The budget's done — gavel down, signatures dry. So today we stop asking whether City Hall can negotiate and start asking what they actually signed off on. If you're just joining, San Francisco came into this with Mayor Daniel Lurie's proposed budget for fiscal years 2025-26 and 2026-27, and a longer-term deficit hanging over it. The reform fight has been over which spending and staffing choices are flexible enough to protect core services and improve outcomes — instead of treating every line item like it's either sacred or doomed. This is San Francisco Politics and Urbanism Daily. Today: a budget that closed fast, a Tenderloin crowd that didn't go quietly, and a supervisor's plan to make nonprofits show their lobbying receipts. Mark's been waiting for this one. If you want to keep up with San Francisco budget deficit reform, tap follow so the next episode lands in your feed. Io Yeh Gilman, writing in Kelly Waldron, Io Yeh Gilman:
While the overall city budget is up to$16.9 billion, a full $1 billion more than last year’s, the current proposal would reduce funding for a number of social services programs, including those for students and seniors. Mayor Lurie chose to prioritize major increases to departments focused on public health, homelessness, and public safety. He also gave police officers and firefighters new contracts that will cost $100 million over the next two years.
Okay, the deficit fight just moved from Lurie's proposal to a finalized Board package — and they got there after negotiations ran late into Thursday night, unusually quick by Mission Local's read. Quick for whom, exactly? And let's be precise on the scale, because this is where people lose the plot. The total budget's $16.9 billion — a full billion more than last year — but supervisors only control a sliver of it. A sliver barely covers it. Last year the addbacks were $41 million — zero point one percent of the whole thing. Lurie had direct control over two and a half billion. So the nonprofits begging for their lives are fighting over crumbs. And those addbacks — that's the term for funding the Board restores after the mayor's proposal — can be a rounding error to City Hall and the difference between staying open and closing for a senior center. Right. Lurie poured money into public health, homelessness, public safety — gave cops and firefighters new contracts worth $100 million over two years. Meanwhile programs for students and seniors take the hit. I'm not against the contracts, but tell me the seniors weren't the easy cut. San Francisco Chronicle, with J.D. Morris:
Supervisor Matt Dorsey intends to propose an ordinance that would eliminate a provision in city law that exempts nonprofits from local rules requiring organizations to register their lobbyists and publicly report when they seek to influence officials at City Hall. In a Wednesday letter to city lawyers asking for help preparing the ordinance, Dorsey said the legislation was intended to create more transparency around how city-funded nonprofits are allocating their resources.
Matt Dorsey wants city-funded nonprofits to register their lobbyists and report when they're working City Hall — the same rules for-profit groups already follow, per the Chronicle's J.D. Morris. All week I've been staring at PDFs wishing somebody would put their name on a real mechanism. Here's one. And the gap he's trying to close is real — under current law, nonprofits are flat-out exempt from the registration and disclosure rules everybody else has to follow. Dorsey's letter went to the city attorney Wednesday to start drafting. And scale is exactly why it matters — the Chronicle says the city has roughly doubled what it spends on nonprofits since 2019. If that much more money is going out the door, the lobbying coming back in can't stay invisible. To be clear, nobody needs a crusade against every nonprofit. A small neighborhood service group lobbying to stay alive is one thing. Well-funded operators treating City Hall like a standing client should have to say so. Here's Bay Area Reporter:
As San Francisco law enforcement officials briefed media outlets about safety over Pride weekend Wednesday, some Castro residents are wondering why it took police hours to respond to an alleged threat of violence at a Castro nightclub. The reported incident took place just days before Pride week festivities began, according to a man who was asked to call first responders by staff. At the news conference June 24, San Francisco Police Chief Derrick Lew promised to reassess the hours that beat police officers are assigned to the Castro.
So the chief stands up at a Pride safety presser and promises to reassess beat officer hours in the Castro — because a guy allegedly threatened to shoot staff and patrons at Badlands, and it took hours to get a real response. Credit to the Bay Area Reporter for this one. The detail that jumps out: John Daly says staff had already called police twice, then he called 311 at 10:55 p.m. — that's the city's non-emergency line, not 911 — and got transferred over to officers anyway. And he says himself, in hindsight he should've dialed 911. Fine. But when somebody's threatening to shoot up a club on 18th Street, the system shouldn't hinge on whether a scared patron picks the right three digits. Chief Derrick Lew's answer was to promise a look at how many hours beat cops are assigned to the Castro. Which, days before Pride weekend, is the moment you'd hope that math was already done. Badlands is an institution — it's been on that corner forever. A press-conference reassessment only matters if the next time someone calls, someone shows up fast. This one's from The Tenderloin Voice:
Hundreds of San Francisco residents and nonprofit staff filled City Hall on Wednesday, asking legislators to restore funding to services slated for cuts in the next fiscal year, which begins in July. Among them were Tenderloin residents, workers, and activists who demanded the full restoration of $3.8 million in proposed cuts to neighborhood programs and services — part of city officials’ strategy to close a projected $642 million two-year deficit.
We just walked through the budget finalizing after — quote — unusually quick negotiations. Meanwhile, The Tenderloin Voice has people queued up all day at City Hall on Wednesday, June 24th, for their last shot at the mic. Neal Wong's photos for the Voice show hundreds — residents and nonprofit staff — waiting to give public comment on cuts to services that start biting in July, when the new fiscal year opens. And there's another scene here — over a hundred people outside Daniel Lurie's office Thursday. The same week the deal closes fast inside, the people it touches are standing in line and standing on the steps to be heard. That's the gap I keep coming back to. And now that the budget's moving from proposal to deal, the question gets sharper: of everything those folks lined up to defend, what actually survived in the final document? Right — that's the verdict I want. City Hall proved it can negotiate, and fast. Now tell me what the Tenderloin actually got back. The Dissent writes:
The District 9 supervisor's return closes a chapter that left the Mission, Bernal Heights, and Portola neighborhoods without their elected voice at the Board of Supervisors since late March. Fielder had initially called reporters and Mayor Daniel Lurie from her hospital room to say she planned to resign before learning she could take medical leave instead.
Jackie Fielder's back at City Hall Sunday, three months after a mental health collapse put her in the hospital and right up to the edge of resigning. And per The Dissent, she's not hiding any of it — she's laying out exactly what wore her down. And the things she lists are the actual job — two BART plazas, evictions all over the Mission, immigrant families scared of ICE. That's the grind nobody sees when we're up here scoring the budget like it's a chess match. The precise version matters here: she told Mission Local she called reporters and the mayor from her hospital room, ready to quit, then found out she could take medical leave instead. District 9 had been without an elected voice since late March. And she's not coming back to coast — she wants two bills moving immediately, with votes at the June 30 meeting. That's a fast restart. That's what gets me about it, honestly — the candor. She put a video on Instagram and sat down with Mission Local instead of letting it leak. For a sitting supervisor, that takes nerve. If you follow San Francisco politics, you might also like California Governor's Race — daily 2026 race coverage on candidates, polling, debates, fundraising, and policy, for voters who want more than horse-race takes. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
What we're watching next: Jackie Fielder is scheduled to return to City Hall on June 29, then appear at the June 30 Board of Supervisors meeting.
You’ll find links to every story we mentioned today in the show notes, so if something caught your ear, you can read it there. That’s San Francisco Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.