The Weekly Digest (July 20, 2025)

Written By Bill Jackson

Happy Sunday, Brionies! Here’s what you need to know about local politics this week and beyond:

San Francisco City Hall

  • Tuesday, July 22 at 2pm — Regular meeting of the Board of Supervisors (agenda here):

    • Items 5 and 6: This is it, folks. After Mayor Lurie’s proposed budget (with some tweaks) for fiscal years 2026 and 2027 was passed on first reading last week, it returns to the Board this Tuesday for a second and final vote before heading back to Lurie for his sign-off. If you need a primer on how San Francisco’s budget comes together, we recommend taking a minute to read this piece before proceeding.

    • Spending in FY26 will remain the same as it was in FY25 at $15.9 billion, before increasing to $16.3 billion in FY27. As required by law, the budget closes a projected two-year deficit of nearly $800 million. It does this through a combination of modest workforce reductions (1,300 unfilled positions will be eliminated and 40 current employees will be laid off), use of one-time funds (though the budget plan does shift away from this kind of accounting trickery next year), and deserved cuts to the nonprofit industrial complex.

    • Unfortunately, these measures are mere Band-Aids on a sucking chest wound. Even the most optimistic forecasts see recurring annual deficits of more than $1.5 billion starting in FY30. The unavoidable problem is the sheer size of San Francisco government, whose budget has increased more than 67 percent on an inflation-adjusted basis over the past 15 years despite the population remaining flat over that period.

    • Much of that growth was driven by increases in the City workforce: San Francisco’s government employs 7,000 more people today than it did in 2011. There are now approximately 4 public employees for every 100 residents, which would imply three-Michelin-star-level concierge service that is clearly not being delivered. In fact, many San Francisco neighborhoods have, out of frustration, established self-funded Community Benefit Districts to perform core, tie-your-shoelaces-type government functions like street cleaning.

    • The bottom line: On a per capita basis, San Francisco’s budget is the largest of any Consolidated City-County in America — by some estimates, three times larger than the next most profligate spender — yet we are consistently ranked as the worst-run city in the country.

    • Fortunately, it seems like we now have a mayor that gets it, even if he’s not willing to say so directly — at least, not yet: “This year was about rightsizing. Next year we’ll be looking at restructuring.” We’ve previously written about what kind of restructuring is needed, but in light of recent developments it may be necessary to go even further. Consider, for example, the hysterical reaction of public sector unions to the proposition of even a few dozen job cuts at City Hall. What will happen when San Francisco finally musters the courage to do what must be done and cut thousands of positions? There are plenty of reasons to believe that public sector unions are uniquely pernicious — FDR, for example, vehemently opposed the idea of collective bargaining for government employees, noting that the interests on the other side of the table from unions in the public context were the citizens’ — and perhaps unconstitutional. While the Supreme Court appears to be inching towards that view, there’s no need to wait on the federal judiciary. In fact, the only laws that protect public sector union jobs in California are state laws. If our local representatives in the Assembly and Senate care more about the solvency of San Francisco than their reelection war chests, they’d be advocating for the repeal or limitation of those laws so that the worst offending government employees could be fired at will — just like, you know, the rest of us in the real world.

Action items

  • Hey, you. Yes, you! Do you have a college degree and at least eight years of experience in auditing, investigations, or compliance? Do you know someone who does? Then apply (or make them apply) to become San Francisco’s first Inspector General, a role established after local voters (foolishly) passed Proposition C last year. Why bother? Because, as John Adams put it, “Public business must always be done by someone or other. If wise men decline it; others will not. If honest men refuse it; others will not.” In other words, if moderates don’t organize around filling this position with someone sensible, don’t complain when you see Inspector General Christin Evans at the next Board meeting.

  • Reform California has officially filed the paperwork for a California Voter ID ballot initiative, starting the clock for gathering 1 million signatures in 180 days. Learn more about how you can help here.

We’re Hiring!

  • Are you or someone you know eager to advance a solutions-oriented conservative movement in America’s cities? The Briones Society is looking for an Operations Manager to lead Briones operations and help build a vibrant volunteer network. See the job description here and reach out to diana@brionessociety.org for more information.

