800,000 is also larger than the population of several states, and local cost of labor is a lot higher in SF, driving the cost of pretty much everything other than buying commodity goods a government might do higher.
15 billion is more than the respective budgets of Alabama, Oklahoma, New Mexico, North Dakota, Iowa, West Virginia, Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, Mississippi, Rhode Island, Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Vermont, New Hampshire, and South Dakota. Of these, only North Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, and Vermont have populations lower than 800,000.
Seattle has roughly the same population as San Francisco and roughly the same labor costs, and has an annual budget of $8.3 billion. At some point you have to just face facts that it's gross mismanagement and incompetence.
Seattle is a city, San Francisco is a combined city and county; it literally has a lot of functions that Seattle doesn't. Add a population based pro-rata share of King County’s budget to Seattle’s budget and you get something not all that much less than the budget of the City and County of San Francisco.
Also, California has realigned a number of what were previously (and are still in other states) state functions to counties, including some felony incarceration that would otherwise be in state prisons, so, even compared to out-of-state city and county combined functions, SF has more it is required to do.
"King County provides local and regional services to nearly 2.4 million residents, with a 2025 Proposed Budget of $10.2 billion and nearly 17,700 employees."[1]
Seattle's population is around 755,000. 755,000 / 2,400,000 ≈ 0.315. 10,200,000,000 * 0.315 = 3,213,000,000.
3.2 billion + 8.3 billion = 11.5 billion.
15 billion (San Francisco budget) - 11.5 billion (Seattle budget) = 3.5 billion.
So San Francisco's budget is around 3.5 billion dollars higher.
It is not that simple. San Francisco budget includes the SFO airport but Seattle budget doesn’t include that. That’s part of Port of Seattle, which is not part of city of Seattle.
Also, sound transit provides much transportation services in Seattle, but it is not part of city of Seattle. On the other hand, SFMTA is a department of city and county of San Francisco.
Since their populations, economies, and geographies are comparable, it seems like the play is to compare cost-to-effect ratios between the two cities on a service-for-service basis. I've done this with my own city before and was surprised to find that there wasn't anything particularly egregious in the budget outside of some cultural events I wouldn't have chosen to support. I suspect you probably find comparable levels of bloat in comparable municipalities, though, so even two municipalities being similar wouldn't necessarily be a good indication that they were using resources effectively.
My point is that unless we understand the government structure, we risk missing budget in municipal government. I pointed out two instances in which in Seattle the government entities managing the infrastructure (airports, transits) are separate from the city/county. They are still municipal governments supported by tax revenues but we don’t see them on the book of the city/county.
How do you draw the conclusion you like to draw if you miss these?
Can you provide some insight into the differences as you see them? And where, just in broad brushstrokes, the mismanagement and incompetence primarily manifests itself? At the high level you cite, assuming those are accurate numbers, my knee jerk is to agree with you, but if you have insight would love to know whether the difference is actually attributable to mismanagement/incompetence/corruption/other bad thing.
I think you are probably not comparing apple to apple. I think San Francisco is both a city and a county, while Seattle is a city within a county. Also, the San Francisco International Airport is managed by the city & county of San Francisco, while Seattle Tacoma international airport is managed by Port of Seattle, which is also separate from city of Seattle. The budget if city of San Francisco also includes Municipal Transportation Agency but city of Seattle budget doesn’t include king county metro and sound transit which are separate entity.
San Francisco is both a city and a county so the budgets aren’t actually comparable… SF owns the port and the Airport as well. “Facing facts” is great when you actually understand the basic facts before making proclamations.
I'm sorry for being unkind, but lazy comments like this really frustrate me. I can't imagine you've done any real research or thinking on this, but still think others have to "face facts" which are coincidentally just exactly whatever you've already decided they are.
Now, I don't know if San Francisco has a bloated, runaway budget or not – it might! But I do at least know that it's both a city and a county; I expect that San Francisco's budget includes operating the ports and public hospitals – that could be $5bn in spending right there!
Endless time is wasted by not even doing the most basic thinking before spouting off.
GDP is just more people spending more money for more expensive things. It's kind of a failed metric for economic productivity unless you think an $8 Big Mac is twice as productive to the economy than a $4 Big Mac.
> unless you think an $8 Big Mac is twice as productive to the economy than a $4 Big Mac.
It literally straightforwardly is. It provides the same number of calories, to a worker who is twice as productive in the $8-per-big-Mac city as the $4-per-Big-Mac city. Differences in per-capita productivity between supercities and hinterlands are vast.
