that government is a low-accountability sector, but many people have a quasi-religious belief that due to elections, it isn't.
- jariel 6y ago
  I think people's belief about 'government not needing true accountability' is one of civic mindset, and a kind of naivte to how inefficient things can truly get. The word 'incentives' triggers the socialist crowd with 'capitalist speak'. I for one value good governance, and I don't think it's all about incentives, but that's definitely part of the issue and we don't have any popular measurable accountability for the bureaucracy.
seibelj 6y ago
The problem is incentive. No one in the government has any incentive to do anything. In fact not rocking the boat is far safer than doing something new, which is risky. While I do wish the government would shrink heavily, another idea I have is to pay department heads a percentage of every dollar saved each year. As it stands, agencies want to increase their budget and headcount every year as that leads to prestige. If 10 cents of every dollar saved went straight to the head of the department, you would magically see millions and millions cut each year as they install better software, streamline, etc.

ashtonkem 6y ago

To make matters worse, wealth is pretty easily moveable within legal borders. It’s extremely trivial for those in SF to move anywhere else in CA without having to even change their tax status (Edit: for withholding. Crossing state lines is more of a paperwork hassle for some companies), depriving SF of rents and taxes. And that’s not even counting the people willing to leave California for the various PADS (Portland, Austin, Seattle, Denver) cities. This coming decade is going to be bad for SF. Shame they didn’t spend all that money making the city more desirable for reasons other than FAANG jobs.

seibelj 6y ago
It’s quite easy for the wealthy to move their domicile and assets between states and even countries. The tricks lawyers, accountants, and estate planners can do run circles around tax authorities. They can’t close the loopholes as fast as new tricks are created. The “if we only just seized money from the rich to solve all our problems” theorists are wrong on two major counts. First they expect to be able to seize the money, which as I described above is very unlikely. The second is that once they seize it once, they will be unable to seize it again as the wealthy don’t have any more assets or wise up. The proper way out of the fiscal mess is to reform government and, if needed, increase taxes broadly and sustainably. I am not a Bernie Sanders supporter but he was the only one who straight-up said he would raise taxes on everyone, unlike every other candidate that was promising utopia by taking the money from billionaires. But everyone wants easy answers nowadays, no one wants to sacrifice, if it’s not something for nothing immediately then it’s a non-starter.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  While I largely agree, I’d raise some limits about the basic principle that people will move their domicile to avoid taxes. People do move to avoid taxes all the time, but it’s nowhere near as simple as saying that people will quickly move to wherever taxes are the lowest; people will tolerate some level of higher tax if they feel that it’s worth it for whatever reason. At the low income end, that’s been CA for decades. CA is a higher tax state than other places, but they could get away with it because people wanted to live in CA, and were willing to pay for it. It helps that the really desirable areas of CA are a long way away from other states, making leaving the state kind of a pain in the butt. It’ll be interesting to see how Covid changes that around. Even at the higher level, we don’t see a ton of millionaires and billionaires renouncing their citizenship and moving to wherever the taxes are the lowest. Some do, but a lot stay in the US because living in the US is a really nice place to be if you’re rich. They might move to the lower tax states, but that’s as far as they’re willing to go. The issue for SF specifically is a bit like the issue for NYC; it’s relatively small and really close to a bunch of places within commuting distance that have lower tax rates. Compared to leaving even CA, leaving SF specifically is really easy. And FWIW, I think that the tax thing is a bit overblown; I think housing costs are the real problem. I’m leaving CA (Los Angeles) next month for another state, and while I’ll save a bit on taxes, it’s nothing compared to what I’ll save on housing costs. Four months of owning a home will save me enough over my 2bd LA apartment to obliterate any difference in income taxes for the year.

jackfoxy 6y ago

A one party city in a one party state, endorsed by the local media establishment. You get what you vote for.

