San Francisco’s Values Must Shine Through Our City Budget

Our city government budget is a statement of San Francisco’s values, and it has never been more important than at this moment – a moment when we face fascist attacks from our federal government. 

Since January of this year, our federal administration has been actively dismantling critical programs that provide food security, health care, housing and education. The president’s executive orders and Congress’s budget bill tell us very plainly that they do not share our San Francisco values where we are a sanctuary city for the poor, the vulnerable, immigrants, LGBTQ+, working people, seniors and people with disabilities.

As chair of the Board of Supervisors’ Budget Committee, it is my job to ensure our mayor and the Board of Supervisors work together to invest our public dollars in protecting San Franciscans and our values. We can do this while cutting wasteful spending, reducing our structural deficit and maintaining city services for all San Franciscans. But the federal government’s attacks and cuts put us in an impossible position where we have to focus on the core mission of city government: keeping people housed, fed and cared for. 

This means that for every dollar that we can save as we balance the budget, we must put it away on reserve as a guardrail against federal cuts. To date, Mayor Lurie and I, with the help of Controller Greg Wagner, put an estimated $400 million on reserve. However, in this year alone, the City has received almost $1 billion in Medicaid reimbursements for San Francisco residents. So, any federal cuts on Medicaid, which we know are coming, will significantly cut into the City’s budget. This is why we know we must work together to face this challenge, even if we may disagree on some issues.  

During the past few months, my team and I have been meeting with the mayor and his team to discuss our budget, and it is clear that we have many points of alignment. We agree that we must prioritize clean and safe streets and keeping people housed, fed and cared for, including individuals living on our streets. 

To further ensure the rest of the members of the Board of Supervisors are also in alignment and that the budget process and the decisions we make are transparent and inclusive, I introduced a motion which laid out the Budget Committee process and the board’s budget priorities. In the motion we established priorities to ensure that the basic needs of San Franciscans are met. This will be done through prioritizing housing affordability and stability, programs to keep people housed, food security programs and services to keep people fed, and healthcare programs and support services to keep people well. The motion passed unanimously. 

We also seek to establish partnerships with the business community to support downtown revitalization as well as our small businesses and neighborhood commercial corridors. We granted the mayor and his team the tools they need to establish partnerships that utilize philanthropic dollars to support their efforts instead of simply relying on public dollars. This is the moment that we ask our business community to contribute to help San Francisco, a time when we need all hands on deck. 

As we move through the board’s budget process, it is also clear that we have no good options. We are going to be faced with some very difficult decisions. This means that, in the month of June, my team and I will be working with the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office to comb through the mayor’s proposed budget of an estimated $16 billion each year. We will evaluate the budget, identify further savings and attempt to prevent further cuts to critical services and essential workers, just as we did last year, when we successfully reduced $95 million of spending from Mayor Breed’s proposed budget, yet restored critical community services by working collaboratively with our budget stakeholders.

While San Francisco may be facing a historic budget deficit and the Republican-controlled Congress is colluding with the Trump administration to systematically dismantle our social safety nets with draconian cuts, it is all the more important that we stand strong in our San Francisco values. Even facing tough decisions, by doing this together, we will find the common ground that we need to be able to continue to invest and protect our community against attacks from the Trump Administration. 

Connie Chan represents District 1 on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. She can be reached at 415-554-7410 or at chanstaff@sfgov.org.