Muni's budget deficit: Waiting for Biden

SF Citizen

In today's SF Chronicle:

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency could lay off as many as 1,226 employees — 22% of the agency’s workforce — next fiscal year as the agency faces a mounting budget deficit with few other options to close its massive budget gap.

The coronavirus pandemic, shelter-in-place and economic recession have devastated the transit agency’s finances, with fare revenues down around 95% and parking fees and fines about halved. The agency...already cut $118 million this year by freezing hiring and reducing operational costs and service, but it hasn’t been enough.

The tipoff that this is a bogus emergency---or, to be exact, a premature declaration of an emergency---is later in the story when we learn that there won't be any layoffs for 60 days.

According to the State Controller, as of 2019 the SFMTA had 7079 employees at a cost of $583,686,138 in wages and $176,710,724 in benefits. It's about time that the bloated city agency had a hiring freeze.

Except for the people who actually drive buses and streetcars, it's never been clear what all those other people do, except scheme to make it harder to drive and park in San Francisco.

What they're doing now is waiting for a Biden administration to come to the rescue with another massive bailout.

In the meantime, City Hall will target a familiar "revenue" source: drivers of those wicked motor vehicles by "beefing up parking ticket citations," since parking meters and parking tickets have always been a major income source for this anti-car city: Guess which city has the most expensive parking tickets?

See also Muni: Transit agency or jobs program? and Predatory government.