Controllers, Mayor’s Budget Office warn of persistent multi‑year shortfalls as Fitch downgrades city credit

Summary

City Controller and Mayor’s budget office presented a joint three‑year general‑fund projection showing a roughly $306 million shortfall in the coming year and larger deficits after that, and flagged depleted reserves, pension costs and reliance on one‑time funds—factors cited by Fitch in a recent downgrade.

City Controller Ben Rosenfield and the Mayor’s budget director told the Budget and Finance Committee that San Francisco faces a structural imbalance between revenues and expenditures that will continue to produce multi‑hundred‑million‑dollar shortfalls without policy changes.

Rosenfield presented the joint three‑year projection, saying the General Fund faces a projected shortfall of roughly $306 million in the coming fiscal year with larger deficits in later years. He told supervisors the projection assumes modest local economic recovery, status‑quo service levels and CPI increases on open labor contracts, and that the city has assumed a preliminary $30 million revenue loss tied to the unsettled state budget.

"We issued the report last week," Rosenfield said, noting the forecast reflects both modest revenue growth—driven by property‑tax and transfer‑tax improvements—and much stronger projected expenditure growth tied to wages, benefits,…

Controllers, Mayor’s Budget Office warn of persistent multi‑year shortfalls as Fitch downgrades city credit

Summary

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