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Committee refers mandatory local-hire ordinance to full Board after lengthy debate and technical amendments
Summary
After extended presentations from OED and the Controller’s Office, and hours of public testimony, the Budget & Finance Committee agreed to technical amendments to a mandatory local-hire ordinance (25% escalating to 50% by trade, specialty exemptions, bankable hours, incentives/penalties) and referred the ordinance to the full Board without recommendation for further consideration.
The Budget & Finance Committee on Tuesday referred a proposed mandatory local-hire ordinance to the full Board of Supervisors without recommendation after an extended public hearing and staff presentations.
Supervisor John Avalos introduced the ordinance to amend the San Francisco Administrative Code (chapter 6.22g) to require contractors on city-funded public works projects to perform a specified percentage of project work hours using San Francisco residents and disadvantaged residents, to set incentives for exceeding requirements, liquidated damages for failures, and monitoring and enforcement procedures. The ordinance as drafted began at a 25% mandatory local-hire requirement (per trade) with a scheduled escalation to 50% over six years, and included a year-3 market review to pause escalation if needed.
Guillermo Rodriguez of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development outlined technical cleanup amendments to clarify roles for community-based organizations, refine the local hiring plan process for large projects, and correct definitional language for CityBuild-related items. Controller Ben Rosenfield and Ted Egan presented an economic impact analysis estimating the ordinance (at a 50% target) could create roughly 335 construction jobs and inject about $27 million in local spending annually while increasing covered contracting costs by about $9 million a year (roughly a 1% cost increase on covered projects). The controller’s office suggested mitigations — trade-specific targets, biennial studies, and transferable credit hours — that could substantially lower the city’s per-job cost.
Budget analyst Harvey Rose outlined implementation costs (one-time ~$607,000 and ongoing annual administrative costs of ~$1.65 million) and flagged that potential incentive or bonus payments from the city could not yet be estimated. The meeting featured extensive public comment: labor unions, community groups, residents of Bayview/Hunters Point and elsewhere, contractors, and environmental and advocacy organizations gave mostly supportive testimony, with unions and several contractors saying the program can work with workable relief valves; residents and community groups urged mandatory local hire to address chronic unemployment and displacement.
OED offered a set of agreed technical amendments (including clarifying CBO roles, definition edits, and arbitration language for appeals) which the committee took without objection. Supervisor Avalos recommended forwarding the ordinance to the full Board without recommendation to allow consideration of the controller’s and other suggested changes; the committee so referred the ordinance.
