The SF Weekly, an alternative newspaper in San Francisco – and self-described politically independent publication, has labeled its hometown the “The Worst-Run Big City in the US.” And it might not be hyperbole. In painstaking detail, the articles' authors lay out case against the city by the Bay.
Here are a few illuminating statements from the article:
"This year's city budget is an astonishing $6.6 billion — more than twice the budget for the entire state of Idaho — for roughly 800,000 residents. Yet despite that stratospheric amount, San Francisco can't point to progress on many of the social issues it spends liberally to tackle — and no one is made to answer when the city comes up short."
"This is a union town. You can't reform the city charter without winning an election; winning an election requires union support; and unions — almost by definition — don't want major reform. It would be a paradox — but that would contravene a number of union bylaws."
"Many cities contract with nonprofits because it's cheaper than using city workers. Government is now paying the tab for services that used to be undertaken by families, churches — or, frankly, no one. But a 2009 University of San Francisco study notes that this city is to nonprofits what New York is to big musicals: "Per capita expenditures by operating nonprofits in San Francisco are almost double that of the rest of the Bay Area, and more than twice that found in Los Angeles or [the whole of] California."
"Research by professor Bill Watkins of California Lutheran University over the past decade reveals that San Francisco is shedding its middle-class population at double the state rate [JPC note: which itself is shedding its middle class]. The city, however, is not losing low-income people at nearly the state's pace — and is gaining wealthy residents at far more than California's overall rate. In short, we are replacing our middle class with a rich elite and a burgeoning underclass."
California unionistas of old were the alleged defenders of the middle class. Members of public employee unions in San Francisco, which dominate San Francisco government and politics, are not middle class by most measures. Their salaries are too high. Therefore, those who support these unions do not, by proxy, support the middle class as they might claim.
Social welfare programs, even with good intentions, should not persist without demonstrating progress over time in reducing the problems. San Francisco, like California, has spent more and more on social welfare programs over the years. With no evidence of progress, these services, paid through San Francisco’s high taxes on citizens and business, drive businesses out, which reduces availability of jobs for the middle and working classes, and increases the number of people taking advantage of these services.
Any undergraduate political science student can tell you that a healthy middle class is necessary for a democracy. Modern history, post-Industrial Revolution, demonstrates that the absence of middle class usually leads to social upheaval, often through very undemocratic means.
San Francisco is a public employee union town, dominated from top to bottom by these unions, which have helped to destroy any hope of fiscal solvency without new revenues (read: taxes). San Francisco has siphoned money from transportation (specifically their "Muni" system), despite voter directive on how such money should be spent. San Francisco spends more on social welfare programs than any other city and yet cannot produce and, largely, does not aim to produce evidence of progress. San Francisco is dominated by one party, though there is a Green Party element, and more so by a single ideology.
Does any of this sound familiar? California is perilously close to one-party domination in the Legislature and has many of the same symptoms: union domination, ineffective yet expanding social programs, and a budget gone awry. Moreover, by many accounts, a Democrat candidate is the odds-on winner for Governor. If those who demand performance-based budgeting and fiscal sanity do not win out, San Francisco might represent the state’s future.
SF Weekly article: http://is.gd/5qyvw
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