In his first meeting with city department heads Jan. 9, the new mayor [Daniel Lurie] pledged to “eliminate $1 billion in overspending” in the next three years, warning that the fiscal discipline would be “challenging” and “probably even painful.”
Lurie suggested he’s going to address the city’s $876 million two-year budget hole by changing the city’s “structural deficit” — usually code for “cuts” — instead of relying on one-time funding supplements as former Mayor London Breed did…
In his directive to heads of departments — including the Municipal Transportation Agency, Public Works, and Public Health — the mayor said he wants to “eliminate our least effective programs.”
The first and most necessary step to rescuing SFMTA will involve two ballot measures in 2026: one citywide and one that is regional across four counties. Both could involve sales and/or parcel taxes, but that funding wouldn’t be enough to save Muni lines from being cut and keep BART running later into the night…
Officials aren’t sugarcoating just how calamitous the SFMTA deficit could be for San Francisco’s economy if the public transportation system is forced to substantially scale back. The number of visitors to the city would drop, leading to a trickle-down effect on the bottom lines of restaurants and other small businesses. Commuting workers would also have a harder time getting in and out of the city.
“It clearly would be a serious negative shock to the city’s economy if Muni was forced to make draconian cuts to service,” said Ted Egan, the city’s chief economist. “There is literally no way to fill downtown with commuters unless you have public transit.”
Nobody says the businesses have to stay in SF. Watch the fun as businesses start to leave–and take all those bothersome “commuters”–and the $$$ they spend–out of downtown. Suddenly, a problem…
According to the executive order that created DOGE, its purpose is “modernizing federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”
That’s all it does. Not a bad thing to do, certainly. But all it says is US government will look for ways to improve its IT.
So I’m not understanding how SF plugging a budget hole has anything to do with DOGE.
Good move. By executive order, DOGE can only work IT integration. That’s good policy but by design it is creating another layer of bureaucracy to do something that should be done already.
Unless you are a mindless bureaucrat. Then it makes lots of sense.
As with the UK we are in a period of Demand Side economics.
Play with the wrong fiscal tools and find out. As in blank around and find out.
But she still appears to be fairly resolute about her economic philosophy. Busy promoting her new memoir, she has dismissed anyone who blames her for crashing the UK economy as “stupid or malevolent”.