San Francisco Voter Guide, Nov 2024

About

For a few years now I’ve been writing an informal voter guide for some friends. It started as a byproduct of my own decision process: I need to figure out how to vote, and I may as well tell you. I’m now publishing it for anyone who finds it helpful.

Before we get started, a bit about me and my political views, to get a sense of whether and where you might agree with me:

• I’m a software engineer who once minored in political science, and have lived in SF for about 8 years now; see more about me.
• I’m a registered Democrat. In general I consider myself very progressive, but care more than many progressives about good government, realistic economics, and general competence. In practice in SF this puts me somewhere in the middle between the “moderates” and the “progressives”, and I tend to agree with urbanists and YIMBYs on housing and related issues.
• I’m not a fan of the number of propositions we get in California. I sometimes joke about the “anti-proposition voter guide” which is not real but if it were it would oppose everything that could possibly be done legislatively. I don’t always follow that theory, but I tend to hew a bit closer to it than most of the voter guides out there.
• I’m very excited about democracy and about the fact that you and I might not agree on absolutely everything. In this voter guide, I’ll try to tell you what I actually think, whether I’m quite certain or not really sure yet. I don’t do “no endorsement”: I have to decide what to put on my ballot, even if it’s a weak leaning, and so do you. (I basically never leave a line blank.¹) When it’s a weaker opinion, I’ll also usually try to tell you why you might choose differently.
• For reference, all my voter guides are available here.
• Needless to say, these are my own views and not those of anybody else.

I may still edit this guide up until election day (and will try to leave a changelog if I do). If you think I’ve missed something important in some race, or have any questions, let me know via the links in the header!

Summary

Federal & state candidates:

• President: Harris
• US Senate (twice): Schiff
• US House D11: Pelosi
• CA Senate D11: Wiener
• CA Assembly D17: Haney

SF candidates:

• Mayor (RCV): Breed, Safaí, Lurie, Farrell, Peskin
• Supervisor D9 (RCV): Chandler, Fielder, Hernandez
• Board of Education (4 seats): Alexander, Cheung, Huling, Jersin
• Community College Board (4 seats): Chisti, Ferguson, McCarty, Zamora
• BART Board D9: Wright
• City Attorney: Chiu
• District Attorney: Khojasteh
• Sheriff: Miyamoto
• Treasurer: Cisneros

State proposition:

• Prop 2 (school bond): Yes
• Prop 3 (marriage): Yes
• Prop 4 (water/fire bond): Yes
• Prop 5 (housing/infra bond policy): Yes
• Prop 6 (prison labor): Yes
• Prop 32 (minimum wage): Yes
• Prop 33 (rent control): No
• Prop 34 (AIDS Healthcare Foundation): No
• Prop 35 (Medi-Cal funding): No
• Prop 36 (theft and drug charges): No

SF propositions:

• Prop A (school bond): Yes
• Prop B (potpourri bond): Yes
• Prop C (inspector general): Yes
• Prop D (fewer commissions): Yes
• Prop E (commission on commissions): Leave blank
• Prop F (police staffing/retirement): No
• Prop G (housing subsidy set-aside): No
• Prop H (firefighter pensions): No
• Prop I (nurse pensions): Yes
• Prop J (school/youth funding oversight): Yes
• Prop K (car-free Great Highway): Yes
• Prop L (ride-hail tax): Yes
• Prop M (business tax): Yes
• Prop N (first responder training): Yes
• Prop O (reproductive rights): Yes

I’ve also put these in a database along with other endorsements I consulted (inclusion doesn’t imply I agree with the endorser or their endorsement, of course).

Federal & state candidates

• President: Harris

I assume you’re not voting for the other guy!

• US Senate (twice): Schiff

I wrote in March about how I preferred Lee but Schiff was good too. Schiff is still good too! (His opponent, Garvey, called UCLA protesters “terrorists”.)

