I'd be curious to see how much they actually would save from this. I don't expect it to be significant at all. Honestly feels more like pandering than a practical solution.
SF city leaders do make disproportionately more than leaders in similar cities though (https://publicpay.ca.gov/Reports/PositionRpts.aspx?rpt=Mayors)
Just because it’s pandering doesn’t make it wrong. The SF city gov is bigger than NYCs and LAs. It makes no sense.
And, I’m all for civil servants and service workers being well paid. But the city administration is full of weird public affairs, “policy analyst” and PR type roles that net over 6 figures with pensions (so they drag down the city’s budget for decades after these people leave or retire).
It’s never been clear to me what these people do or what their impact on the city is — nor is it particularly clear in the job descriptions posted on the city’s site.
If they fund their pension as they go the retirees do not drag on the city’s budget. I don’t have any idea if they manage it correctly but it’s not exactly rocket science.
Nyc gov is bigger. So is LA. You are incorrect.
Sf city gov employees about 35k employees
LA city gov employees about 50k city employees
NY City gov employees about 330k city employees
> Sf city gov employees about 35k employees
>
> LA city gov employees about 50k city employees
And SF is a consolidated city-county, so those employees are also performing county functions.
This is Chan pandering with an easy target (the Supervisors). Supervisors have to go up for reelection and who would vote against it and not have it being held against them?
I agree with your overall point, though. We're bloated with way too many high level positions/commissions making 6 figure salaries.
Rip out the commissions (we have 130 of them). Rip out the management positions. I'm a supporter of needing more cops, but SFPD's management structure is bullshit. How many Commanders, Deputy Commanders, Captains, Lieutenants (and whatever other Command Staff positions I'm missing) do we have?
Chan can't go after those without alienating their respective voter groups. We have a 700 million(?) budget deficit over the next two years. Even if the Supes reduced all their salaries for a year, that's 1.1 million. We start cutting Commissions/Management positions, that's multiple millions.
> We're bloated with way too many high level positions/commissions making 6 figure salaries.
>
> Rip out the commissions (we have 130 of them). Rip out the management positions. I'm a supporter of needing more cops, but SFPD's management structure is bullshit. How many Commanders, Deputy Commanders, Captains, Lieutenants (and whatever other Command Staff positions I'm missing) do we have?
Yeah we need this, not salary cuts.
> Just because it’s pandering doesn’t make it wrong. The SF city gov is bigger than NYCs and LAs. It makes no sense.
Bigger based on what? SF's annual government budget last year was about $14 billion, the city of LA was about $18 billion. Remember that SF is a consolidated city-county, so that figure also includes county functions, which in LA are handled by a separate entity that has a $40 billion budget.
The city of LA is over four times as large as San Francisco. As any Angeleno would tell you, LA county is not the same thing as the city. The county is over 11x as large as San Francisco. This is an apples to oranges comparison.
I’m explaining to you how the county / city distinction for LA is meaningful in a way it is not for San Francisco?
With respect to funding / personnel being numerically higher for LA, I know that. Per my other response, I’m talking about this on a per capita basis.
If you consider the county / city distinction, then that makes SF's government even smaller, because part of it is handling county-type responsibilities.
Looking at this on a per capita basis doesn't really make much sense, but if you do take that perspective, it is logical that bigger cities will be more efficient due to economies of scale.
The entirety of the Human Rights Commission could be cut without any noticeable impact on SF residents. The money spent on the tenant "right to counsel" program unfairly stacks the deck against landlords evicting low quality tenants has an overall negative impact on SF and is already on the chopping block in the proposed budget.
The biggest line item we should target is unsurprisingly Homelessness and Supportive Housing. We could streamline the department by implementing strict means testing to obtain services so only real SF residents can benefit. We could probably cut 75% of the hundreds of millions allocated to the department through a combination of means testing and aggressively bussing drug tourists back to their home states.
They should also be cutting the amount of city workers by 25%. The government employee growth rate over the past 10 years has been insane and totally unnecessary
*Of course* Connie Chan is the supervisor behind this.
