People’s Budget Episode Nine: Making Cents of it All
This year was my first time participating in the creation of the annual document known as the People’s Budget. For nine consecutive years the Coalition on Homelessness, as well as a number of other community groups, have pulled together to form the People’s Budget Collaborative. They produce an alternative budget that details ways the City can raise revenue and preserve vital services to poor people. Public Health cuts are analyzed and detailed, with emphasis on making the effect of the proposed cuts apparent to ordinary people who may not be used to deciphering the complex lexicon of handsomely paid bureaucrats.
What follows is a twofold tale of psychological horror: a description of some of the proposed budget cuts and a personal narrative of the painful process by which they were identified through the production of the 2005 People’s Budget. In this article I will attempt to make an insufferably oppressive and boring subject modestly entertaining. The reader is encouraged to exercise discretion in identifying sarcastic and cynical commentary.
As a relatively new employee of the Coalition on Homelessness I was asked if I would like to help this year with the People’s Budget. Call me a professional dilettante, call me a seasoned rookie, call me na•ve or call me crazy as hell (I’m used to it), but I smiled over a latte and said, “Um, yeah.” Little did I know the drama upon which I had agreed to embark.
Budget Process Overview
The city budget process is extremely confusing. This can not be emphasized enough. The process works something like this:
- Around December the Mayor sends his directions and guidelines to the city departments on what to cut, what to preserve and so forth. Much of this is done behind the scenes because department heads are appointed by the mayor and are his confidants and protégés.
- Early in the year, departments write their budgets, making the cuts and changes the Mayor has told them to implement. In February departments send their budgets off to the commissions for approval.
- The commissions are the governing bodies over the departments (for example, the Health Commission is over the Department of Public Health) and they can change or modify the proposed departmental budgets. At this stage there are public hearings and people can testify in front of the commissions about the proposed budget in question. Typically the commissions rubber stamp and approve the departmental budgets that are presented to them. In March the commissions send the budget stuff back to the mayor.
- The Mayor, the Controller and the Mayor’s Budget Office create their budget and publish it in big, glossy paperback. In early June, there is a press conference and usually sycophantic media fanfare associated with the release of the mayor’s budget.
- Now the mayor’s proposed budget goes to the Board of Supervisors where they can tweak it, add amendments and make recommendations. In order for the city to operate for another year, they must approve it no later than the last day of July, when the fiscal year begins.
Let the Meetings Begin
The first People’s Budget meetings were lively, a number of community leaders that I admire and respect were present. I felt as if I was in a different league, one of the heavy players, one of the chosen, one of the reputable and credible organizers instead of a veteran slacktivist. People’s Budget. Wow… the big time.
My idealism changed, however, as the meetings digressed into circular tangents that I found myself fighting to pursue and grasp. Somehow I ended up as a point person who had assumed the responsibility of compiling the material. The anxiety was just beginning. Then key players began deserting. Our meetings shrunk to a handful of aspiring policy wonks. They were really great and competent people, there just were so few of us. I started to think it would never happen. But somehow we all still rose to the occasion and completed our mission.
I began to analyze the proposed cuts to public health. It was truly disturbing what the architects of fiscal savings were trying to push through. For example, outpatient substance abuse programs were slated to be cut by a third. The departmental plan was really confusing on this one. Instead of just cutting money from a certain program that can be identified, DPH required all outpatient programs to reapply for funding through a competitive process (called Request for Proposal, or RFP) and only certain programs would get their funding back. This sophisticated and confusing tactic made it impossible to tell who would be cut and who would be spared. In my meetings and conversations with different departmental and city budget representatives, it was revealed that this is part of a strategy to obscure the real impact of the cuts. This also serves as disincentive for programs to challenge the cuts for fear of being targeted. The end result is that about 3,000 poor people would lose access to outpatient treatment.
Some of the proposed cuts just don’t make any sense. Again, take for example the plan to close the SF General Hospital Dialysis unit. Check out these numbers-the total operating cost of the clinic is $2.6 million but $2.3 million of that comes from Medi-Cal (and other) reimbursement. (This reimbursement money pays for an Inferential Radiologist technician and another specialist vein surgeon, who both work in other parts of the hospital as well. These positions would be lost.) This leaves $340,000, which is the amount of the cut. The city is still required to provide dialysis treatments to inmates at the county jail who are currently served at General Hospital. Services for these prisoners will have to be contracted out at private clinics at a cost of around $200,000 a year. This means that it will only cost the city around $140,000 to keep the entire dialysis unit open and preserve a specialist doctor and a technician!
And of course, there is the $550,000 DHS cut that closes Hospitality House Self Help Drop-In Center in the Tenderloin. There homeless people can freely enter, use phones and computers, receive services such as case management, employment training and job placement, all in a friendly peer-oriented atmosphere. There has been an ongoing struggle to preserve this valuable and accessible neighborhood treasure.
There are many more cuts detailed in the 2005 People’s Budget. Copies can be downloaded from here
Say What?
