For six years, San Francisco officials have been playing hard-to-get over a proposed 555-bed hospital on Cathedral Hill. Mayor Ed Lee’s latest demand for about $2 billion over 50 years from the California Pacific Medical Center is so exorbitant that you’d think the company was trying to construct a coal-burning plant at Van Ness Avenue and Geary Boulevard instead of a state-of-the-art medical facility that will improve the health and save the lives of city residents. Read More

Senate Democrats led by Patty Murray of Washington and Chuck Schumer of New York have an odd way of looking at things. Murray is the chairman of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, and Schumer is among the party’s messaging gurus. Read More

Don’t look now, but Gov. Jerry Brown is morphing into Arnold Schwarzenegger before our very eyes. Once again, a governor has come into Sacramento promising to change the way things work in the Capitol, to make the tough decisions to make state government fiscally solvent. And once again, we are stuck with a state budget based on unrealistic revenue assumptions that avoid necessary spending cuts. Read More

It happens every year without fail. At some point during San Francisco’s annual budget tug-of-war, it suddenly becomes evident that most of The City’s larger municipal departments are spending wildly more than their approved overtime allocations. Read More