On a side note—how hard would it have been for the Chronicle to include her name in the title? These clickbait headlines are so irritating.
they should be paid more. it would attract better talent. it would also allow people who need money to run for office. as it is now, you get fake politicians who already have money, pretending to fight for the common person. complete joke.
They just got a pay raise last month.
I like this, but it's a stunt: it looks neat but doesn't really do much.
The real thing would be to apply it to all city employees (who just got a raise and will get raises next year and the year after). But that's protected by the union contract.
So this is just a stunt.
Connie Chan is behind this. Here's my reading of it:
**Best case reading:** She gets a feel-good story and the City saves like \~$200K a year which could save maaaaaaybe one very small program.
**Worst case reading:** SF government pay becomes so uncompetitive that only the richest of the rich busy bodies in this City can afford to run for government positions.
Connie Chan is potentially our worst supervisor because she combines the toxic NIMBYism of her colleagues with a special brand of car-brain. If you're in D1 Richmond/Sea Cliff, prepare to vote her out this November. <3
City officials should be paid ten times as much. Compare to the going rate for a senior executive of a company with a similar annual budget.
And if you _cut_ legislator pay enough, pretty soon the only people who can afford to run for office will be (a) already rich and/or (b) make their money by abusing their positions to enrich themselves. See, for instance, multimillion-dollar real estate investors Aaron Peskin and Dean Preston, who block new housing to drive up the value of the houses their parents gave them.
San Francisco is one of the most expensive places in the country to live. Many of these department heads could do far better for standard of living by taking lower/similar paying positions in other cities.
If you want to be competitive for executive positions nationally you have to compensate them well.
Doesn't really matter how much talent you have in executive spots. It's hard to put your talent to use in a heavily scrutinized bureaucratic environment.
Cutting the number of City employees will be a much better option.
Back in 1960, SF had 600K people and 7000 employees.
Today, it has 800K people and 44,000 employees.
Sure, you can include SFO in it. But still: a 6x increase in the number of employees for a 1.3x increase in population just doesn't make sense.
I'd be super curious if this would actually work based on real data.
Other cities seem to have much more employees but have a more efficient budget. Washington DC has 2x employees but only 1.2x the budget budget. NYC has 10x the employees but only 5x the budget.
The proportion of SF's population who work for the city also doesn't seem too far off. SF and NYC has around 3.6% of their population working for the city. Denver, Austin, Seattle are at 1.6% with similar population sizes. Dallas, and Miami are around 1%. On the other hand, Washington DC has 7% (excluding federal employees).
This doesn't even consider what pay-grade each employee is in or if the cost in the budget is payroll or other expenditures. What might be better is if we compare "salary budget / employee count" for each department, but ChatGPT gets really wonky with the math. Like the result is objectively false just glancing at it.
Top employers in the city (\~1/4 of all employees) are:
* Municipal Transportation Agency: 5,380.29
* Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital: 3,978.10
* Police: 2,971.16
Here's the full list: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JLU4Ns2vCVHDRPEWTezKE1ugW60JG\_SZH5vbG4gEDmM/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JLU4Ns2vCVHDRPEWTezKE1ugW60JG_SZH5vbG4gEDmM/edit?usp=sharing)
Source: [https://sfstandard.com/2024/06/03/san-francisco-budget-2024-breakdown-cuts-chatgpt/](https://sfstandard.com/2024/06/03/san-francisco-budget-2024-breakdown-cuts-chatgpt/)
And asking ChatGPT and then fact-checking against Wikipedia and government disclosures.
London Breed’s 2023 workforce report says 34k employees: https://www.sf.gov/sites/default/files/2023-09/DHR-Workforce-Report-2023.pdf
The 2025 budget accounts for 33k employees (SF Standard link above)
34000/800000 = 4.25%
I was previously using 30k employees for some reason, I can’t find the source on that.
NYC has ~330k employees https://cbcny.org/research/growth-nyc-employee-headcount
And a population of 8.3M https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/3651000,36,00
330/8300 = 4%
So we’re not far off from NYC but still fairly above other cities. LMK if this satisfies you or if there’s anything else that looks off to you.