Happenings around town

  • Briones Society events

    • Briones Conversations: Frank Lavin, author of “Inside the Reagan White House” – Tuesday, August 12, 6-8pm

      • Join us for a discussion with Frank Lavin, former Hoover Institution fellow, naval officer, diplomat, and White House political director about his new book, Inside the Reagan White House: A Front-Row Seat to Presidential Leadership with Lessons for Today.

What we’re reading

California vs the OBBB

  • One of the more amusing collisions with reality to occur during the European debt crisis of the last decade (for our younger readers: a bunch of southern European countries borrowed enormous sums of money to finance bloated welfare states while simultaneously working 20 hours per week and taking off all of August; they then went bankrupt and begged for bailouts from England, Germany, and others who were like, “ugh, fine”) was when the Marxist economist Yanis Varoufakis, the leading voice against imposing austerity measures in Greece, was shown evidence that roughly 2 percent of the population of Zakynthos was registered as legally blind — five times higher than the EU average. It turned out that many “visually impaired” Zakynthians were drawing generous welfare benefits, then going for a leisurely drive, playing cards, and even hunting in their spare time. The scandal resulted in Zakynthos being ridiculed in guidebooks as the “Famous Greek Isle of the Blind.”

  • Not to be outdone in wasteful spending, graft, and welfare fraud, about 38(!) percent of Californians — 15 million residents — are now enrolled in Medicaid. Categorical expansions are partly to blame for this eye-popping number. Originally intended to cover indigent families and children, seniors, people with disabilities, and a targeted number of vulnerable populations (e.g., young adults transitioning out of foster care), Medicaid coverage was expanded by President Obama to healthy, low-income adults without children. Then, starting in 2016,  Democrats in Sacramento gradually expanded Medi-Cal (our state’s Medicaid program) coverage to healthy, low-income adults without children regardless of immigration status.

  • But, even before these expansions took effect, California has always been an outlier in coverage. Back in 2010, for example, Medi-Cal enrollment stood at 23 percent against a national Medicaid average of 14.5 percent. Today, most states still enroll well under 25 percent of their populations (with figures as low as 8.6 percent in Utah). So, what’s the deal? To paraphrase James Carville: It’s the fraud, stupid.

  • In fact, survey estimates show that only about 5 million California adults have household incomes at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty line (the income threshold for Medi-Cal coverage). Presumably, some of those Californians have children, some have private insurance through their schools or their spouses, and some previously qualified for Medi-Cal due to disability. So what accounts for the 7 million Medi-Cal enrollee increase, when the primary coverage expansion category only numbers 5 million at most? Don’t make me tap the sign, people: It’s the fraud, stupid.

  • The fact that benefits fraud is a serious problem in California should come as no surprise to anyone, and used to be readily acknowledged even by left-leaning news outlets. So the progressive pushback against commonsense Medicaid reforms in the One Big Beautiful Bill, many of them targeting fraud, waste, and abuse, is disappointing (but not surprising). While the OBBB does (rightly, in our opinion) roll back some Medicaid coverage for illegal immigrants and impose modest work requirements on able-bodied adults, it also requires more frequent eligibility verification (including checks to ensure that deceased individuals aren’t enrolled, with their benefits collected by identity thieves), prohibits various pricing schemes that doctors and pharmacies have been using to inflate their reimbursement rates, and funds initiatives at the IRS and DOJ to monitor for payment anomalies. A good start.

Quick hits

Palate cleanser

This week in San Francisco history

On July 22, 1916, a suitcase bomb was detonated next to the Ferry Building during a parade encouraging support for the US’s entry into WWI. The explosion killed 10 people and injured more than 40 others. Two radicals, Thomas Mooney and Warren Billings, were convicted of the bombing, but were ultimately pardoned after key witnesses admitted to fabricating testimony. To this day the crime goes unsolved, though most historians believe that fellow travelers of Mooney and Billings in San Francisco’s then-growing socialist and anarchist circles were the true culprits.

These United States

We sign off this week with a performance of the Star Spangled Banner conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, the longest-serving music director of the San Francisco Symphony. This unique and unconventional arrangement — which adds a triumphal seventh chord — was conceived in 1944 by Igor Stravinsky, who had recently immigrated to the US. Stravinsky described it as his attempt “to do my bit in these grievous times toward fostering and preserving the spirit of patriotism in this country.”

Bill Jackson
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The Weekly Digest (July 13, 2025)