Committee sets tone for a bloody budget season

Heads down: A newly appointed Budget and Finance Committee convened yesterday
to begin the unenviable task of reconciling a $251 million 2008/2009 budget shortfall.
Photos by Luke Thomas

By Nicholas Olczak

March 6, 2008

The newly appointed Budget and Finance committee set the tone for budget season yesterday, wrangling over spending $246,000 to save the San Francisco General Hospital Workers Compensation Clinic from closure.

This is expected to be the first of many budget battles in a year where the City of San Francisco faces a $251 million budget gap.

The discussion fell into a rhythm with Progressive supervisors looking for ways to justify the spending. Promoters of the cut are attempting a kind of realpolitik in their repeated assertions of financial crisis.

The Mayor’s Office hopes to save $700,000 by closing the clinic and outsourcing services to another center. The move would involve no layoffs, although three individuals would be “displaced” to other hospital positions.

Defending the cut, Mayor’s Budget Director Nani Coloretti said it would be very difficult to justify spending the money at a time of “such an enormous budget deficit.” She suggested that there was a declining attendance of the clinic while administrative costs are rising.

Mayor’s Budget Director Nani Coloretti

When Supervisor Jake McGoldrick asked if the City could make alternative cuts, Coloretti replied that it wasn’t a case of balancing one cut with another expenditure, that the city had to get out of “a very large hole.”

Supervisor Sean Elsbernd supported this argument, clarifying that the proposal is not so much a “cut” on already allocated money, but a “freeze” on additional spending. He said it would be impossible to find alternative cuts that required no layoffs and no “service impacts.”

“We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem,” Elsbernd responded to Fog City Journal inquiry.

Supervisor Sean Elsbernd

SF General Hospital’s Dr John Hall contested the suggestion that services would not be affected, stating that the clinic is one of just “three clinics that are useable” in the Bay Area.

Dr. John Hall

Union representatives argued that proponents of the cuts were ignoring the financial benefit gained by getting City staff back to work quickly. They claimed that privatizing treatment would remove the incentive to do this and cost the City more money.

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi criticized the City’s failure to subject the clinic to a “utilizations review to improve upon or lower the cost” before taking the drastic measure of closure.

He said that this “epitomizes a larger complaint we often hear from San Franciscans about how wasteful our Government is.”

Supervisor Ross Mrikarimi

Activist Robert Haaland subverted the rhetoric of financial bankruptcy being used to push the cuts, describing them instead as “morally bankrupt.” He said the City is cutting off its nose in order to feed its mouth.

Robert Haaland

The committee finally approved the expenditure with dissenting votes cast by Supervisors Elsbernd and Carmen Chu.

Elsbernd criticized the committee’s understanding of the wider budget issues, stating that other supervisors are “not looking at the bigger picture.”

Elsbernd forewarned that, due to the budget shortfall, job layoffs are inevitable and that “blood will be spilled.”

Nicholas Olczak

Bio Nicholas Olczak is a freelance writer who comes from (the original) Boston in England, but who normally chooses to travel the world. He has contributed to publications in Hong Kong and the USA and enjoys delving into anything political or cultural. He currently lives on one of San Francisco's many hills.

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