• US House D11: Pelosi

We’re pro-Pelosi now I think? Well, I have always been pro-Pelosi, but one more term in exchange for getting Biden to step aside seems fair in any case. Get ready for a whole mess in 2026 or whenever she does step down (really, it has already started).

• CA Senate D11: Wiener

Our man Scott Wiener has finally found himself something more controversial than housing: AI regulation. Anyway, I care more about housing than AI regulation, and also if Simon thinks it’s ok then it’s probably fine. Also, even if you hate SB 1047, his opponent is a weird Republican who wants to protect Prop 13, so you’ll have to wait to challenge him until 2028, or until we all get turned into paperclips.

• CA Assembly D17: Haney

Legislatively Haney has been great! I’m impressed with how quickly he has started to pass his own housing bills, given the number of other housing bill authors already in the legislature. I wish he wouldn’t spend so much on 49ers tickets, but on the scale of dumb scandals in California politics that barely registers.

SF candidates

• Mayor (RCV): Breed, Safaí, Lurie, Farrell, Peskin

You’ve probably heard a lot about the mayoral race already (almost $20M spent already!), so I will keep this brief.

The main candidates are, on the “moderate”² end of the spectrum, Breed, Farrell, and Lurie; and on the “progressive” side, Peskin.

Peskin is a NIMBY in the truest sense of the word, insisting that he’s voted to approve plenty of housing while passing stricter height limits in his neighborhood, personally making permitting the mess that it is, and literally creating the Historic Preservation Commission. Building more housing is so important as a citywide issue that I think Peskin would be very bad even if I agreed with him on everything else (and I don’t).

Breed, Farrell, and Lurie are more similar. Most of the moderate groups suggest voting for all three (in some order, or any order). They’re all pro-housing (great) and all significantly more conservative on policing and drug policy than I’d like. But:

• Farrell started his campaign by saying we need to bring back cars on Market. He’s since walked it back a bit, but I don’t really trust him on bike and transit issues. He also seems the harshest on homelessness and drug usage, including plans to detain people revived with Narcan for up to 47 days(!).
• Lurie’s policies on homelessness seem the most compassionate and focused on shelter of the three. But he joins Farrell and Peskin in opposing making Great Highway a park, and seems pretty bad, maybe even worse than Farrell, on bike and transit issues. And his main experience is running a nonprofit (funded in large part by his family), which I don’t see as enough for a mayor.

That leaves Breed, who has certainly done a lot as mayor and also gotten in plenty of stupid trouble. But she’s probably the best candidate on housing (and certainly the best on bike and transit issues). And we know she can do the work (sometimes, usually). In this race I don’t think the grass is greener on the other side.

There’s also Safaí, who has already become a bit of an also-ran; his only distinguishing factor seems to be a bunch of union support. I think he’s probably decent, so I’ll rank him, but I doubt it matters.

This is a ranked-choice race, so you want to rank all the candidates (or at least all the ones who have any chance of winning³). Based on the above, my ordering is Breed, Safaí, Lurie, Farrell, Peskin. I could see skipping Safaí (he probably won’t win anyway), or swapping Lurie and Farrell (if you care about transit more than compassionate homelessness policy).

• Supervisor D9 (RCV): Chandler, Fielder, Hernandez

There are four candidates who seem to have a chance: Chandler, Fielder, Hernandez, and Torres. Chandler is the only candidate (of all seven) I would describe as remotely pro-housing; he’s not only the YIMBY endorsee but the only one who seems to understand the issue or have any interest in building less than 100% affordable housing.

Chandler is reasonable on bike and transit issues, although Fielder is perhaps a bit better, and Hernandez seems to be surprisingly not so bad given his past stances (the times, they are a-changin’?). Meanwhile, I don’t like Chandler’s responses to questions about policing; for example he supported Prop E this spring including specifically the car chase policy.

But I can’t bring myself to consider voting for an anti-housing supervisor, so he will have to be good enough. Of the others, they seem to agree on a lot of issues, but on bike and transit I think the ranking is clear.