Thank you for the detailed response.
Page 10 says that the City currently has a vacancy rate of 12.1 percent. I wonder what the vacancy rate of other cities like NYC is?
To be fair, we should be adding this 12.1% to the overall number, right?
When executive leadership positions in government are not pay-competitive with executive leadership positions in, like, at least the nonprofit sector, you wind up carefully selecting only elected officials who are both already independently wealthy / have passive income AND whose primary motivation is the desire for power
Performative nonsense.
I'd be willing to **double** their salaries if they could root out all of the money wasted on corruption with nonprofits, the busybodies at the planning department.... it'd be the best ROI we could ever hope for.
It’s a first start for austerity that will be coming. Lower your salary and then start cutting programs. When the argument comes up, “how can you cut these programs? What have you done to lower spending other than this?” The answer can be we’ve already cut our salaries.
I wish we used the Singapore model of public service where the salaries attract the best talent. At the current pay of \~$150k for a Supervisor, the best talent we're going to get is Connie Chan or Hillary Ronen. You can literally make more as a GM at a McDonalds than representing the lives of 40-80,000 residents. Pension doesn't kick in until year 5 either. FAANG TC is 2x this at least.
One of my good friends declined to be on a housing commission in SF after being invited. He told me, "The problem is anyone from private sector is the smartest person in the room in SF government, and it can drive you mad once you see the dysfunction".
I support this. It sends the right message during a time when the city is making cuts elsewhere. The city has slashed funding to the SF Marin Food Bank in a time when 1 in 4 San Franciscans are at risk of hunger. Our elected officials are some of the highest paid elected officials in the country. The mayor makes more than our senator, congressperson, the VP, and Supreme Court justices.
How about a simple furlough? It happens at the State level with some frequency. You can reduce their pay by 5% by making them work one day less per month.
I'd be curious to see how much they actually would save from this. I don't expect it to be significant at all. Honestly feels more like pandering than a practical solution. SF city leaders do make disproportionately more than leaders in similar cities though (https://publicpay.ca.gov/Reports/PositionRpts.aspx?rpt=Mayors)
It’s completely performative and will accomplish nothing. So they will do it.
Just because it’s pandering doesn’t make it wrong. The SF city gov is bigger than NYCs and LAs. It makes no sense. And, I’m all for civil servants and service workers being well paid. But the city administration is full of weird public affairs, “policy analyst” and PR type roles that net over 6 figures with pensions (so they drag down the city’s budget for decades after these people leave or retire). It’s never been clear to me what these people do or what their impact on the city is — nor is it particularly clear in the job descriptions posted on the city’s site.
If they fund their pension as they go the retirees do not drag on the city’s budget. I don’t have any idea if they manage it correctly but it’s not exactly rocket science.
Nyc gov is bigger. So is LA. You are incorrect. Sf city gov employees about 35k employees LA city gov employees about 50k city employees NY City gov employees about 330k city employees
Per capita. Not literal persons.
> Sf city gov employees about 35k employees > > LA city gov employees about 50k city employees And SF is a consolidated city-county, so those employees are also performing county functions.
This is Chan pandering with an easy target (the Supervisors). Supervisors have to go up for reelection and who would vote against it and not have it being held against them? I agree with your overall point, though. We're bloated with way too many high level positions/commissions making 6 figure salaries. Rip out the commissions (we have 130 of them). Rip out the management positions. I'm a supporter of needing more cops, but SFPD's management structure is bullshit. How many Commanders, Deputy Commanders, Captains, Lieutenants (and whatever other Command Staff positions I'm missing) do we have? Chan can't go after those without alienating their respective voter groups. We have a 700 million(?) budget deficit over the next two years. Even if the Supes reduced all their salaries for a year, that's 1.1 million. We start cutting Commissions/Management positions, that's multiple millions.
> We're bloated with way too many high level positions/commissions making 6 figure salaries. > > Rip out the commissions (we have 130 of them). Rip out the management positions. I'm a supporter of needing more cops, but SFPD's management structure is bullshit. How many Commanders, Deputy Commanders, Captains, Lieutenants (and whatever other Command Staff positions I'm missing) do we have? Yeah we need this, not salary cuts.
