By Rebecca Bowe
About 150 labor representatives and health-service providers turned out at last night’s Board of Supervisors meeting to sound off on drastic budget cuts that many said would weaken an already-strained safety net for populations who are most in need. For more than four hours, representatives from homeless-advocacy groups; clinics serving the uninsured, sex workers or other disenfranchised populations; youth organizations that strive to keep kids off the street; labor-union representatives; stressed-out hospital staffers and many others gave the board an earful. The overwhelming majority urged the Board of Supervisors to approve a special election for June 2, which would give voters an opportunity to decide whether to establish new taxes as a way of generating revenue, rather than relying solely on deep cuts to solve the city’s budget woes.
The city is facing a budgetary crisis of unprecedented scale, with a daunting $576 million deficit. When Mayor Gavin Newsom appeared before the supervisors last December to ask for their cooperation in tackling the budget shortfall, he described it as arguably the most daunting crisis the city has seen since the Great Depression. (Newsom was attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland yesterday.)
While the members of the board put off the decision as to whether or not to actually hold a special election, they did pass a measure allowing for the option to stay open. With Supervisors Alioto-Pier, Chu and Elsbernd voting no, the board approved an emergency measure to waive regular election procedures that would have prevented the tax measure from being placed on a June 2 ballot.
Nor did the board vote on an amended budget package, which was introduced by Supervisor Chris Daly to counter Mayor Gavin Newsom’s mid-year budget cuts. Daly’s list of alternative cuts targeted management-level positions, mayoral communications staff and funding for the opera, ballet and symphony in an effort to free up funds that could then be diverted to sectors such as public health.
Instead of adopting Daly’s amended list of cuts, supervisors voted 6-5 on a motion — called by Supervisor Sean Elsbernd — to send the whole thing back to the Budget & Finance Committee for a closer look. “All of this needs to be analyzed,” Elsbernd said after questioning a few management-level cuts included in the list. “To push this forward today without total understanding of the impact of each and every one of these — and these are just the ones I’ve caught while sitting here! — God knows what else is in there. I’m just saying, let’s have this fully vetted.” Supervisors Alioto-Pier, Chiu, Chu, Dufty, Elsburnd and Maxwell supported the motion.
That left an interesting and somewhat mixed message about the politics of the new board. Supervisors Dufty and Maxwell, who will be the swing votes on anything that requires a supermajority (to override a mayoral veto) stayed with the progressives on the vote for a June election. But Chiu – elected board president entirely with progressive support – sided with the mayor’s allies and the moderates on the budget re-allocation vote.
We’ll have to see how this new calculus plays out in the next few weeks.