• Board of Education (4 seats): Alexander, Cheung, Huling, Jersin

This is a big and confusing race! We have 11 candidates for 4 seats, most of whom seem to be thoughtful and actually care about schools. Progress! But it makes the differences a bit harder to parse; and a lot of the usual ideological lines are a bit scrambled.

And the school board has a lot on its plate right now: the budget situation is pretty bad (nearing a state takeover if nothing is done), some schools likely need to be closed (an already-controversial and chaotic process), the Board is considering whether to fire the superintendent, the mayor is sending a team to help, and that’s not to mention the chaos in simply hiring and paying teachers. No wonder only one of the incumbents is running for re-election.

Reading their answers to Mission Local and GrowSF questionnaires, and watching the LWV forum, I get the following impressions:

• Alexander clearly knows what’s up and seems generally great.
• Huling and Jersin are both exactly the polished speakers you’d expect them to be, but seem genuinely thoughtful and quite informed.
• Chang and Gupta both sound like experienced executives who don’t know as much about schools.
• Hsu lives up to her reputation as a bit more traditionalist, and doesn’t seem to care at all about equity (compared to, say, Huling or Jersin who had much more solid answers about how equity and achievement shouldn’t be opposed).
• Lee seems thoughtful in some cases, but doesn’t come off as quite as knowledgeable in others.
• Cheung and Ray didn’t really resonate with me on any issue.
• Krantz doesn’t quite have the breadth of experience we need at this point; I always love to support a recent student for school board but given the state of the district and the number of other good candidates I don’t think she quite meets the bar.
• Eleftheriou seems a bit clueless and doesn’t have anything else going for him.

Ideologically:

• Alexander and Cheung are a bit more to the left (although the field has shifted quite a lot from say four years ago; “we need to hold the learning that’s happening at home” this sure isn’t).
• Gupta, Huling, and Jersin are a mid-moderate slate⁴, with Ray, Lee, and Hsu a bit to their right.
• Chang is the only Republican endorsee.
• Krantz and Eleftheriou have less clear positions.

The endorsements are a bit scrambled: the moderate groups mostly endorsed Gupta, Huling, Jersin, and Ray, while the left groups mostly endorsed Alexander, Cheung, and then some subset of the moderate endorsees. UESF, the teachers’ union, endorsed Alexander, Gupta, Huling, and Jersin, seemingly after the latter three agreed to endorse Alexander.

Anyway, given the huge turnover on the board recently, keeping Alexander on seems like a good default, and he seems plenty thoughtful to merit it. Beyond him, I found Huling and Jersin to have the clearest experience ideas on the issues. Finally, of the remaining candidates I think Cheung probably adds the most breadth of perspective on the challenges of some of the groups of students who need the most support. Some readers may also want to consider Ray, Gupta, or Hsu for that last slot.

• Community College Board (4 seats): Chisti, Ferguson, McCarty, Zamora

There are eight candidates, of which we elect four. After watching the LWV forum I basically agree with the Chron’s take here:

• Louie, Kaplan, and Ramos all seem to have problems.
• The remaining five all say good things, but Wong seems to have been a bit too much a part of getting City College into this mess to feel great about.

That leaves Chisti, Ferguson, McCarty, and Zamora, all of whom seem reasonable.

• BART Board D9: Wright

Both candidates seem great here. Sangirardi is a YIMBY organizer, but Wright also seems quite reasonable on housing. Both seem very good on transit, bike, and other urbanist issues, but Wright seems to have slightly more detailed opinions on transit, as well as direct experience at SFMTA. Since BART Board is about transit, I think Wright is the better candidate, but we really can’t go wrong and I’d be happy for Sangirardi to be elected to something else in the future.

• City Attorney: Chiu

Chiu should stop deleting his texts, but in practice he’s surely still fine, is endorsed by everyone, and his opponent is an anti-vaxxer.

