San Francisco’s budget: An outlier among its peers

Part 3 in a 13-part series: Apples to apples — comparing peer city-counties

A common pushback when comparing San Francisco’s budget to other cities is this: We’re not just a city — we’re also a county. That’s true. But it’s not unique.

In fact, eight other local governments in the United States with populations between half and twice the size of San Francisco’s operate as consolidated city-counties, just like we do. So when we compare our budget to theirs, we’re looking at a true apples-to-apples comparison in terms of government structure.

San Francisco still spends far more per resident than its peers.

Politically, the comparison holds too: seven of those eight city-counties are led by Democratic mayors, with one (Honolulu) governed by an Independent. So ideological differences aren’t driving budget disparities either.

Some of these governments also run large municipal operations — airports, transit systems, utilities — known as enterprise departments. Like in San Francisco, those operations are typically self-funded and aren’t part of the core general fund. So to develop a fair comparison, we exclude those enterprise departments. We also adjust for differences in cost of living.

The result? San Francisco still spends far more per resident than its peers.

In fact, our local government spends approximately twice as much — $12,000 per resident. In our peer cities, the average is just $6,000 per resident — half as much.

Multiply that $6,000-per-resident gap by our current population of about 830,000, and you get a stark number: San Francisco is spending roughly $4.8 billion more than the peer average.

Yes, we might choose to do some things differently in San Francisco. But are we as San Francisco residents seeing results and outcomes that justify an additional $4.8 billion?

That’s the question we need to start asking—and if the answer is no, which it certainly appears to be today, then we should support the efforts of the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors to cut the waste and excess.

Sources: U.S. Census, California Department of Finance, SFGov.org, Association of Bay Area Governments, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Standard. Full cites available on request.

Marie Hurabiell, Esq., is the ED of ConnectedSF, working to fix SF and make civic engagement easier for all residents. She is an eighth-generation San Franciscan, attorney, founding team of a health technology company, prior Chair of Presidio Trust board, Georgetown Board of Regents and Stop Crime Action.

Originally published on The Voice of San Francisco on May 8, 2025 by Marie Hurabiell