Latest news with #deficit
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
SF mayor's $15.9 billion budget proposal includes layoffs, service cuts to address deficit
The Brief The mayor's $15.9B budget proposal calls for 1,400 job cuts in 17 city departments. There are no cuts to SFPD or sheriff's department officers in the proposal. $400 million would be set aside to offset potential drops in state and federal funding. SAN FRANCISCO - San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie announced his $15.9 billion budget proposal Friday for the 2025-2026 fiscal year, acknowledging that it includes difficult cuts to jobs and services which he says are necessary to address San Francisco's $817 million projected deficit for the next two years. "This is a painful budget, but I am hopeful and I am optimistic about our economic future in San Francisco," Lurie siad. Mayor Lurie says there are structural problems with the city's finances, that have led to the city using one-time funding as a stop-gap measure to pay for services, as businesses have left and tax revenues have fallen. "Any job loss is difficult. I take no joy in this, and yet, I was elected to make hard choices," Lurie said. Lurie's 150-page budget proposal calls for cutting 1,400 jobs from 17 departments. Most of those positions have been vacant for more than two years, but 100 of them are filled and would require layoff notices. The proposal has no cuts to sworn officers in the San Francisco Police Department or Sheriff's office. It also maintains funding for the Fire Department, District Attorney's office, probation services, and the Public Defender's office. It would cut $100 million to nonprofit providers and contractors. Funding would be maintained for a 'First year Free' program that gives incentives and support for small businesses, by waiving their fees for one year. Lurie's plan also calls for setting aside $400 million in reserve to offset potential drops in state and federal funding. "Close to $2 billion comes through from the Feds to San Francisco through Medicaid and housing and other forms. So it's a big risk," Lurie said. "I'm going to focus on what we can control and that is prioritizing clean and safe streets, making sure we are bringing business back, conventions back, tourism back." Lurie said he couldn't comment on the city's costly legal battle with AirBnB, which claimed in a lawsuit that it should receive a refund from the city for over payment of taxes. Lurie also acknowledged that the city was in a dispute with the Federal Emergency Management Agency over reimbursements and future funding. "We're going to fight for every dollar our city is owed. Whether it's at the state or whether it's at the federal level," Lurie said. "There was a report and an ask by FEMA. We're going through a process where we appeal that, and so that will take a number of months to find out." What they're saying Labor unions issued a statement Friday saying the city should be more aggressive in raising corporate tax revenues instead of cuts to staffing and services. "Essential service jobs should never be on the line. Jobs should absolutely not be cut. I think the Mayor needs to hold these large corporations accountable," Sarah Perez, the San Francisco Vice-President of IFPTE Local 21 which represents some 6,000 city employees. "At the moment we prioritize investments in permanent housing. he wants to shift that into temporary housing, more shelters. Shelters are more expensive," Anya Worley-Ziegmann, Coordinator of the People's Budget Coalition said. The SFPD Police Officers Association president Tracy McCray said she was glad Mayor Lurie appears to be upholding his campaign promises of prioritizing public safety and increasing the police ranks. The Sheriff's Office also said it was pleased with Mayor Lurie's budget plan showing no cuts to sworn police officers or Sheriff's deputies. "We were asked to make concessions to help support the City's financial stability, including the elimination of several professional staff positions. Some positions in our Records and Personnel Units are currently filled with deputies, who will now remain in those role," Tara Moriarty, a spokesperson to the Sheriff Paul Miyamoto, said. What's next The San Francisco Board of Supervisors Budget Committee plans to address Mayor Lurie's proposal at their June 11 meeting. "We will prioritize clean and safe streets while keeping people housed, fed, and cared for, including individuals living on our streets. We can do this while cutting wasteful spending, reducing our structural deficit, maintaining city services, prioritizing critical city services, and preserving essential workers," Budget Committee chair and Supervisor Connie Chan said in a statement. "We will fight and protect our community against attacks from the Trump administration." "We need to fix the structural deficit. That's a real thing and the mayor is trying to do that. And this budget doesn't get us there either. Deficits continue to grow in the 3rd,4th, 5th year going out," Rafael Mandelman, SF Board of Supervisors President said. Click to open this PDF in a new window.