• District Attorney: Khojasteh

Jenkins is the moderate incumbent, who survived the mess of an election last cycle. Khojasteh is the challenger to her left, although he’s much more measured in his language than some reform DAs; his line seems to be less that Jenkins is too harsh and more that she’s too political. (The tea is that Khojasteh was a Boudin hiree fired by Jenkins, although he has aimed to distance himself from Boudin as well as to learn from Boudin’s mistakes.)

Jenkins got off to a rocky start but seems to have avoided too much trouble since then. But she’s still clearly not very interested in criminal justice reform. I’d still like to believe we can have both public safety and just outcomes, so I prefer Khojasteh.

• Sheriff: Miyamoto

The Sheriff’s Office isn’t doing so great. Sadly, not even the Pissed-Off Voters seem to think the challenger has the experience or the platform to fix it, so I guess it’s four more years we get.

• Treasurer: Cisneros

Cisneros seems fine and is running unopposed.

State proposition

• Prop 2 (school bond): Yes

Everyone loves a school bond (except the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association). Seems great.

• Prop 3 (marriage): Yes

Obviously we’re for marriage equality. Given the direction of the Supreme Court, repealing the previous ballot prop banning gay marriage could actually be important, even though it wouldn’t change what’s legal today.

• Prop 4 (water/fire bond): Yes

Why can water supply, fire prevention, energy infrastructure, and agriculture be the same bond, but schools can’t? Who knows. Anyway, they all seem like fine things and it’s endorsed by everyone.

• Prop 5 (housing/infra bond policy): Yes

It’s infrastructure week here in California! Actually, this isn’t an infrastructure bond, but it makes it easier for cities and counties to pass infrastructure and affordable housing bonds (55% rather than ⅔ approval, and exclusion from the 1% property tax limit). This matches what we already do for school bonds. We like housing and infrastructure bonds, so it seems good.

The Chron raises some interesting concerns about various details of the measure. These do seem like problems, but I don’t feel they rise to the level where “reject it and hope to get a better version in 2026” is actually a better option here.

Note that this applies to measure on the same ballot, so it would lower the threshold needed for SF Prop B.

• Prop 6 (prison labor): Yes

Banning slavery seems good!

• Prop 32 (minimum wage): Yes

I’m all for raising the minimum wage! I’m not sure why it needs to be on my ballot instead of an ordinary law? Although at least it allows further increases by simple majority, and other changes by ⅔ majority. So I guess it’s fine. (Note this wouldn’t directly affect SF at all, since our minimum wage is currently $18.67.)

• Prop 33 (rent control): No

In 2018 I supported Costa-Hawkins repeal, writing, “for better or worse, housing policy in California is set at the local level, not the state level”. I was wrong.

Fortunately, today, housing policy is increasingly state level! And that includes rent control; I think the existing statewide rent control law is a decent baseline for how to do rent control that lets people stay in their homes without distorting the market too much. It’s a complex issue and we’ll surely need tweaks, but a ballot prop only makes that harder. If the legislature wants to carve out some narrower room to experiment with local rent control, that may be okay, but a ballot prop isn’t the way.

Additionally, because housing policy is now so much a state level issue, rich suburbs are looking for any excuse to block more housing, because they can’t legally just forbid it anymore. Rent control would give them another avenue. As someone who cheers whenever people push dense housing through in wealthier areas (see recently Santa Monica, Menlo Park), I don’t want to give them an inch.

• Prop 34 (AIDS Healthcare Foundation): No

If reading the official summary of this prop leaves you more confused than you started, that’s because the prop isn’t really about prescription drugs. It’s really about the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and all the weird conditions are to make sure it only affects them.

To be clear, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation is at this point clearly bad; see for example last year’s expose, not to mention their general opposition to building housing.

But this isn’t the way. If you want to stick it to them, vote against Prop 33, on which they’ve spent $35M already. Or ask your representative to support reform of the 340B program that funds them. Don’t encourage this nonsense on your ballot.

