Lurie\u2019s answer was succinct and accurate \u2014 but it was also a convenient rationalization. The city, with a budget of $17 billion, certainly has an abundance of cash. But its leaders don\u2019t hesitate to cry poor when it suits them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When it comes to plugging the $307 million hole in the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency\u2019s annual budget, Lurie and transit advocates aren\u2019t helping out with more money from the city\u2019s general fund. Instead, they are asking taxpayers to dig deeper into their pockets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s one public transit system in the world that makes money, and it\u2019s in Tokyo,\u201d Lurie told me, warming up to the excuse-making case for why San Franciscans need to make up the balance between what Muni spends and what it collects in fares and other revenue. \u201cMost governments take this as a public good and as a way to keep a city affordable and moving.\u201d<\/p>\n
The issue at hand is Proposition H<\/a>, which would raise $185 million annually by imposing a new parcel tax on San Francisco property owners for 15 years, allowing Muni to avoid threatened service cuts and layoffs. Most homeowners would face an additional tax bill of $129, while a richer few would pay considerably more, and businesses would bear 75% of the burden.<\/p>\n Voters have a choice, at least as Lurie and his allies have framed it: Bail out Muni or suffer crippling service cuts that would kill downtown\u2019s recovery and clog city streets.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s get an important argument against this referendum out of the way quickly. Transit absolutely is a public good. Full stop. You benefit from Muni even if you never ride it. You drive on Muni-maintained city streets, for example, and your nurses, merchants, teachers, and housekeepers (and the children of all these and more) rely on it to get to work and school. That\u2019s called life in a city. <\/p>\n The question isn\u2019t whether Muni itself is a public good but rather at what level we are willing to subsidize it. Fare revenue makes up a paltry 8% of SFMTA\u2019s revenues \u2014 about half of 2019 levels. The city\u2019s taxpayer-funded general fund is already the agency\u2019s largest source of revenue, at 38%. I asked Lurie what percentage he thought was appropriate. \u201cI\u2019m not going to sit here and tell you I know the number,\u201d he said. He argued instead that Sacramento and Washington should pay more, and that failure to pass Prop. H would \u201ckneecap\u201d the economic recovery and cause gridlock on the city\u2019s streets. Lurie and other supporters point to timely studies that back up these assertions, including a September report (opens in new tab)<\/a> by City Economist Ted Egan that forecasts a 1% dip in residential and commercial property values if the tax measure fails.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s a stretch to call this a calamity. The traffic-congestion apocalypse Egan forecasts is actually a 0.08% decline in work trips. That\u2019s a rounding error. And property values otherwise are soaring, so any hit to property owners will be more than superseded by the gains of the AI economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n The larger issue with such studies is that they analyze only Muni\u2019s promised cuts and not any other possible reactions. In the real world, employers might offer shuttles, and riders would adjust their schedules. This is no knock on his analysis, but Egan does not envision the city finding the money elsewhere, which it always does.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hotel occupancy is up (opens in new tab)<\/a>, for example, which generates tax revenue that has a direct impact on the city\u2019s coffers. Why couldn\u2019t future tourism gains fund Muni? Additionally, the general fund recently came into $200 million in unclaimed funds (opens in new tab)<\/a> from businesses that pay into a mandatory health-insurance program. Though many in the restaurant industry hate that mandate<\/a>, maybe they\u2019d hate it less if it were funding transportation for their workforce and customers. There is more where that came from. As Lurie says, the city has money.<\/p>\n To my eyes, some of Muni\u2019s threatened cuts actually look reasonable. The agency says if voters reject Prop. H, it will reduce service on its busiest routes; eliminate duplicative lines; slash expensive cable car service; and extend less-frequent late-night service by four hours, meaning more \u201cowl\u201d buses, rather than full-service, in the wee hours. With the exception of trimming the busiest routes, these seem like actions Muni should be considering now.<\/p>\n Even modest cuts, however, would put Muni in conflict with its labor unions, which has yet to ratify Lurie\u2019s across-the-board salary increase<\/a> and no-layoff promise, despite his having said the deal is not contingent on the passage of the parcel tax. Avoiding layoffs is a stated Muni goal of the taxpayer buyout, which agency chief Julie Kirschbaum told me is important for worker morale.\u00a0<\/p>\n The numbers tell the story. SFMTA\u2019s 6,000-person workforce has remained constant since 2019, before the pandemic, even as ridership yo-yoed. Labor costs then were around $700 million, versus $900 million now. Ever-rising labor costs are a fact of public-sector life in San Francisco, and Lurie has shown he would rather buy labor peace with taxpayer dollars than poke this formidable bear.<\/p>\n In that same time frame, fare revenue has plummeted after Muni halted fare enforcement during Covid. Transit fares accounted for $200 million in 2019 and $100 million in 2025. In (opens in new tab)<\/a> recent months, Muni has begun emphasizing fare collection again, if half-heartedly. In September, two months before asking voters to back its tax, Muni started posting \u201cFare required\u201d on the digital marquees of its buses. The Chronicle captured (opens in new tab)<\/a> the cultural aversion to asking customers to pay by noting that one bus operator, responding to pleas from riders, turned off the message. Muni believes fare-enforcement efforts added about $5 million in revenue last year. (It doesn\u2019t know for sure, but it extrapolates from firmer revenue-collection and ridership data.) Progress is progress, but so far Muni\u2019s gains are a drop in the fare-collection bucket.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791988212_205_-S3840x2561-FPNG.png\"\/)
Voters have a choice, according to Lurie and his allies: Bail out Muni or suffer crippling service cuts that would kill downtown\u2019s recovery. | Source: Emily Steinberger\/The Standard<\/p>\n