San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie Looks to Eliminate 500 City Jobs

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie is directing departments to trim around 500 positions at City Hall in a bid to save around $100 million in personnel spending.

The directive, sent in an email to city staff this week, comes as San Francisco stares down an $877 million budget shortfall and is seeking to cut nearly $400 million in annual spending following federal budget cuts.

“The city must bend the cost curve, especially where rising expected costs exceed both inflation and revenue expectations,” reads an email from Sophia Kittler, the mayor’s budget director. “Based on the [mayor’s budget office] analysis of current vacancy rates, meeting this target requires eliminating filled positions.”

Departments already submitted cost-saving proposals to the mayor’s office earlier this year, but Kittler wrote that those totaled less than 25% of the city’s target. Departments are now required to send in new staffing cut proposals to the mayor’s budget office by March 12.

Lurie’s second year in office has coincided with another year of tough budget decisions. Last year, the mayor proposed cutting around 1,400 jobs, but the vast majority of those were vacant positions. About 100 filled positions were cut in last year’s budget; however, the city also moved to end about $100 million in grants and other funding from the city’s budget to narrow the budget gap.

This year’s directive would eliminate far more filled positions. While the budget is not yet final, advocates for city staff and services are already fighting back against the proposed cuts.

“This is nothing short of heartbreaking to hear for our labor partners, and knowing that we are choosing to gut San Francisco’s social safety net,” said Anya Worley-Ziegmann, a spokesperson for the People’s Budget Coalition, which is advocating to preserve the jobs. “That’s really what these layoffs mean, it’s more than individual workers. The city will suffer as well.”

Budget cuts are falling on departments such as public health, which the mayor has asked to cut spending by around $40 million over the next two years, Mission Local reports.

“We have serious concerns about any funding cuts that would harm HIV and AIDS prevention and care, but in particular ones that would cause disproportionate harm to communities that are already disenfranchised by existing health care systems,” said Tyler TerMeer, CEO of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, in a statement. “We know that Black and African American people in San Francisco experience higher rates of HIV diagnoses than other communities — now is not the time to pull back on valuable investments made to improve health outcomes in these communities.”

Advocates criticizing the proposed cuts are calling on the city to push back against large San Francisco-based tech companies fighting business taxes. Companies such as Airbnb, Uber and Lyft are currently suing the city to claw back collectively over $300 million in taxes.

“Why should workers get laid off and residents lose essential services when big tech companies like Airbnb are holding up hundreds of millions of dollars, suing the city to get out of paying their fair share in taxes?” Worley-Ziegmann said. “Mayor Luire helped end the hotel strike and stopped a National Guard takeover with two phone calls. Maybe he should call these CEOs before asking workers and residents to foot the bill.”

While the funding from those cases, if resolved, would only provide one-time dollars, Worley-Ziegmann said it would buy the city time to address structural funding issues that still lie ahead. Proponents of the CEO tax likely headed before San Francisco voters this November say that funding generated from that proposal could offer longer-term solutions.

But critics and companies that filed the lawsuit say they were improperly taxed at a higher rate than warranted. Lurie, meanwhile, has said he does not support the proposals for a state wealth tax, saying it would drive out some of the largest tax-generating businesses.

“This is an excellent bridge plan to be able to use that funding while we work on longer-term solutions to the deficit,” Worley-Ziegmann said.