In June, The City will vote on Proposition D, a proposal that aims to chip some ice off San Francisco’s glacier-size retirement obligations. Among other things, Prop. D would cause pension amounts to be calculated using an average of an employee’s two highest-earning years instead of one year. This is supposed to save money and prevent pension “spiking,” a practice whereby an employee inflates his or her final compensation (and thus pension amount) using vacation payouts or quickie promotions.  Read More

Anyone with a sibling winced a little after learning that Deborah Madden’s sister apparently blew the whistle on her sibling’s alleged enjoyment of one perk of being a San Francisco Police Department crime lab technician — access to cocaine. I’d like to think my sister would helpfully bring over a bag of lye if I told her there was a dead body in my bathtub, but obviously not every family is that loving. Read More

Back in March 2008, the Mayor’s Office convened the San Francisco Streets and Neighborhoods Workgroup to make recommendations for improving the quality of life in The City. Members of the group included then-police Chief Heather Fong, Supervisor Bevan Dufty, Chamber of Commerce President Steve Falk and Coalition on Homelessness Executive Director Jennifer Friedenbach. This collection of 18 A-list leaders released their report in January 2009. Read More

Think of The City’s budget system like this: The mayor brings the Board of Supervisors a stack of checks with the “amount” and “purpose” sections already filled out; the mayor can’t deposit the checks unless the board signs them; however, once signed, the mayor doesn’t have to deposit them. But what happens if the board really, really wants the mayor to spend one of those checks? Nothing. Tough noogies. Credit-rating agencies love this absence of budgetary bureaucracy, but it makes the Board of Supervisors perpetually apoplectic. Read More

This is Part I of a three-part series on San Francisco retirement benefits. In the first installment, we will examine “The Good”: the San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System. By “good” I certainly don’t mean “perfect” or even “not scary,” but I do mean that our system is the envy of other localities. And compared to our retiree health benefits fund (the subject of Part II) the city pension fund is positively fat and happy. Some background: Read More

‘I would prefer not to cut positions and library hours. I would prefer to go after redundancies in business regulation,” San Francisco Supervisor David Chiu said at a Land Use Committee hearing April 6. Proposition I, passed in November 2007, created the Small Business Assistance Center and required the Office of Small Business to issue a report that “makes recommendations regarding the streamlining and consolidation of [regulatory] departmental functions under the Office of Small Business.” That report should have been completed by April 2008. Read More