• Prop 35 (Medi-Cal funding): No

Man, I wish I could summarize Prop 35 for you, but I simply cannot. There’s a weird healthcare plan tax, except it’s really mostly loophole to get extra federal funding of Medi-Cal. This prop makes that tax permanent, then changes exactly which categories of Medi-Cal spending the money raised can go towards, and finally prevents the tax revenue from replacing other Medi-Cal funding. And, of course, it prevents the legislature from making further modifications without a supermajority.

It’s hard to tell for sure, but this all seems stupid. I’m sure that there are some places where the restrictions on how we spend the tax are bad, but the legislature can adjust that the usual way. The feds may close the loophole, in which case it might make sense to modify the tax further (or get rid of it entirely). I’m open to learning there’s a reason to do things this way, but no one seems to have an argument beyond “healthcare funding good”, and it’s not clear to me that this even increases Medi-Cal funding by more than a trivial amount.

Anyway, when in doubt I say: get it off my ballot. I’m open to changing this, but as of now I see no reason to vote for it.

• Prop 36 (theft and drug charges): No

Just Say No to the War on Drugs, kids. More seriously, even if you think we should crack down on shoplifting, drug dealing, and similar crimes, plenty of evidence at this point shows the thing to do is catch perpetrators more consistently, not punish them more harshly.

SF propositions

• Prop A (school bond): Yes

We still love a school bond! As does everyone except the Libertarian Party of San Francisco.

• Prop B (potpourri bond): Yes

I don’t really love how this bond is 8 different things. Maybe you want to acquire and improve community health centers, but not seismically retrofit Zuck General Hospital? Anyway, it seems like it’s all good stuff so oh well.

• Prop C (inspector general): Yes

First of all, clearly SF has some corruption problems. This seems like a reasonable improvement to enforcement powers: it does seem to have different scope of inquiry and powers than the other similar offices, but it doesn’t create a whole new department or commission to do so, just an office in an existing department.

The opponents’ arguments seem to be either that this duplicates existing departments (but proponents seem to have a clear case it’s different) or that it’s “just more bureaucracy” (but it seems pretty minimal in that respect). It does seem less than ideal that it seems the Ethics Commission’s suggestions weren’t fully incorporated, but that doesn’t seem to be enough reason to vote no.

• Prop D (fewer commissions): Yes
• Prop E (commission on commissions): Leave blank

It seems we have all come around to the idea, long promoted by this very voter guide, that San Francisco has too many commissions. (Or at least, we all claim to.) Prop D is an aggressive form of commission reform proposed by the moderate PAC TogetherSF and their billionaire founder Michael Moritz. Prop E is Aaron Peskin’s duelling prop, proposing a minor (but not entirely toothless) commission reform.

Maybe you haven’t come around to the idea, so let’s talk about a few of San Francisco’s 130 commissions.

• At a recent meeting, the Advisory Committee of Street Artists and Craftsmen Examiners reviewed eight applications under SF Police Code § 2400. Three applications were approved without conditions, three were approved contingent on the artists providing additional proof of their art, one was approved only as to selling “bead craft and pendants with knotting with the caveat of not selling pendants alone”, and one was tabled in favor of a “studio visit to determine craft”. The people of San Francisco, having created the Committee via November 1975’s Proposition L, no doubt appreciate the Committee members’ diligent work in ensuring that only true artists and craftspersons may obtain licenses to sell the fruits of their labor in public, but perhaps such applications could simply be processed by city staff?
• The Advisory Council to the Disability and Aging Services Commission and the Age & Disability Friendly SF Implementation Workgroup both seem to advise the Disability and Aging Services Commission, which in turn oversees the Department of Disability and Aging Services (as well as advising other city departments on relevant matters). Their advice is surely valuable, but perhaps just one combined advisors-to-the-commission group would suffice?
• The Advisory Council on Human Rights no longer seems to exist. Fear not; the Human Rights Commission it advised remains, now under strict Controller oversight. (Who watches the watchers of watchmen, to ensure they remember to watch?)