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Walkersville cuts stormwater projects, uses money from savings to fill budget gap
Walkersville will cut $400,000 in stormwater funds and shift more than $400,000 from the town's savings to help close a nearly million-dollar gap in the town's budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The town's commissioners voted 4-1 Wednesday night to approve the fiscal year 2026 budget, which begins July 1. The budget keeps the town's property tax rate of 14 cents per $100,000 of assessed value the same. Commissioners Tom Gilbert, Betsey Whitmore Brannen, Russ Winch, and Chris Ragen voted in favor of the budget, with Commissioner Bob Yoder opposed. Yoder said he opposed the proposal because the town should have looked at other expenses to eliminate rather than continuing to take money from savings. The commissioners had faced a $921,548 deficit to balance the town's proposed $6.2 million budget. The proposed budget had $2 million for the town's agreement with the Maryland State Police to provide police protection for the town. But the latest estimate from Maryland State Police was $1.83 million, Town Manager Sean Williams said. After including $70,000 to cover possible overtime costs for the troopers, the additional savings could provide $100,000 in savings, Williams said. The commissioners also voted to eliminate $400,000 out of a proposed $500,000 in stormwater projects, and put the money toward the deficit. Many of the stormwater projects are still in the administrative or developmental stages, and the $500,000 isn't likely to be spent in the upcoming fiscal year, Williams said. The town will transfer $421,548 from about $5.8 million in available savings to cover the rest of the deficit. Yoder, who was elected to the board in September, criticized the decision to draw from savings, pointing to the town's 'astronomical' payments for police and almost $1.2 million in capital projects. The town cannot continue to spend more than it takes in, he said. 'We have to make decisions now, and stop kicking the can down the road,' he said. Former Commissioner Mary Ann Brodie-Ennis was the only member of the public to speak at a public hearing before the budget vote, and expressed concern about taking money from reserves again. Brodie-Ennis, who lost her re-election bid in the September election, said she was also concerned last year, when the commissioners voted to take $1.3 million from savings. Commissioner Tom Gilbert said he shares some concerns about dipping into savings to fill out the budget, and thinks the town will soon have to look at increasing its tax rate. Winch said that, of all of the municipalities in Maryland, Walkersville's tax rate is the 16th lowest in the state. Looking at the town's needs and growth, its expenses will continue to increase, he said. 'I think we've hit that point where we're going to have to have a step increase in taxes,' he said. Whitmore Brannen said she agreed with Yoder that the town will have to look at cutting some capital expenses. Ragen noted that the town voted last year to raise water rates by 20% that year and 3% each of the next four years. After the budget vote, the commissioners approved a motion by Yoder to form a subcommittee to talk about the future of public safety in the town. The vote was 4-1, with Gilbert, Whitmore Brannen, Ragen, and Yoder in support and Winch opposed. Winch said the town knows its options: stay with MSP, create its own police force, or sign a contract with the Frederick County Sheriff's Office for police coverage. Burgess Chad Weddle agreed that the town has examined the issue three or four times over the years. 'We've looked at various things at different times,' he said.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Scorecard: How Musk and DOGE could end up costing more than they save
A version of this story appeared in CNN's What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here. Rather than set government straight, Elon Musk is leaving Washington with the federal budget all cattywampus. Deficit spending is increasing, not waning, and there is a growing school of thought that his 'efficiency' effort could end up costing the government as much as or more than it saved. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO came to Washington with a cut-till-it-hurts mindset and carte blanche from President Donald Trump. Musk quickly dialed back his campaign-trail bravado of cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget, but as recently as a Fox News interview in March, he said that by the time he left government, his Department of Government Efficiency 'will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars….' Instead, Musk will leave government work 'disappointed' that the Republicans he helped put in power are working to pass a bill that is estimated to add some $3.8 trillion in deficit spending and which Trump calls 'big' and 'beautiful.' There's no accounting trick to correct that imbalance. The budget is trillions out of whack, and the shock-and-awe campaign Musk and Trump imposed across the federal workforce has led to some serious PTSD for federal workers and contractors while claiming only to have saved $175 billion. That's not chump change, but it's not going to radically reform the US government. What's listed on the still-rudimentary DOGE website is also not an accurate reflection of what the group might actually have accomplished. DOGE will live on in the White House, 'like Buddhism' without Buddha, Musk has said, and CNN has reported that more cuts are planned after his departure. But the pace of DOGE activity has slowed, at least as reflected on its website. Musk's departure is an opportunity to consider whether the Department of Government Efficiency has lived up to its name. CNN's Casey Tolan is among the reporters who have been trying to match what DOGE claims to have saved or cut with what has actually been trimmed. Picking apart the 'estimated savings' of $175 billion on the DOGE website, Tolan told me that less than half that figure is backed up with even the most basic documentation. That means it's possible only even to start investigating about $32 billion of savings from terminated contracts, $40 billion of savings from terminated grants and $216 million of savings from terminated leases that DOGE claims. Plus, some of the specific terminations that are included in those numbers have no details at all. And Tolan has reported on the fact that DOGE's tally has 'been marred by various errors and dubious calculations throughout the entire time they've been releasing this info.' Probably not. The figure is based on '161 million individual federal taxpayers,' according to the DOGE website, which drastically undercounts taxpayers in the US. That 161 million figure is more likely a reflection of individual tax returns and would not reflect married people who file jointly, according to Betsey Stevenson, a former chief economist at the US Department of Labor during the Obama administration who is now a professor at the University of Michigan. 