Newsom Plays Politics With the Health Department’s Budget

by Paul Hogarth, 2007-06-06

On May 22nd, Gavin Newsom told members of SEIU Local 1021 (i.e., City workers and non-profits who contract with the City) that they will be “pleased” with the upcoming budget. He also said that the City will avoid outsourcing jobs, “even if it’s going to cost us more money.” But the Mayor’s proposed budget includes $6.9 million in cuts to the Health Department, and eliminates or reduces funding for 17 non-profits who provide services for low-income clients. It would also outsource emergency and inpatient psychiatric services and close down the Worker’s Comp Clinic at S.F. General Hospital.

These cuts barely represent more than one tenth of one percent of a six billion dollar budget. Everyone expects that the Board of Supervisors will restore these cuts after hearing public testimony on June 19th. But it will also force non-profits to spend time at City Hall fighting to save their jobs when they could be using that time to provide vital services. It’s a “dog-and-pony” show that has happened before, and it keeps the Supervisors busy listening to hours of public comment when they could be tackling other parts of the budget. Fortunately, Chris Daly and Tom Ammiano have already taken the pro-active step to restore some of these cuts.

Politicos who’ve been around long enough may remember the late Eric Allen Bass (a.k.a. Joe Fire), the black gay Rebublican blogger who worked on Newsom’s mayoral campaign and wrote about San Francisco politics. I almost never agreed with what he had to say, but in June 2004 – at the peak of budget season at City Hall – he wrote an extremely cogent analysis that could be written today:

For the third consecutive year, a Mayor submitted a budget to the Board of Supervisors calling for cuts to key health care services. There's every expectation that these cuts will be restored by the Board, still there's something wrong with forcing people who have severe service needs have to come down to city hall and beg for services that most folks would agree are very important - and needed.

My working theory on this is that the Mayor makes these - all and all minor cuts (5 Million bucks is not a lot in a 5 BILLION dollar budget) to the budget in this important area just to give the Budget committee something to do. In turn the budget committee holds hearings where they listen to everyone and at the end of the process can claim that they saved these key programs. All this seems to be a way for the Mayor to give the Board something to do - and it's ridiculous!

The San Francisco Police Department received a 10 million dollar increase to its budget. I'm sure that increase is needed - so fine. However, we'll never get into an in-depth examination of that increase or other more hidden expenditures as the focus will be more on cuts to healthcare. It all looks like a silly and dangerous game.

Tuesday's public hearing on healthcare lasted over 6 hours and had an endless number of people speak to all the problems that will be caused if the cuts are adopted. Wouldn't it be interesting if citizens and staff of the Police Department called for a hearing before the full Board to complain about a 5 Million Dollar cut to its budget?

As Yogi Berra said, “it’s déjà vu all over again.” This year, the Mayor wants to increase police salaries by 8% while non-profit salaries would only be upped by 2.4%. But the Board will be too pre-occupied with the proposed $6.9 million cuts in the Health Department to worry about that, which should consume their time during the add-back process. While a cynic would argue that restoring the cuts gives Supervisors “something to do,” what it really does is prevent them from working on anything else.

Many of the non-profit services that the Mayor wants cut have a good reputation in the community – needle exchange for youth at the Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center, emergency housing subsidies at the Positive Resource Center, drug prevention programs at the D.O.P.E. project, and a homeless drop-in center on 13th Street. These groups can mobilize their members and volunteers at City Hall for another six-hour hearing and after hours of testimony, nobody expects that they’ll really be cut.

For the SRO Collaboratives in Chinatown, the Mission and the Central City, the Mayor proposes a $233,000 across-the-board budget cut. These agencies provide a wide variety of services for low-income hotel tenants, and have been credited with encouraging housing stability for formerly homeless people. The Tenderloin Housing Clinic (who publishes Beyond Chron) runs the Central City Collaborative, and our various projects are on hold for the next two weeks to mobilize a good turnout at the City Hall hearings.

But here’s the kicker. The SRO Collaboratives don’t get their money from the Health Department – they get it from the Department of Building Inspection, which then sends the money to DPH to administer the program. Cutting $233,000 from the Collaboratives out of the DPH Budget won’t save a dime for the city because the money doesn’t come from the Health Department. It makes no sense to scare a group of low-income tenants about budget cuts that aren’t going to happen.

In fact, we already went through this nonsense last April when Public Health Director Mitch Katz recommended cutting off the Collaboratives entirely. After Beyond Chron pointed out that it won’t save any money, the Health Department backed off. Now, apparently, the Mayor’s Office is trying to do it again. The definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Before leaving the SEIU meeting where he was seeking an early endorsement, Newsom said, “I didn’t make any commitments tonight that I can’t keep.” But it doesn’t seem like he did that if he told them they would be “pleased” with the budget. It’s unconscionable for Newsom to scare a large group of non-profits, City employees and their clients about budget cuts in the Health Department that will probably fail to materialize. And now the Board of Supervisors will have spend hours listening to public pleas to restore these cuts, meaning that they won’t have time to do anything else substantive.

Yesterday, Chris Daly and Tom Ammiano took the pro-active step by making a motion to amend the budget – restore some of the cuts in AIDS funding and psychiatric beds at SF General. They also moved to put the affordable housing package that was funded through the Supplemental (i.e., the one that the Mayor refuses to spend) back into the Mayor’s budget. Incredibly, Newsom reacted by calling it “one of the most transparent political moves in San Francisco history.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Beyond Chron is published by the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, whose employees are represented by SEIU Local 1021. The Central City SRO Collaborative, who is threatened with being cut, is also run by the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. Send feedback to paul@beyondchron.org