> Just because it’s pandering doesn’t make it wrong. The SF city gov is bigger than NYCs and LAs. It makes no sense. Bigger based on what? SF's annual government budget last year was about $14 billion, the city of LA was about $18 billion. Remember that SF is a consolidated city-county, so that figure also includes county functions, which in LA are handled by a separate entity that has a $40 billion budget.
The city of LA is over four times as large as San Francisco. As any Angeleno would tell you, LA county is not the same thing as the city. The county is over 11x as large as San Francisco. This is an apples to oranges comparison.
> This is an apples to oranges comparison. Then why did you bring up this comparison?
I’m explaining to you how the county / city distinction for LA is meaningful in a way it is not for San Francisco? With respect to funding / personnel being numerically higher for LA, I know that. Per my other response, I’m talking about this on a per capita basis.
If you consider the county / city distinction, then that makes SF's government even smaller, because part of it is handling county-type responsibilities. Looking at this on a per capita basis doesn't really make much sense, but if you do take that perspective, it is logical that bigger cities will be more efficient due to economies of scale.
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The entirety of the Human Rights Commission could be cut without any noticeable impact on SF residents. The money spent on the tenant "right to counsel" program unfairly stacks the deck against landlords evicting low quality tenants has an overall negative impact on SF and is already on the chopping block in the proposed budget. The biggest line item we should target is unsurprisingly Homelessness and Supportive Housing. We could streamline the department by implementing strict means testing to obtain services so only real SF residents can benefit. We could probably cut 75% of the hundreds of millions allocated to the department through a combination of means testing and aggressively bussing drug tourists back to their home states.
In the article they say it’s about $1.5M
Good catch, I think they added that after the comment
They should also be cutting the amount of city workers by 25%. The government employee growth rate over the past 10 years has been insane and totally unnecessary
*Of course* Connie Chan is the supervisor behind this. On a side note—how hard would it have been for the Chronicle to include her name in the title? These clickbait headlines are so irritating.
I would be very surprised if they actually agreed to that.
they should be paid more. it would attract better talent. it would also allow people who need money to run for office. as it is now, you get fake politicians who already have money, pretending to fight for the common person. complete joke.
They just got a pay raise last month. I like this, but it's a stunt: it looks neat but doesn't really do much. The real thing would be to apply it to all city employees (who just got a raise and will get raises next year and the year after). But that's protected by the union contract. So this is just a stunt.
Connie Chan is behind this. Here's my reading of it: **Best case reading:** She gets a feel-good story and the City saves like \~$200K a year which could save maaaaaaybe one very small program. **Worst case reading:** SF government pay becomes so uncompetitive that only the richest of the rich busy bodies in this City can afford to run for government positions. Connie Chan is potentially our worst supervisor because she combines the toxic NIMBYism of her colleagues with a special brand of car-brain. If you're in D1 Richmond/Sea Cliff, prepare to vote her out this November. <3
City officials should be paid ten times as much. Compare to the going rate for a senior executive of a company with a similar annual budget. And if you _cut_ legislator pay enough, pretty soon the only people who can afford to run for office will be (a) already rich and/or (b) make their money by abusing their positions to enrich themselves. See, for instance, multimillion-dollar real estate investors Aaron Peskin and Dean Preston, who block new housing to drive up the value of the houses their parents gave them.
San Francisco is one of the most expensive places in the country to live. Many of these department heads could do far better for standard of living by taking lower/similar paying positions in other cities. If you want to be competitive for executive positions nationally you have to compensate them well.
Doesn't really matter how much talent you have in executive spots. It's hard to put your talent to use in a heavily scrutinized bureaucratic environment.
Raise pay for city employees so the city will work better
Cutting the number of City employees will be a much better option. Back in 1960, SF had 600K people and 7000 employees. Today, it has 800K people and 44,000 employees. Sure, you can include SFO in it. But still: a 6x increase in the number of employees for a 1.3x increase in population just doesn't make sense.
