Budget

Drivers to pay for Sunday parking; low-income youth will ride Muni free

Jerold Chinn, SF Public Press — Apr 18 2012 - 9:25pm

Drivers who plan to spend a day in the city on Sundays should remember to bring their change to pay the parking meter. San Francisco’s transportation agency approved its two-year budget Tuesday, which included making motorists pay at parking meters on Sundays, handing out free Fast Passes to low-income youth and funding for more maintenance on Muni.

City's health plan risks reverting to safety net for poor

Angela Hart, SF Public Press — Mar 15 2012 - 9:26am

Local, state officials must develop new models for care by 2014

This story appeared in the Spring 2012 print edition of the San Francisco Public Press.

San Francisco’s experiment in universal health care, which grew over the last five years to cover an estimated 85 percent of the city’s uninsured, may need to partly return to its origin as a network of safety net clinics and hospitals for the poor as national reforms syphon off middle-class patients. Healthy San Francisco provides medical services to more than 50,000 city residents. But the program could take a financial blow within the next two years as cities and counties adapt to national health reform.

Muni riders speak out at town hall meeting

Jerold Chinn, SF Public Press — Mar 14 2012 - 5:22pm

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which oversees public transportation in the city, faces a $53 million budget deficit for the next two years. At a meeting in the San Francisco Public Library Wednesday evening, the agency was showing off its budget plan and was getting public feedback. We follow it via Storify.

Some San Francisco firms using legal loophole to skimp on health care cost

Barbara Grady, SF Public Press — Mar 12 2012 - 3:11pm

A version of this story appeared in the Spring 2012 print edition of the San Francisco Public Press.

It’s no wonder there is a hue and cry about an uneven playing field among businesses as they comply with San Francisco’s Health Care Security Ordinance. The law requires most employers to provide health care benefits to workers who put in at least eight hours a week. But an analysis of compliance reports submitted by 15 randomly selected employers to the city’s Labor Standards Enforcement Office finds that they spent wildly different amounts on health benefits per employee in 2010, the most recent year reported.

City's transit agency faces $53 million deficit for next two years

Jerold Chinn, SF Public Press — Feb 22 2012 - 12:41pm

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is looking for new revenue sources to balance its budget for the next two years.Despite cuts in overtime and management reductions, the transit agency still faces a looming budget deficit of $19.6 million for the 2012-2013 fiscal year and $33.6 million for the 2013-2014 fiscal year.

State funding ends for California libraries

Holly McDede, KALW News — Feb 6 2012 - 8:15pm

The bad news is that state funding for California libraries has been completely eliminated. There’s not really any good news about that, except that it was expected. This past July, state library funding was sliced in half, and there was a trigger amendment attached to the budget that would eliminate state funding for public libraries at midyear if the state's revenue projections were not met. Needless to say, they weren’t.

End of redevelopment agencies traps billions in local government loans

Kendall Taggart, California Watch — Feb 2 2012 - 10:17pm

More than 400 redevelopment agencies have been officially shuttered, leaving a trail of uncertainty – and a potentially staggering debt load. Across the state, cities and counties have loaned more than $4 billion to their redevelopment agencies over the past few decades, but according to the law governing how agencies will be dissolved, they may not be able to recover that money.

Muni operators deserve payout from settlement, says Mayor Lee

Jerold Chinn, SF Public Press — Dec 14 2011 - 6:04pm

San Francisco transit workers got an unexpected holiday bonus, of sorts, after winning back a contested $8 million in health care payouts that the city initially refused to give because it was trying to cut its 2011 budget. Mayor Ed Lee said Tuesday that he agreed with the decision by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to relinquish the funds to the Transport Workers Union 250-A.

After anti-trafficking team shifted focus to prostitution arrests, police retool investigations

Jason Winshell, SF Public Press — Nov 30 2011 - 1:25pm

Special victims unit to take a new victim-centered approach to human rights violations 

The little-noticed use of San Francisco’s human trafficking task force to arrest street prostitutes over the summer underscores a sharp nationwide debate on how local law enforcement can help rescue victims of economic and sexual slavery. Until October, the city’s anti-trafficking team operated out of the San Francisco Police Department’s vice crimes unit. With the help of a federal-state grant, the team racked up more than 15 investigations of suspected traffickers. But in the spring it altered its tactics, making large-scale arrests of dozens of prostitutes in the Polk Gulch neighborhood, in response to complaints from neighbors.

Some employers drop private health plans for San Francisco’s subsidized public option

Barbara Grady, SF Public Press — Nov 16 2011 - 10:08am

Unintended consequences of city’s effort at universal health care

A San Francisco requirement that businesses pay for their employees’ health needs has led to more workers having some form of health care. But after businesses initially stepped up to buy private health insurance for more of their workers, there has been a steady retreat. Since 2008, a growing percentage of employers have ditched private insurance for a cheaper way of meeting the law’s requirements: city-engineered reimbursement accounts, which cost companies half or less what they previously paid for traditional insurance.

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