In which we outline some of the pressing issues of the week to come
By Tim Redmond
MARCH 23, 2015 – I found an interesting item on the news this week, a report on how the state’s overtime costs are now soaring. Some of this is eminently predictable: More than half of the billion-plus in OT comes from the state prison system. The prisons are, and for decades have been, a money sink, California’s version of the Department of Defense. We lock up too many people for far too long, and spend a vast fortune that could have gone to, say, education and anti-poverty programs (which are the best crime-prevention strategies around) – and then complain when its breaking the budget.
But if you read between the lines, part of the problem is that the state always gets into this kind of mess when it drastically slashes the budget in tough times, then doesn’t make any effort to restore those cuts when things get a bit better. Suddenly, everyone is scrambling.
That’s because when the state (or the city) makes cuts, there’s no plan for how long the cuts will last – and what will happen as they economic busts and booms play out. So when a recession ends, as this one mostly has in California, the baseline budget becomes the recession budget, not the budget that we had before the economy tanked.
Here’s one way to look at that: The state’s General Fund in 2006 was roughly $102 billion. This year, it’s around $113 billion. If we simply adjusted the pre-recession 2006 budget for inflation, it would be around $119 billion. Adjust for population growth, and you get to $129 billion.
So the current budget that Gov. Brown and the Legislature have approved is about $16 billion below what we should be spending based on how the state was operating before the recession led to brutal cuts.
That’s a structural imbalance, and it’s playing out on every level. When you have to lay off employees, and their jobs are gone for years, you lose a lot of them. Then you’re starting from scratch when you need to hire more people. It takes a while. You wind up with excessive overtime.
If we had balanced the budget during the tough years with a more reasonable balance of tax hikes on the corporations and people who weren’t suffering (and there were, and are, plenty of them), we might have been able to save some jobs and not be scrambling years later to fill positions.
And if the governor and the Legislature took into account inflation and the growth in the state, and created a baseline budget that reflected our needs, not just our current revenue, then when they cut in hard times, they would know what gaps they needed to fill and where the target ought to be when California is again booming. As it appears to be now.
One of the casualties of some very bad budget years has been school transportation. A decade ago, the second-biggest expense at the San Francisco Unified School District was getting students to school, on yellow buses that offered free rides all over town. The school bus is an American icon; generations rode them all over the country. The drivers were more than vehicle operators – they were trained to make sure than (very) young kids got to the right place at the right time, and got home safely. Parents had no concerns about putting kindergarteners on a school bus.
But that’s mostly over in San Francisco. There aren’t that many yellow school buses going anywhere – which leaves parents with only a couple of options. They can luck out, and live in a part of town with good neighborhood schools, then luck into those slots in the lottery. Or they can drive their kids in a car, if they have the money for a car and the time to do it.
Or they can trust young kids to Muni.
The San Francisco Public Press had a nice expose on this in January: Distance makes it hard to parents in low-income areas to send their kids to the best schools in the city.
Again: If we had a baseline budget, that included what we used to spend on school buses, and we went back to that budget after the recession, we might not be facing this problem. But we couldn’t afford the buses, and now we will never be back to a point where we can.
So for a growing number of students and parents, the only option is Muni.
Which is why the joint committee of the Board of Supervisors and School Board is holding a hearing Thursday/26 on how the district and Muni can better coordinate to meet student needs. It’s long overdue: Some bus lines that serve public schools are so crowded that kids can’t get on – and then can’t get to school on time, and then get in trouble for being tardy. Some schools have no decent Muni service at all – certainly not at the times when the kids need it.
The Free Muni for Youth program has helped, tremendously, but there’s still a lot of work to do if we are going to permanently replace the yellow school bus with Muni. And that seems to be the way the city is going. The meeting’s at 3:30pm in City Hall Room 250.
San Francisco has seen quite a few police shootings in the past year – and one of the things that makes it so difficult to analyze the patterns is a terrible state law that prevents the public from getting access to most data on police discipline. For example: On Wednesday/25, the Police Commission will meet at Grattan Elementary School (165 Grattan) at 6pm. Much of the agenda is pretty standard – reports from the chief, the Office of Citizen Complaints, etc.
Then comes this:
7. Closed Session Roll Call; a. Pursuant to Government Code Section 54957(b)(1) and San Francisco Administrative Code Section 67.10(b) and Penal Code Section 832.7: PUBLIC EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE EVALUATION: Chief of Police Review of findings and Chief’s decision to return or not return officers to duty following an officer-involved shooting (OIS Case No. 15-004) (DISCUSSION)
What shooting was this? Who were the officers? What’s the chief think –did they use good judgment? Was it a legit use of force? Or are there problems here?
We don’t know. We won’t know. But then there is this:
8. Vote to elect whether to disclose any or all discussion on Item 7 held in closed session (San Francisco Administrative Code Section 67.12(a)) (ACTION)
We got that passed under the Sunshine Ordinance. The commissioners actually have to vote, in public, whether to keep the discussion secret.
They will, of course. Keep it secret, that it. But there’s always public comment, and a chance to raise the question: Are the SF cops shooting too many people?
