zlacker

>>rntn+(OP)
San Francisco's budget is around $15 billion, which is larger than that of many states, for a population of around 800,000

>>apsec1+Oa
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.

>>dragon+lc
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.

>>Analem+Fd
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.

>>dragon+bh
"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.

[1] - https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/executive/governance-leadersh...

>>lurk2+X61
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.

>>apex3s+Zy1
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.

>>lurk2+FP1
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?