By Calvin Welch, HANC Board
July's general membership meeting focused on the topic of the coming budget crisis and efforts at the local level to cushion the impact on our most vulnerable neighbors.
While Governor Newsom is still wedded to the notion that President Trump and the Republicans will pass a "bailout" for state and local government, and as yet has offered no new statewide revenue measures, Mayor Breed and the Board of Supervisors have made the more realistic assumption that we will need new revenue if we are to lessen the serious impacts of the looming budget deficit.
Our two July meeting guests, Debbi Lerman of the Human Services Network, a coalition of many faith and community based non-profit health and human service providers and a long-time participant in the city's "budget wars" and Matthias Mormino, Director of Policy for the community-based non-profit affordable housing developer Chinatown Community Development Center and past legislative assistant to Supervisors Kim and Yee, laid out the depth of the budget crisis facing us locally and emphasized the need for new revenue.
At the time of our meeting there were competing measures to raise revenue from the Board and the Mayor. While the measures are similar in important components--for example, both measures are gross receipt taxes and both would raise enough new funds that the Controller has said he would release some hundreds of millions of dollars already collected but held up by lawsuits from the passage of two 2018 gross receipt business tax measures for homeless, affordable housing and childcare services in San Francisco. Yet there were other aspects of the competing measures that conflicted, chief among them was the timing of the new taxes.
Under the Mayor’s proposal the full tax increase would be linked to the unemployment rate in San Francisco, currently at 12%. Her proposal was that the tax increase rise slowly until the rate was back to the 3% it was before the COVID-19 induced economic collapse. Since no one has any real idea when or if San Francisco's economy will return to its pre-COVID-19 level, the Board of Supervisors’ measure had a much shorter "ramp up" to full levels on the realistic assumption that new funds would be needed now, not when the economy righted itself.
In addition, our speakers informed us that the Mayor was also trying to get the Supervisors to remove two unrelated measures aimed at the scandal involving the fired Public Works director. Supervisors were prepared to place a measure on the ballot that would split the Department of Public Works (DPW), now with no commission and under control of the Mayor, into two departments--street cleaning and public works--each with a Commission jointly appointed by the Supervisors and the Mayor. In addition Board members were supporting the creation of a new "public advocate" aimed at investigating "corruption." Mayor Breed opposed both measures and wanted them removed or she would place her gross receipt measure on the ballot to compete with the Supervisors’ measure.
A week after our meeting the Board amended its proposal to increase the business tax over three year period, not tethered to the unemployment rate. They also voted down putting the public advocate measure on the ballot- as Mayor Breed wished. She then withdrew her revenue measure. The Supervisors did however, put the DPW measure on the ballot.