Every major news outlet in the city has reported on a study by the city’s chief economist, Ted Egan, that says Prop. D, the overpaid executive tax, will hurt the local economy.
Headlines: “Report says Overpaid CEO Tax could eliminate jobs and shrink SF economy.” (SF Standard). “Chief economist says Prop. D raises risk to SF’s fiscal health.” (Examiner). SF’s Overpaid CEO tax could cost city more than 900 jobs: (Chronicle).
Gee, sounds awful.
It’s also wrong. The report (and the headlines) wildly overplay the relatively tiny impact Prop. D could have on the private sector as it saves hundreds of public-sector jobs—and services. It’s just super shoddy journalism across the board.
Let’s look honestly at the numbers, per the report itself.
According to Federal Reserve data, about 484,000 people work in the San Francisco County. If 944 jobs vanished, that would amount to 0.19 percent of the city workforce. That’s a tiny, tiny number, so small that no economist can really predict it with any accuracy. The city gains and loses that many jobs every week, just through normal business activities.
How about the Gross Domestic Product? The report says the tax could lower the city’s GDP by $206 million, which sounds like a big number.
Except that the city’s total GDP is around $268 billion (again, Federal Reserve data). So the loss would amount to (get ready) 0.07 percent. Again: This type of change happens all the time, for better and for worse.
The bottom line: The impact of Prop. D on jobs and the local economy is far too miniscule to even measure. The impact on essential public services is massive.
Don’t reporters do math anymore?
The San Francisco Chronicle still has a lot of old-school unwritten rules. The city’s largest daily newspaper doesn’t like to admit that other publications got a big story first, and often fails to report on news that would require an admission that someone else had the scoop.
I have lived with this for decades. So have many, many others.
The New York Times used to operate the same way, but it’s coming around. You now see Times stories that say “this information was first reported by Politico,” or whatever outlet had the break. The Chron is still struggling to adapt to a world where multiple independent news sources, some of them reliable, some of them less so, break stories in San Francisco that the Chron’s staff missed or ignored.
These days, a lot of what I write about is inspired by other reporters; I can’t cover everything, and I’m happy to credit, say, Mission Local for reporting on Sup. Rafael Mandelman’s comments to a right-wing political group. I pursued Mission Local’s lead, confronted Mandelman, and got a follow-up story that put the breaking news in perspective.
That said: It’s absolutely news, by any normal standard, that two former close aides to London Breed have said, for the record, that she appointed Sup. Stephen Sherrill because she expected his former boss Michael Bloomberg would give her some sort of financial reward. The SF Standard and Mission Local broke the story at the same time; the Chron has said nothing.
Now The Standard reports that the FBI is looking into the situation. That’s even more clearly news. Maybe the Trump Administration is using the FBI to attack Bloomberg (I don’t think anyone in Trump World cares about Breed at this point). That’s news. Maybe there’s a real investigation by career agents who look into public corruption; that’s news.
The current mayor, Daniel Lurie, ran on a platform of rooting out corruption, and he has endorsed Sherrill and said absolutely nothing. “The tone from the top is basically silence,” former Sup. Aaron Peskin told me.
That’s also news.
Peskin has formally asked the city’s inspector general (an office he helped create) to look into the situation. From his May 15 letter to Inspector General Alexandra Shepard:
The full picture, taken together, is this: a billionaire who had given more than $1.5 million to Breed’s campaigns, who funded the office where Sherrill worked, and who had employed Sherrill in a prior chapter of his career, personally called a departing Mayor and asked her to hand that same person a seat on the Board of Supervisors. The Mayor, by her own reported words, made the appointment in anticipation of personal financial benefit. Following the appointment, the Mayor accepted a six-month position as an adviser-in-residence at the Aspen Policy Academy, which collaborates with and is partially funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies. That is the matter I am asking your office to investigate.
It has now been nearly a week since this reporting was published. The conduct described involves a sitting Supervisor whose appointment is alleged to have been made not in the public interest, but as a personal favor to a billionaire donor in exchange for the prospect of private employment. The Supervisor in question remains in office and is a candidate in the June 2 District 2 election.
Mayor Lurie — who made the fight against City Hall corruption a central and repeated pledge of his 2024 campaign, announcing “aggressive ethics enforcement proposal to restore trust, integrity and accountability in city government, ” and stating, “I am the only candidate who will dramatically reshape the bureaucracy, clean out the rot of corruption and hold every department accountable” has not spoken publiclyabout this matter, despite having endorsed Supervisor Sherrill in the current District 2 election. City Hall has taken no action.
This silence is precisely the circumstance your office was designed to address.
Again: news. By any standard.
The Chron at this point is showing its increasing irrelevance.
On August 28, three city clinics that serve vulnerable populations are set to close under the Lurie Administration cuts. The South East Mission Geriatric Services Clinic, which provides mental health services to seniors, and the Michael Baxter Larkin Street Youth Clinic and the Cole Street Clinic, which provide medical, sexual and reproductive, and mental health care to LGBTQ and homeless youth, will shutter; Lurie’s Health Department says those folks can find services at other sites.
But for a lot of people, particularly seniors, giving up existing health-care providers and moving to a place that may require multiple bus rides is not an easy option. For LGBTQ and homeless youth, the loss of familiar, culturally competent services is a serious problem.
Under state law, commonly known as the Beilenson Act, any move to close or significantly reduce public health services requires a public hearing. The Health Commission will meet Monday/18 to consider the closures, and a broad coalition will be on hand to push back. That meeting begins at 3pm in City Hall Room 208.