CamperBob2 6y ago
When the Republicans insist on nominating unelectable kooks, a one-party state is indeed what you end up with. That's what we see happening here in Washington, in any case. There's no one I can vote for who isn't a Democrat, so I guess I'm a Democrat by default, whether I wanted to be one or not. Super frustrating.
youareostriches 6y ago
Did you read the article? It laments a lack of investment in: * Affordable housing * Public transit * Green energy Can you show me any of these items in the current Republican party platform, or even point to any local Republican-run government which has invested significantly in any of these?
- garmaine 6y ago
  I think you are misinterpreting the post you are replying to. Any single-party system devolves into graft and cronyism as the politicians aren't held accountable for their actions. After all, what are you going to do, waste your vote on the other side?
- whatanattitude 6y ago
  Why haven’t the Democrats who have ran this city done any of that is the point of the article. Your looking to republicans. It’s a liberal run city.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - deepakhj 6y ago
    On housing - Nimbys.. folks that fight change.

cft 6y ago

I believe that behind the veneer of the official progressivism there's deep monetary corruption in San Francisco government. Here is my data (all within last 24 months): 1. SF Public works director arrested by the FBI: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-Public-Works-Director-Mohammed-Nuru-arrested-15010510.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-Public-Works-... 2. SF Building Inspector Commissioner arrested by the FBI: https://www.kqed.org/news/11817788/former-sf-building-inspection-commissioner-arrested-and-charged-with-bank-fraud https://www.kqed.org/news/11817788/former-sf-building-inspec... 3. SF health director Garcia forced to resign over conflict-of-interest https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/SF-health-director-Garcia-forced-to-resign-over-13178653.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/SF-h... 4. SF DPH official arrested by the FBI: https://sfdistrictattorney.org/press-release/former-sf-public-official-arrested-for-contract-that-netted-husband-65k/ https://sfdistrictattorney.org/press-release/former-sf-publi...

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
This is good data but hard to imagine financial corruption being the only reason the city is a toilet. Take for example the fact that open drug use and public defecation isn’t even a crime here.
thatguy0900 6y ago
Out of curiosity, I wanted to see how unusual this is. According to https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezaucr/asp/ucr_display.asp https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezaucr/asp/ucr_display.asp about 150000 people were arrested for fraud and embezzlement in 2014 out of 328m Americans, or .0004% of the population, with 31830 employees that should be 12 a year if there's a even distribution of fraudsters in the country. Granted it's 2 am here and I'm really tired, so this might not make much sense.
- cft 6y ago
  A better stat would be the % of arrests of other cities' officials. The majority of population does not have access to the FBI scale embezzlement, even if they wanted to do it.

throwaway8989 6y ago

This "article" is from the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.

seibelj 6y ago
When the letter is full of bad news, just shoot the messenger.
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Is there something in the article that’s untrue? It’s not like the state of the city is a secret.
- throwaway8989 6y ago
  Because it's 2020, election season, and "hackers" should know how to recognize when an agenda is being pushed. I stated the source of the article. And, look at that, my comment was flagged.

jameslk 6y ago

It seems all too frequent that this is the outcome of many things in the US. Like universities and healthcare. More and more money becomes less and less effective. When there's so much demand and so little supply, it seems the suppliers of things (e.g. effective governing) care lesser the more it's demanded.

ENOTTY 6y ago

> Municipal employment has eaten up a large share. Salaries and benefits account for almost 45 percent of the budget, averaging $175,004 per employee, in a city where median household income is $96,265. This is not fair. Comparing salaries + benefits to income is an apples to oranges comparison.

tyrust 6y ago
The article was filled with apples and oranges comparisons. I'm sure that there are legitimate points to be made, but it's hard to take seriously when then piece is so slanted.
jxramos 6y ago
They're kind of in the orbit of one another. One quantifies the near total cost of funding an individual public employee from that municipality vs the entire household income of a family living in said municipality who presumably contributes towards funding that one individual. That household certainly doesn't pay for that municipal individual's total compensation from their benefits dollars but rather from their income.
cissou 6y ago
It's at least directional. In the other direction, a household is typically more than one income, whereas $175k is a per employee figure.

olivermarks 6y ago

This article is from August 2019, the coronapocalypse will play havoc with what's left of the city's finances...

