It always continues to amaze me that big businesses like PG&E, Gap and Clorox continue to have their corporate headquarters in San Francisco or Oakland. Both cities are governed by people who take businesses and the jobs they create for granted.
The other day the San Francisco Chronicle printed an excellent op-ed by Jim Wunderman, president and CEO of the Bay Area Council, that pointed out the many ways San Francisco city government is pushing businesses out of the city. According to a Colliers International report Wunderman cited, businesses in San Francisco pays 100 times it would in Walnut Creek, 10 mores than in San Mateo and double the amount in Oakland. Further, since 1990, 54 of the Bay Area’s top 200 businesses have left the city, with only 37 remaining.
What’s San Francisco’s the latest assault on jobs? Universal health care. Who is going to pay for it? Businesses, of course. I can hear the moving boxes being packed now…
Here’s the SF program in a nutshell: 85,000 uninsured city residents would get city-sponsored health care for the cost of $200 million a year, with the city paying $104 million, consumers paying $56 million with the rest coming from SF-based employers. Mayor Gavin Newsom proposed this idea, only to be one-upped from the left by Supervisor Tom Ammiano. On Tuesday, Newsom and Ammiano agreed to a compromise that, for one, increased the number of hours a week that an employee would have to work in order to qualify for this benefit from 2 to 12. Ammiano wanted businesses to pay the full cost of the program and offer the care to employees working as little as 2 hours a week. The compromise requires businesses with 50 or more employees to start paying for the health coverage on July 1, 2007. Businesses with 20 to 49 employees will be charged starting in spring of 2008. Ammiano wanted the businesses to start paying immediately.
Business will pay $180 per employee per month, with cost increases capped at 5 percent a year. The Board of Supervisors will vote on the deal next week. While business representatives continue to tell city leaders that the program will harm jobs and threaten businesses’ ability to stay in SF, especially restaurants, the supervisors were singing the same old tune: we’re so special.
Here’s what Supervisor Bevan Dufty told the SF Chronicle: “Part of living in a city is recognizing that there is change and that change will take place. And fundamentally, San Francisco is different than the rest of the country. There’s a reason we’re here.”
Don’t ask me what the whole “change will take place” rhetoric is about, but we all know that SF is “different.” No arguments there! Now they will be different AND hungry, when all but the highest-end restaurants close shop and move elsewhere because the cost of business is just too darn high in their little socialistic corner of the world.
But Oakland is not much better and Ron Dellums hasn’t even taken control yet. O-town’s city council is considering putting a measure on the November ballot that would increase the city’s hotel tax by 2 percent to raise more money for the Oakland Zoo, the Oakland Museum of California and the Chabot Space and Science Center. The current hotel tax is 11 percent. If Oakland raises it’s tax to 13 percent, the city’s tax would be lower than San Francisco’s but higher than Emeryville’s and even Berkeley’s. Businesses are opposing the proposal, arguing that the plan does not make any effort to examine the economic impact of the tax increase on hotels and local businesses. Just four years ago, Oakland voters (who NEVER pass up a change to raise their/my taxes) approved a $59 million bond for capital improvements to the zoo, museum and science center. But the three non-profits say that they are still financially struggling. This proposal will be a slam-dunk, I’m sure, since it gives O-town voters a chance to raise other people’s taxes.