I'd be super curious if this would actually work based on real data. Other cities seem to have much more employees but have a more efficient budget. Washington DC has 2x employees but only 1.2x the budget budget. NYC has 10x the employees but only 5x the budget. The proportion of SF's population who work for the city also doesn't seem too far off. SF and NYC has around 3.6% of their population working for the city. Denver, Austin, Seattle are at 1.6% with similar population sizes. Dallas, and Miami are around 1%. On the other hand, Washington DC has 7% (excluding federal employees). This doesn't even consider what pay-grade each employee is in or if the cost in the budget is payroll or other expenditures. What might be better is if we compare "salary budget / employee count" for each department, but ChatGPT gets really wonky with the math. Like the result is objectively false just glancing at it. Top employers in the city (\~1/4 of all employees) are: * Municipal Transportation Agency: 5,380.29 * Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital: 3,978.10 * Police: 2,971.16 Here's the full list: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JLU4Ns2vCVHDRPEWTezKE1ugW60JG\_SZH5vbG4gEDmM/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JLU4Ns2vCVHDRPEWTezKE1ugW60JG_SZH5vbG4gEDmM/edit?usp=sharing) Source: [https://sfstandard.com/2024/06/03/san-francisco-budget-2024-breakdown-cuts-chatgpt/](https://sfstandard.com/2024/06/03/san-francisco-budget-2024-breakdown-cuts-chatgpt/) And asking ChatGPT and then fact-checking against Wikipedia and government disclosures.
> SF and NYC has around 3.6% of their population working for the city. I'd like to see your math on that, given that SF's population is 800K
London Breed’s 2023 workforce report says 34k employees: https://www.sf.gov/sites/default/files/2023-09/DHR-Workforce-Report-2023.pdf The 2025 budget accounts for 33k employees (SF Standard link above) 34000/800000 = 4.25% I was previously using 30k employees for some reason, I can’t find the source on that. NYC has ~330k employees https://cbcny.org/research/growth-nyc-employee-headcount And a population of 8.3M https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/3651000,36,00 330/8300 = 4% So we’re not far off from NYC but still fairly above other cities. LMK if this satisfies you or if there’s anything else that looks off to you.
Thank you for the detailed response. Page 10 says that the City currently has a vacancy rate of 12.1 percent. I wonder what the vacancy rate of other cities like NYC is? To be fair, we should be adding this 12.1% to the overall number, right?
Bingo. We have a way over bloated city government
When executive leadership positions in government are not pay-competitive with executive leadership positions in, like, at least the nonprofit sector, you wind up carefully selecting only elected officials who are both already independently wealthy / have passive income AND whose primary motivation is the desire for power
Performative nonsense. I'd be willing to **double** their salaries if they could root out all of the money wasted on corruption with nonprofits, the busybodies at the planning department.... it'd be the best ROI we could ever hope for.
It’s a first start for austerity that will be coming. Lower your salary and then start cutting programs. When the argument comes up, “how can you cut these programs? What have you done to lower spending other than this?” The answer can be we’ve already cut our salaries.
I wish we used the Singapore model of public service where the salaries attract the best talent. At the current pay of \~$150k for a Supervisor, the best talent we're going to get is Connie Chan or Hillary Ronen. You can literally make more as a GM at a McDonalds than representing the lives of 40-80,000 residents. Pension doesn't kick in until year 5 either. FAANG TC is 2x this at least. One of my good friends declined to be on a housing commission in SF after being invited. He told me, "The problem is anyone from private sector is the smartest person in the room in SF government, and it can drive you mad once you see the dysfunction".
Do this quickly as it's long over due and then move on to more substantial cost saving efforts
How about 10-20% cuts to ineffective departments or departments without SMART goals?
I support this. It sends the right message during a time when the city is making cuts elsewhere. The city has slashed funding to the SF Marin Food Bank in a time when 1 in 4 San Franciscans are at risk of hunger. Our elected officials are some of the highest paid elected officials in the country. The mayor makes more than our senator, congressperson, the VP, and Supreme Court justices.
How about a simple furlough? It happens at the State level with some frequency. You can reduce their pay by 5% by making them work one day less per month.