Last week was Demonstration Week, when labor and community groups came together under the banner of the People’s Budget Coalition to demand an end to Mayor Daniel Lurie’s brutal proposed cuts, which will cost thousands of jobs and eliminate vital services.
Anya Worley-Ziegman, the coalition coordinator, put it clearly at a large and boisterous rally on the steps of City Hall: Budgets are about making choices, and setting priorities. It’s not about a lack of money, it’s about where that money goes. Police officers are getting a 14 percent raise; nonprofit workers under city contracts, many of whom prevent crimes before they happen, are getting 1.5 percent. That’s not even enough to keep up with inflation, so in effect they are getting pay cuts—those who don’t lose their jobs altogether.
Now the action moves inside City Hall. Public Comment Day is Wednesday/24, when the Budget and Appropriations Committee will hear from hundreds of residents worried about their future and the future of their city. That meeting starts at 10am, and I expect the board chamber will fill quickly and the line to testify will wrap around the second floor.
Three of the committee members, Sups. Danny Sauter, Matt Dorsey, and Rafael Mandelman, are generally allies of the mayor. Interesting to see if the public testimony has any impact on their votes. I expect to hear a lot of public hand-wringing about “painful choices” and “no good alternatives” while they go ahead and vote to give the cops 14 percent more money and let the community-based services die (after opposing Prop. D, which would have made many of these “choices” unnecessary).
That follows a Monday/22 hearing where the committee will consider for the final time budgets for a long list of city departments, including the police, the district attorney and the public defender. That hearing has an 11am start.
The Rules Committee begins Monday/22 considering City Charter amendments for the November election, and three are on the agenda. One will not face much opposition: Sup. Myrna Melgar and Mayor Daniel Lurie have a proposal to increase the minimum annual funding for the Housing Trust Fund, which pays for affordable housing. (Part of the deal to make that happen involves cutting the current mandates for inclusionary affordable housing, but that won’t be on the ballot; the supes will do it on their own.) That proposal already has seven co-sponsors.
Five supes have proposed a measure that would allow the establishment of a Municipal Finance Corporation and Public Bank. Six votes are needed to put it on the ballot. One committee member, Shamann Walton, is a sponsor; one, Stephen Sherrill, will likely oppose it. That leaves the third member, Mandelman, who in the past has supported the concept of a public bank. If he votes for it, the measure will likely make the fall ballot. This is just the first step in what will be a long process of creating a public bank, which will need funding, probably through another ballot measure since it’s unlikely Lurie will put aside millions of dollars to get something started that his allies will oppose.
Then there’s a Charter Amendment supported by the mayor that would eliminate some of city commissions, including the Our City, Our Home commission that oversees the distribution of Prop. C money, and would make some requirements for commission membership “desirable” but not mandatory. (Among other things, it would eliminate the requirements for seven seats on the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, removing the mandate that one member be a media lawyer and that one member represent a racial or ethnic minority media outlet).
In essence, it would give the mayor and the supes more authority over commissions. It’s just a small part of the mayor’s much larger agenda to overhaul the charter to give the chief executive a lot more power and make it harder for citizens to place measures on the ballot.
That meeting starts at 9am.