ENOTTY 6y ago

For all the article’s whining about the Transbay Transit Center, the city only provided financing for about ten percent of the phase one costs. (Phase two not yet started.) The other 90% of the cost was financed through other means, mostly land sales by the state, special tax increases, and toll increases. [1] The expected lifespan of this building at least a hundred years. Frankly $200m from the city is not bad at all. [1]: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ipd/project_profiles/ca_transbay_transit.aspx https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ipd/project_profiles/ca_transbay_tr...

apexalpha 6y ago
If the State sells land, raises taxes and increases tolls on its roads how if that different from 'financing' the project? Sure the City doesn't pay for all of it but the building still cost as much and seems to be useless, according to the article at least.
- ENOTTY 6y ago
  If the article compared the state’s contribution to its budget that would make the point relevant. Instead the article is about the city and I claim it is raising irrelevant points of evidence.
  - tupputuppu 6y ago
    The sources of the funding don't matter, the spending does. If you spent too much money on a thrashed up apartment, it wouldn't matter whether you did that from your salary, selling your previous house or taking a loan.

justinzollars 6y ago

I've lived in 5 cities, across 3 states. I've lived in SF for 10 years and this is by far the worst, least responsive government I've experienced. From my experience in interacting with San Francisco politicians they all want one thing: Nancy Pelosi's job. I don't think they care about anything else. What I see is grown adults spitballing the worst, often national policy platforms/ideas to attract voters and constituency groups for a future campaign. I really do not get the impression they care about the community because the outcomes are so bad.

d_burfoot 6y ago

SF's population is about 800K, so a $12 billion budget could fund a $15K/year universal basic income.

throwawaysea 6y ago

I do agree that the political leadership has squandered a fortune, but if there is a root cause, it ultimately comes down to the voters. It is the voters who repeatedly vote for the same leaders who implement the same policies emphasizing the same values with the same outcomes over and over. And when confronted with those problems, the response from voters is to shame dissenting voices for a lack of empathy instead of recognizing the reality around them and applying common sense. SF shows problems on almost every facet of city governance from businesses unable to set up shop (https://youtu.be/SQo6UZzyR3Y https://youtu.be/SQo6UZzyR3Y) to feces on the streets (https://youtu.be/VEOkX9dp85I https://youtu.be/VEOkX9dp85I) to BART subway stations that are open drug markets (https://youtu.be/5gT5NULvRSk https://youtu.be/5gT5NULvRSk) to mismanagement of massive budgets (https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-record-241-million-on-homeless-6808319.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-recor...) to rampant property crime (https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/The-Scanner-San-Francisco-ranks-No-1-in-13267113.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/The-Scanner-San-Fr...) to the city worsening the used needles problem (https://www.hoover.org/research/why-drug-addicts-outnumber-high-school-students-san-francisco https://www.hoover.org/research/why-drug-addicts-outnumber-h...)... I could go on, but if I had to pick a few basic things that are broken and need attention: - Unequal enforcement of the law. Residents who follow the rules and care about their city are subject to the law. If they break the law, for instance by littering or not paying for parking or not being properly permitted for something, they'll be subject to fines or other penalties. But drug addicted homeless vagrants can break every last law with impunity, and face no consequence for it. - Incredible bloat in governance, with massive public agencies that are really just job creation schemes for those who are looking to lazily coast through a 'career'. We see the same issue at the state level in California. - Woke politics that focuses on pandering to a few loud activists over serving tax paying residents. The city's leaders are willing to devote time, energy, and resources to social justice causes disproportionately, at the expense of other real problems the city faces. This is because of politicians' own personal political biases but also because the voters incentivize them this way by voting based on alignment to a far left progressive agenda instead of goals and results. - Lack of accountability. SF spends hundreds of millions a year on the 'homelessness crisis' and has nothing to show for it. Those breaking the law are released back on the streets and the lack of law enforcement only incentivizes more drug addicted nomads to pour in. No ones seems to talk about tracking the effectiveness of spending with metrics and goals. - A lack of diversity. Yes SF has people of many racial backgrounds. But they're welcome only if their true culture and religion is the SF progressive political culture. Diversity is very literally skin-deep in SF, and there is almost no diversity of thought. This reflects in the city's politics - SF (also CA) is a one-party state and of course, it displays all the classic problems of a one-party state. The city has become so hostile to any differing views that there's no one left who's willing to actually take a stand. The saddest part of all this is that as California and San Francisco bleed residents to other locations, those voters seem to be bringing their same values/politics to those new locations, causing those places to also deteriorate, instead of retrospecting and realizing that they are recreating the very problems they are fleeing from. To me, this is a form of deep arrogance - the inability to learn from the culture of the place they move to, and the blind faith in their own cultural superiority. Unfortunately many formerly beautiful and well-managed cities like Portland, Austin, Denver, and Seattle are starting to show the same problems SF faces - they just seem to be lagging SF by a few years as their local politics gets taken over by SF/CA transplants.