Then there is the rather maddening aspect of interpreting what the bureaucrats are actually saying. This is where it gets really weird. Check this out. The Department of Human (dis)Service (DHS) has a $14 million-plus that came from taking away people’s General Assistance (GA) welfare payments through Care Not Cash. They were using some of this money to fund treatment slots at Golden Gate for Seniors and Redwood Center, both of which are part of the CATS program. DHS is shifting that money to the Citywide Case Management Team and the Behavioral Health Roving Team (BHRT). Now, the Department of Public Health (DPH) will cover those slots at Golden Gate and Redwood by taking away money from residential mental health and substance abuse programs (Baker Place, Walden House and Haight Ashbury Free Clinic) and covering the hole left by DHS. The result is that a number of residential treatment slots in San Francisco are eliminated.
To complicate this, consider that the DPH person and the DHS person I spoke with refute each other in terms of the amount of money in question and number of beds lost-anywhere between 18 and 38, depending on who you talk to. Duane Einhorn at DPH was polite and kind enough to assist me and actually provided data to indicate the cut.
But when I spoke with Jim Buick at DHS, he gave me an entirely different set of numbers and couldn’t provide written documentation to verify his information. I pressed him on this and he said that the money is “work ordered to DPH” and so DHS has no record of what is happening to it. He did however admit that 18 slots at a variety of other treatment programs (in addition to the three mentioned above) were de-funded. Those were Center For Recovery, Jelani House and Western Addition Recovery Services.
I laughed out loud, remembering what Johnny Rotten sang in 1978: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”
This was crazy… it seemed that no one could give me a straight answer. Imagine if I was a struggling drug addict in the Bayview trying to find out why my treatment is being cut. This is the reality. People are being denied services and highly paid bureaucrats can get away with giving sideways, half-assed answers to the public. As I toiled on the People’s Budget I came to realize this quite profoundly. They don’t make it easy.
Mayor’s Budget Released (after four trips)
Here is an example of how the Newsom administration will treat you if you try to dig into their hustle and educate yourself on the budget. At the end of May, some of us from the People’s Budget met with people from the Mayor’s Budget Office. The meeting was polite and they clarified important aspects of the budget for us. They told me that I could pick up a copy of the budget on the following Tuesday. I was told, just come on over and we’ll give you a copy. OK.
The day arrived and at 12:20 I went over to city hall to get my copy (taking off my studded belt to get through security). I saw staff people standing by a box of budget books, holding copies and talking about them. They told me, “We don’t release them until 1:00, that’s the protocol, the supervisors don’t even have them yet.” Silly little peasant that I am, I returned at 1:20 (removing belt yet again) to find the office door locked with no one inside. I went to the mayor’s office and was told by a smiling secretary that “The mayor has all the copies and he is at a press conference at Rossi Playground.” No one could give me a copy. OK. I returned yet again at 4:00 (belt, etc…) and asked the guy at the desk for a copy.
“We don’t have any more, come back tomorrow.”
“What time?”
“We open at nine.”
“Can I get one at ten?”
“Hypothetically.”
I returned the next day with another person and a shiny green booklet was thrust at me. I asked for two. “One per person.” My colleague took one. We left. This whole experience left me feeling dirty and violated, disrespected. I just wanted to get out of that City Hall building, go home and take a shower. I was just trying to do my damn job.
Then I dared to open the glossy 305 page tome to page 206. There were seven meager bullet points regarding the cuts to public health. They provided no clarification or elaboration on the proposed cuts. It was totally obscure and useless for the purposes of understanding the impact on real people’s lives. (I challenge the reader to look for yourself. Compare the document for the 2005-2006 Bielenson hearing [18 cuts listed and detailed] with the 2005-2006 Mayor’s Proposed Budget.)
The whole process is inaccessible to the ordinary person. If I didn’t have some really skilled and experienced people helping me decipher the Etruscan cuneiform provided by the Mayor’s office and city departments, I would have ended up brutally lost.
The point I am trying to make is that the entire budget process is confusing, misleading, obscure and inaccessible. There is a grave injustice being committed upon the people of San Francisco. This money is ours. Poor people have just as much right to know how the City is spending their money as wealthy corporations do. But unless the process is transparent and the government is forthcoming, people won’t be able to understand what is being done.
The People’s Budget Survives
In the end, the People’s Budget Document was finally produced and distributed to people who need to read it. It was hard work. The meetings were small, everyone was scrambling around to decode the cryptic material provided by the Mayor’s Office and DHS. It was rather frantic. We were fortunate enough to be visited by two legal interns who came through and helped the document become complete.
The Mayor and city departments have rooms of full time staff to design and create elaborate budgetary buggery. The People’s Budget had a handful of volunteers and concerned citizens. As one rather cynical and pedantic bureaucrat told me, “Once you have a staff, you are no longer the People, you’re the Man.”
Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered
I’ve seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
Woody Guthrie, Pretty Boy Floyd
James
