San Francisco Supervisors to Vote on Public Bank Measure for November Ballot

The legislation before the board on Tuesday would set up the mission and structure for the public bank, including outlining how it would begin by focusing on affordable housing, green energy and small businesses. It would also clarify that the institution would never lend to fossil fuel corporations or weapons manufacturers. It would also establish that the city attorney, controller, treasurer and tax collector, mayor and supervisors have appointing power.

“This ensures we have an institution run by real bankers that is accountable, nevertheless, to public priorities and public policy priorities,” said Supervisor Jackie Fielder, a longtime advocate for a public bank in San Francisco. “San Franciscans right now are really asking for affordability in a city that is becoming increasingly out of reach for even middle-class families.”

No funding is directly tied to the ballot proposal. But backers say it’s necessary to put before voters this year to keep moving forward on the idea, because the state policy that permits cities to create laws related to public banks expires in 2028.

“We really want to take advantage of this; otherwise, we will not have the legal context to allow San Francisco to make this legislation,” Chen said. “If the state law expires, then we have to work on a new state law before we can have this conversation again.”

Supporters of the public bank say it would enable the city to move ahead on the thousands of approved housing units that lack funding, finance climate goals and support small businesses. The idea would be to have the institution available to offer financial tools like low-to-no-cost loans for projects such as affordable housing.

The city currently has thousands of housing units that have been approved, but still lack the financing needed to break ground.

“I really see the public bank as a tool for the city to have infrastructure in the future to support more affordable housing and support our small businesses to be more resilient,” Chen told KQED.

Five supervisors have co-sponsored the creation of a municipal finance corporation, including Myrna Melgar, Bilal Mahmood, Shamann Walton and Fielder, who was leading the public bank effort before stepping away for a recent medical leave.

Other places in the U.S., like North Dakota, have publicly run banking institutions. But San Francisco is on track to be the first place to create and run such an institution on the municipal level.

That’s created excitement for some who say San Francisco could be a leader in municipal banking and who see popularity growing for publicly run efforts to boost affordability, from subsidized grocery stores to free childcare programs.

A 2025 poll commissioned by the San Francisco Public Bank Coalition, a group in support of the idea, showed 67% of likely San Francisco voters supported starting a public bank.

Other supporters pointed to ways that traditional private banks have failed to finance certain projects that could benefit the public, or have historically discriminated against and denied loans to Black customers and other groups.

“We still see great disparities in lending for no financial business reason against women, against people who don’t have proper documentation, against all sorts of human beings that could be thriving economic actors in our society,” Melgar said at last week’s board meeting in support of the proposal.

The public bank idea still lacks a confirmed plan for revenue. A local tax or coordination with a union trust are among the ideas that supporters of the plan have floated for potential capital investment in the bank. The legislation before the board on Tuesday does not commit any funding to a public bank.

“I would like to see a tax on major financial institutions to fund the public bank,” Fielder said. “But that’s not what we’re voting on this year, and further legislation is definitely going to be needed to actually capitalize the bank, and that could include private philanthropic dollars as well.”

Others on the board are skeptical of taking on the challenge. Supervisor Alan Wong, who represents the Sunset District, was the sole vote against the measure in its first hearing before the full board on June 30.

“In a moment like this, asking voters to commit San Francisco to potentially running a financial institution is asking for trust the city has not yet earned,” Wong said. “A public bank involves decisions about deposits, lending, credit, regulation and risk management. Those decisions carry real financial consequences. They demand institutional discipline, insulation from political pressure, transparency and deep banking expertise. Our city’s track record shows that meeting those demands is harder than it sounds, even for institutions designed with the right intentions.”

To prepare for the big swing, advocates and researchers have been building a base of support and curiosity for the idea for several years.

In 2019, state lawmakers passed AB 857, which legalized municipal public banking in California. Two years later, the Board of Supervisors voted to create the Reinvestment Working Group, which in a report in 2023 outlined the costs and benefits of setting up a public bank and how that could be accomplished. The board adopted the plan in 2023.

“This has really been consensus work for many years, and we’ll be building the broadest coalition possible,” leading to November, said Misha Steier, spokesperson for the San Francisco Public Bank Coalition. “This does not require money from the city. So this is looking like it’s in a strong position, given that we’re just asking voters to pick a good set of rules for the bank.”