By Tim Redmond
The mayor is winning the spin battle over the city budget. The Chron’s first-day story tells the tale:
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom unveiled a $6.6 billion budget Monday for the 2009-10 fiscal year that he said “does a lot of extraordinary things” including bridging a half-billion-dollar deficit without raising taxes or laying off police officers, firefighters or teachers.
“It’s not perfect, but it’s as close to perfect, under the circumstances, as we could make it,” he said. “We did this without the devastation some had predicted.”
The Chron editorial the next day parrots the Newsom line:
San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom acknowledges the obvious about next year’s budget: “It’s not perfect.” But his spending plan bridges a nearly half-billion dollar gap that existed three months ago and leaves basic services and schools in good shape.
Actually, that’s completely untrue — the devastation is going to be pretty serious. And basic services won’t be in good shape, they’ll be shredded.
But the progressives on the Board of Supervisors haven’t made that case yet — and it’s time to get started.
If we wait until the budget hearings, in a couple of weeks, the board will be on the defensive. It’s taken everyone a couple of days to figure out what’s in and out of the budget, but we know enough to understand the impacts — and we know enought to be able to argue that without some serious new revenue, the city’s going to be in horrible shape.
The mayor has, of course, dumped the budget off and fled for a fundraiser in New York . The leaders of the progressive wing on the board ought to be planning a press conference — soon — to tell the other side of the story, and they ought to be presenting an alternative fact sheet showing what Newsom really has in mind for the city.
The supervisors typically change just a tiny fraction of the budget, but this year’s going to be different. It will be — it almost has to be — a major battle over public priorities. And if the mayor sets the agenda and controls the public debate, the outcome won’t be pretty.