That’s just the ones starting with A; the Civil Grand Jury report gives a seemingly-conservative list of a few dozen more along these lines, along with a slew of other problems with the way commissions are run, ranging from a political appointment process to commissioners who don’t even show up to meetings. Incidentally, if you think the people of San Francisco need an advisory board to make their opinions known to the government, I’ve got a seat on the Sugary Drinks Distributor Tax Advisory Committee to sell you (but only if you’re a DPH employee who treats chronic disease).

But I actually don’t think it’s the obviously-useless commissions that are the biggest problem: it’s the ones that appear to be useful, but end up further distributing responsibility or even participating in the corruption. When it’s too hard to build housing in the city, do we blame the mayor, the supervisors, the Building Inspection Commission, the Planning Commission, the Permit Prioritization Task Force, the Board of Appeals, or the Historic Preservation Commission?⁵ It’s hard to know – and to the extent the answer is one of the commissions, it’s even harder to know what to do about it at the ballot box. (Most commissions are appointed by some combination of the mayor and supervisors, but the combination varies wildly.) We need to realize that more commissions don’t mean more accountability, and abolish or consolidate some of the serious commissions too, not just the silly ones.

Anyway. What to do about it? Well, clearly, we need a commission to consolidate or eliminate commissions! We have two options before us to that effect: Prop D, a sweeping reform of commissions encompassing the good, the bad, and the ugly; or Prop E, which I would describe as “probably not useless”.

First, D would keep 20 Charter commissions with decision-making power, limit the city to a total of 65 commissions, to be selected by a commission on commissions. Beyond the 20 Charter commissions and any others required by law, remaining commissions would be advisory, and all commissioners would be unpaid. Any removed powers would go to department heads, and the mayor would have sole authority to appoint and remove ⅔ of commissioners, as well as most of the department heads. The Police Commission would remain as an oversight body, but would no longer adopt rules.

If that sounds like a lot, it is. I like that this is an aggressive reform; it would actually materially reduce the number and power of unnecessary commissions. No reform will be perfect, but with D we would actually be starting at a much fresher state. The number allowed seems like plenty (it’s about the number of total non-advisory commissions today). The mayor being able to remove department heads is probably fine (Breed has set things up that way anyway, although that practice is now banned).

There are some real problems with D, though. The limitation against additional decision-making commissions seems a bit too strict; there may be at least a few more that make sense to keep, like the Library Commission, which would not be possible even within the 65 limit. Additionally, for commissions that meet regularly, paying commissioners seems like a good idea (although it would be good to standardize the structure). I very much don’t like the changes to the Police Commission; that seems like a context where civilian oversight has value (as I wrote in March). And finally, the prop is very complicated, enough so that I assume there are consequences no one has noticed yet. (Indeed, the first version of the prop was pulled because it accidentally handed power to the supervisors instead of the mayor! What are they missing (or hiding) this time around?)

Meanwhile, E is is not quite as toothless as one might assume: for commissions established by ordinary law⁶ their recommendations would go into effect unless rejected by a supermajority of supervisors. This would probably do more than nothing? My guess is what happens here is commission roughly follows the recommendations of the Civil Grand Jury report, which recommended eliminating 15 active commissions and 20 inactive ones, and maybe finds a few more, that some of those recommendations don’t become law leaving us with somewhere around 100 commissions. I certainly expect it would abolish/consolidate only the “silly” commissions, and take a light touch to anything else.

Zooming back out, my view is that the problems with D are not great, but an acceptable cost for a prop that would truly clean house. If it passes, we may need to come back with some tweaks in the next election, but for a sweeping reform like this that seems expected. (Unfortunately, it’s also likely that future props adding commissions will simply increase the magic number, but there’s not really a good way around that.) E, meanwhile, seems much less good, but still better than nothing. Because the props are duelling, if both pass, then the one with more yes votes wins. So my plan is to vote for D (my preference), and leave E blank (I don’t want it to supersede D, but if D fails, E seems fine).

• Prop F (police staffing/retirement): No

We’ve got four props about emergency responder benefits. Unfortunately, this is not a case of parallel structure: they’re all quite different. Don’t worry, they get (slightly) less messy as we go.

