MELsterpiece Theater: Debate Over SEIU Layoffs

At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, the supes debated whether to spend $7 million from The City’s general fund reserve to prevent about 150 layoffs and 400 demotions from the ranks of SEIU Local 1021. (.pdf of ordinance here: Download SEIU Ordinance.)

Here is my dramatic interpretation of the debate (these are NOT quotes - if you want to see or read the original exchange, check it out here):

John Avalos: This was a tough budget year, but the Department of Public Health magically brought in $8.5 million more than we had hoped, plus we’ll be getting several million from the federal government under an improved public health reimbursement law. In light of the money coming in, taking $7 million from the reserve is fair. Also: I think it’s suspicious that these midyear reductions are happening primarily to one union and affect mostly women and people of color.

Chris Daly: The only reason I voted for this stupid budget is because it delayed these staffing reductions until November of this year, giving us time to find money to avoid making the cuts. Lo and behold, we have! The director of the Department of Public Health, Mitch Katz, is the mayor’s best friend — so Katz won’t say it publicly, but behind closed doors he tells me that they cannot afford these reductions. Everybody loves to blab about Healthy San Francisco, but we have to staff it, people.

Sean Elsbernd (After publicly soliciting the info from Ben Rosenfeld and Monique Zmuda from the Controller's Office): Let me share a little something I like to call “The Audacity of Nope.” The $34 million in anticipated money from the federal government is not going to happen this fiscal year. There is not actually $8.5 million sitting around at the DPW waiting to be spent. Because of shortfalls in other departments, overall The City has a teensy surplus of less than $1 million. And even that excess is about to disappear because on Monday we get the controller’s report, which will show that property tax revenue this year is going to be even more paltry than we thought. And you want to take $7 million from the general fund reserve? With a straight face? 

NOTE- CASE OF THE MONDAYS: Rosenfeld's information about the Q1 report that will be released on Monday's sounds very, very scary. Back in August, I wrote that the avalanche of assessment requests might exceed the numbers The City had anticipated and sadly, they do. Thus far this fiscal year, tax abatement requests number 4,000 which represent $25 billion dollars in assets. That's up from 300 requests in FY 2007-2008 and 1200 in FY 2008-2009. Downward shifting the value of so many properties and reassessing taxes based on those new lower values will affect us this year, according to Rosenfeld.

David Campos: Numbers schmumbers! This is a policy choice. Ninety-six percent of the affected workers are people of color and 80 percent are women. It is just not fair to single them out for demotions and layoffs.

Daly: If there are budget shortfalls in certain departments, let’s crack down on them. I don’t see why we should take away the $8.5 million that the Department of Public Health worked hard to earn. We should be rewarding the department that brought this in, not slashing their ranks.  Y’all are always picking on the DPW — using it like The City’s ATM machine and never cutting the police and fire departments.

Elsbernd: If the SEIU had agreed to the givebacks in the tentative agreement proposed last year, we wouldn’t be here making these cuts.

The ordinance required eight votes. With supervisors Michela Alioto-Pier, Chu, Elsbernd and Sophie Maxwell voting no, it failed, but was sent back to the Budget and Finance Committee. Layoffs will begin Monday.

QUOTE OF THE MEETING:

“I can think of no greater Elsberndian thing to say here in these chambers.”

— Supervisor Chris Daly, arguing that Supervisor Sean Elsbernd should endorse the practice of rewarding good fiscal behavior by allowing departments that bring in unforeseen revenue to keep that revenue. Elsbernd later expressed his gratitude for the new adjective, but disagreed on the grounds that budget responsibility is citywide.

Comments

[kwk]

This Avalos/Daly/Campos harping about "reductions... affect mostly women and people of color" sure sounds like they are trying to bully Maxwell into changing her vote.