29athrowaway 6y ago

SF transit sucks. - Street parking allowed in high traffic streets instead of public parking. - Pedestrian crossings allowed in high traffic streets instead of pedestrian overpasses. - Popular conferences allowed to completely saturate the city. - Construction jobs in high traffic streets allowed to take months or even years. - Inadequate public transport, and rideshares everywhere. - If there's a non-zero amount of precipitation everyone instantly forgets how to drive and the entire city collapses.

w6fu 6y ago

Lived and worked in San Francisco for over 25 years. The last decade I lived in the East Bay, we wanted to buy property and felt the most financially responsible place was there. We left in 2018. Having lived there for so long I thought I had seen everything. There was always an atmosphere of drugs in the air, homeless people, crazies on the street... but San Francisco was the city I had grown to love and you took the good with the bad. I'm not exactly sure when it started but you kind of iterate here and there and somehow we got to the point that is just wasn't safe any longer. I had to walk that line at Civic Center BART at 6:30am and there was nothing but bad things happening on either side of you. Needles all over the street. EVERYWHERE. People on the street bend over for half hour at a time high on heroine or fentanyl or whatever. Anyway, you've all seen it... it became too much for even a pretty forgivable long term resident to put up with and we ended up in Austin. Well, outside Austin in the suburbs (our equivalent of the East Bay I guess). FWIW Austin is starting to head in the same direction so we chose to stay outside of Travis County, but that's just me having felt burnt once and not caring to have it happen again. Anyways, digressing... I worry about San Francisco. 54% of businesses have been closed for months, and there's no end in sight. https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Half-of-all-San-Francisco-storefronts-have-closed-15513726.php https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Half-of-all-San-Fran... 2,000 of those businesses have closed for good. There will be more. https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/More-than-2-000-SF-businesses-closed-permanently-15468195.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/More-than-2-000... Lots of tech companies are going fully remote. https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/companies-switching-remote-work-long-term/ https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/companies-switching-remot... Tech companies are starting to pull out of high dollar SF leases. https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Pinterest-terminate-SF-office-lease-88-Bluxome-15525421.php https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Pinterest-terminate-... Most people live in San Francisco because there is a lot of fun stuff to do (not the case right now) and there are tons of job in tech (these are all starting to leave, or go remote first anyway). So there's no real reason to live in San Francisco any longer. Not right now anyway. Don't take my word for it, SF rents have "cratered" 31% over the past year. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-13/san-francisco-studio-apartment-rents-plunge-31-most-in-u-s https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-13/san-franc... Sales tax income is crashing because people are straight up leaving. https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/S-F-sales-tax-data-shows-likely-population-15632448.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/S-F-sales-tax-d... So given the dynamic of more crime (due to lack of prosecution), more homeless because the City allows tents everywhere, less workforce from companies going remote, less income from sales tax, less income from commercial real estate, and a rental market that's crashing... Well, it's not looking great, now is it. There's another crisis that will hit after this, and that's the real estate market. All of these variables will play into that, and if they don't turn it around real soon it's going to be apocalyptic. The good news, that's not happening yet. https://www.bayareamarketreports.com/trend/san-francisco-home-prices-market-trends-news https://www.bayareamarketreports.com/trend/san-francisco-hom... I'm not saying I'm an expert or anything, but you look around and you have to wonder how long that will be the case. Best of luck, San Francisco. You're going to need it.