The first one is to allow police officers close to retirement to start collecting their pensions while continuing to work. If that seems kinda nonsense, well, it is, but the theory is that great pensions have incentivized police to retire and now we need them to stay, so now we have to incentivize them even more to stay.

There are some good aspects. One common problem with pensions is that the impacts are long-term. That’s less true here because the program is only authorized for 5 years, as well as other limits. (Sadly, the controller’s analysis doesn’t seem to give much comparison to what it would cost to hire new officers vs. retain existing ones via this prop.)

But stepping back, while in general I am open to the idea that we need to pay police more, I do think we need to tie that to results. (Think: pay more, but make it easier to fire bad officers; or give officers who actually do their jobs well bonuses, which wouldn’t apply if they instead cost the city millions of dollars in lawsuits.) Passing what is effectively a bonus to a certain subset of officers without negotiating on that front seems less than ideal.

(There are also some tweaks to the police staffing reports, and clarification of who is covered in those reports, which are presumably fine.)

On the whole, this seems a bit too much “digging the hole deeper” to me, even if you support paying more to retain police officers.

• Prop G (housing subsidy set-aside): No

It’s 2024, why are we still doing unfunded set-asides? I think this is all good stuff to spend money on, but there is no need to require a particular amount of funding by proposition. The mayor and supervisors should just allocate the money! Indeed, they surely will without our votes.

• Prop H (firefighter pensions): No

The emergency responder pension props will continue until morale improves. This one is to repeal the increase in the fire department’s retirement age (to get the highest pension).

It’s unclear to me if this is a good idea. Unlike other emergency responders, it’s not clear we actually have a shortage of firefighters. It’s maybe good to pay the firefighters more, but this means we’re paying in the long term to potentially reduce staffing in the short term? It depends if the presumably-improved retention compensates for the presumably-increased retirements. The controller’s analysis is pretty shallow, sadly, so it’s hard to even know how much it would cost over time.

The proponents talk about firefighters’ exposure to chemicals. But if that’s the issue, maybe we should figure out how to have that not happen, instead of fiddling with the retirement age. So I don’t see a great reason to vote for this.

• Prop I (nurse pensions): Yes

There’s a light at the end of the pensions. The short version is this improves pension benefits for temporary nurses (if they later become full-time) and for 911 dispatchers. Seems worthwhile? There really does seem to be a shortage here. The details of the pension programs get pretty complicated but if it helps with recruitment and retention it’s probably worth the $4–7M it will cost. (As with F, probably we should raise salaries too, but actually we already just did that, and it seems fine to do both.)

• Prop J (school/youth funding oversight): Yes

Seems like a fine good government thing? It’s not clear to me that this is the one thing related to the school district that needs more oversight, but it doesn’t seem like a problem either. Everyone supports it.

• Prop K (car-free Great Highway): Yes

Parks are for people, not cars! There are plenty of other roads to drive north/south in the Sunset and only one ocean. (And those roads have the benefit of not falling into the ocean.)

Incidentally, I don’t love that this has become a prop, but given the political blowback Engardio has gotten for simply putting it on the ballot, it was probably the only way.

• Prop L (ride-hail tax): Yes

Two things I believe are:

• We should fund Muni more. (It has a huge upcoming funding gap due to post-pandemic commute patterns!)
• We should tax ride-hail more, and a tax this size will nowhere near offset its costs (road wear and so on) on the city.

This tax does those things! It also has some problems:

• It’s not really enough to fill Muni’s funding gaps, and we could tax rideshare substantially more.
• Set-asides are bad, although as they go this one seems pretty fine; surely we should always be funding Muni at least this much.
• The tax should also apply to taxis (although of course that would be politically tougher).
• We should especially also tax private cars more for the cost of maintaining roads, pollution externalities, etc. (To the extent people who don’t own cars are users of both ride-hail and buses, this tax is kinda just redistributing between them, rather than discouraging private car ownership.)

