Supervisor Connie Chan is on a mission to reverse all of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s proposed layoffs of city employees.
Chan, the Board of Supervisors budget chair, is scouring the city for alternatives, she told The Standard. She’s got two leads so far: eliminating vacant positions for city managers and, potentially, laying off managers.
“We have been short-staffed of line workers and critical workers, essential workers, for the last few years,” Chan said. The budget legislative analyst found that the city hires management at twice the rates of line workers, she said, “so we know we are a top-heavy workforce.”
Lurie released his budget at the end of May, revealing his plan to shore up a $782 million deficit. While most of the 1,400 positions he proposed to eliminate are vacant, roughly 150 would be layoffs.
When asked for comment, the mayor’s office referred to Lurie’s previous remarks on the need to right-size government for fiscal responsibility.
The Board of Supervisors is hearing from city departments throughout June; many are asking that their funding be restored. In those hearings, Chan has repeatedly asked department heads how layoffs would affect them.
Chan “wanted to learn more about the ratio between management and line workers, and understand better what we can do to be more efficient,” she told Public Works staff at a Wednesday budget hearing.
If savings can be found in one department, Chan explained, perhaps it could ease the burden of layoffs elsewhere.
Kim Tavaglione, head of the San Francisco Labor Council, which represents most city workers, said Chan is on their side.
“She is working with labor to deliver a fair budget for working people and our city services,” Tavaglione said.
Labor has blasted Lurie, demanding he apply public pressure to Airbnb and other businesses to drop their lawsuits against the city, alleging that they were overcharged on taxes. Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi has already done so.
Shrinking government is the main tool Lurie has to reduce the structural deficit, which essentially means stopping the city from spending more than it takes in.
He has other options; for example, he could further reduce government spending on grant funding to nonprofits or put a measure on the ballot to raise taxes.
The Controller’s Office wrote in its annual revenue letter evaluating the mayor’s proposed spending that Lurie made “meaningful progress” toward closing the structural deficit in his proposed budget, while warning of an additional deficit of $700 million in fiscal 2027-28 that will necessitate more cuts.
Two employees of SF Planning, Maggie Laush, 33, and Dylan Hamilton, 36, spoke out at Wednesday’s meeting. They were not among those warned that they would be laid off but said everyone is affected when the city is understaffed and employees are overburdened.
“I believe in spending money on services,” Laush said. “Fiscal responsibility, right-sizing government — those are conservative talking points from 15 years ago, and I don’t think it behooves mayor Lurie to double down on that position.”
Hamilton said the budget cuts could hurt those most dependent on public services.
“Aside from our colleagues, the people this budget is going to impact the most are low-income communities, people of color, people who depend on public services to have safe places to live and clean water to drink,” he said. “Mayor Lurie talking about eliminating things he’s never relied on in his life is not surprising.”