But those problems all seem minor. It’s okay for a prop to not try to fully solve the problem. For example, Muni can and should additionally raise parking meter rates as a levy on private vehicles. Fund the bus, man!

• Prop M (business tax): Yes

Everybody get excited, it’s gross receipts tax time again! (Don’t get too excited.) This prop modifies the gross receipts tax, the administrative office tax, business registration fee, the homelessness gross receipts tax, and the overpaid executive tax, previously passed as four different props in Novembers 2012 (E), 2018 (C), 2020 (F and L).

I wish I could summarize the tax changes; they’re very complicated and vary in time, category of business (indeed the categories themselves are changed), and gross receipts. In general, it seems people think that this will cut taxes in the next few years (to help businesses recover from the pandemic, is the idea), but raise them in the longer term (to make it revenue-neutral by 2030). Then it will exempt more small businesses, but also make the tax less focused on the few biggest businesses in the city (so tax the middle-sized businesses more; but also somehow increase the top rates?), and focus it more on sales and less on payroll. The point of the latter two is to avoid disincentivizing offices downtown, especially since the current tax falls so much on the few largest businesses, and they might move office employees elsewhere to save on taxes. But I’m not really sure of that summary, even; the changes are complex and there are probably some of the categories that are differently affected, not to mention differing impact businesses with higher or lower gross receipts vs. payroll.

And that’s not all! It would also:

• reduce the overpaid executive tax by 80% (meh; it was never a great tax but I don’t like how this is basically a repeal but not completely and no one is calling it such)
• consolidate the business categories for the tax from 14 to 7 (fine, but makes understanding the changes even harder)
• provide for the Tax Collector to provide official guidance to taxpayers (such as what category the business is in; seems good)
• change the rules to make extensions easier to get (good, presumably)
• add tax credits for supermarkets (ok), stadiums (don’t love this), and certain lessees in newly constructed buildings (who is this paying off?)
• make the 2025-2026 registration year only 9 months, shifting end of year from June to March (who even knows)

and probably more besides. And finally, it is a one-way conflict with L: M supersedes L, while L doesn’t supersede M, so if both pass and L gets more votes, both apply, but if both pass and M gets more votes, only M applies.

(There’s also another potential impact: the supervisors have recently introduced legislation reducing or waiving a bunch of business license fees, which is conditional on M passing. This is included in the Controller’s report! That seems silly to me; the law is expected to pass but hasn’t yet, and there’s no reason as far as I know that they can’t simply pass the same law without M, so I’m not including it here.)

Sadly, this one does have to be a prop, so I don’t feel great just voting no on principle, even though this is a terrible way to make policy. Most of the endorsers I follow support it, although some are too concerned about the conflict with L to do so. So I lean towards, it would be good if this passes. Given the conflict with L, it might make sense to leave blank, but M’s impact on the city is surely much larger, even if L’s is more obviously salutary, so I still plan to vote yes.

• Prop N (first responder training): Yes

This is the last of the propositions to recruit first responders. It’s not about pensions, but rather a fund to reimburse new emergency responders for their student loads and training expenses. Once again, have we considered simply paying more? With that said, I don’t love having this as a prop, but it might be helpful and doesn’t seem to have much downside. Honestly it probably doesn’t matter that much either way.

(In particular, I don’t like a prop to create a pot of money without putting money in it, but presumably the orgs spending $100k supporting the prop would spend some more on the fund, and if they don’t then it just kinda does nothing. And I don’t see why this needs to be on the ballot, but it’s set up so the supervisors can amend it arbitrarily, so it’s not so bad. Finally, it seems like it’s kinda small potatoes to be on my ballot, but oh well.)

• Prop O (reproductive rights): Yes

You might think this is one of those stupid resolutions that doesn’t do anything, but it actually does some things, including prohibiting city officials from providing information to (presumably out-of-state) law enforcement about abortions happening in SF. Some of this could be done by an ordinary law, but given the national political mess, it seems like a fine idea to have it all on the most solid legal footing available: for so be it ordained by the People of the City and County.