'This distinction is about trying to get that number as large as possible. If instead it was expressed as per American then it would be $514,' and only if you assume DOGE has saved $175 billion, which it probably has not, she told me in an email. Workers who generated revenue from the government have been fired, Stevenson points out. For example, staffing cuts at the IRS will mean the US brings in less revenue — but so will operating national parks short-staffed. Plus, a universe of litigation related to DOGE's efforts to cancel contracts and fire workers seemingly without cause is percolating through courts. 'In total, estimates suggest that what has been spent to generate these cuts may be as great as the cuts. In the long run, it's not clear that DOGE generated any savings,' she said. Max Stier, CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, has estimated in a back-of-the-envelope way that DOGE cuts could end up costing the US $135 billion simply because it will need to retrain and rehire elements of the work force that have been let go. The federal workforce is literally in trauma — something Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, said was an aim of his. Stier estimates the federal workers will be much less productive after DOGE's efforts, for a variety of reasons. Workers are now worried about losing jobs; their morale is depleted; they are distracted from their work; and many top performers are being reassigned or are leaving entirely. In a previous interview, Stier described the DOGE effort to me as 'arson of a public asset.' We probably can't, according to Nat Malkus, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has tried to keep track of DOGE's accounting for its cuts. While Musk has promised maximum transparency, it has been impossible to verify much of what DOGE has said it has done. 'We expect the government to show receipts,' Malkus told me in a phone interview. 'And the receipts that DOGE has shown that are posted publicly are nonetheless woefully inadequate to back their claims,' he said. Far from fundamentally changing government, the savings DOGE claims won't actually be realized unless and until Congress, which has the power of the purse in the Constitution, passes a rescission bill to claw back the funding. 'So far, we've just canceled contracts,' he said. 'The money is still spent because Congress spends the money.' The DOGE effort has certainly changed the tenor of the conversation around government spending. Its aggressiveness came as a shock to many Americans. 'They have shown that they're willing to inflict pain in the pursuit of reducing government expenditures,' Malkus said, adding that most Americans think the government spends too much money. 'That resolve is something rare and potentially valuable,' Malkus said. DOGE also brought in a tech mindset of cutting more than is necessary with the aim of building back, something that could be argued occurred with the rehiring of nuclear safety workers, for instance, or the reinstatement of certain contracts. Jessica Tillipman, an expert in government procurement law at George Washington University, is troubled by the idea that the government has gone from being the best business partner to one contractors approach with caution. 'The government's not acting like a good business partner right now,' Tillipman said. 'They're squeezing contracts that have been fairly negotiated between the government and contractors.' It's always possible DOGE could end up reforming government in positive ways, but the evidence is not yet there, Tillipman said. 'What have we seen? You require everybody to come back to work and you don't have office space,' she said as one example. 'You have people doing work that they're not trained to do. You have talent drains,' Tillipman said, pointing out that most of the government firings so far were among recently hired workers often brought on with a particular expertise. 'Half the training programs for the government have been canceled, so these pipelines that the government spent decades working on to make sure that there's a steady supply and the government's an attractive place for high-quality talent have gone away.' The long-term effect of those changes will not be clear for some time. 'There's a long way to go before this is going to actually shift the way agencies work,' Malkus said. 'It just takes longer than four months.' Stevenson pointed out that despite everything DOGE claimed to do, government outlays are on track to rise by 9% in 2025 compared with 2024. That's because Americans are living longer and drawing more from programs like Medicare and Social Security. It's those programs that are driving the deficit and debt, not the discretionary spending Musk targeted. 'Chainsaws and bluster can't solve the yawning gap between revenue and spending that has led American debt to rise to unsustainable levels,' Stevenson said.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Interim WS/FCS leader faces funding chasm
A member of the N.C. State Board of Education who has experience as a superintendent is stepping in to help lead the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools deal with a deficit that has exploded in recent weeks to nearly $80 million. Catty Quiroz Moore will serve as interim superintendent while the WS/FCS Board of Education works to hire a permanent replacement for Superintendent Tricia McManus, who will retire at the end of June, WS/FCS announced Tuesday night. Moore has spent more than three decades in North Carolina public schools. She currently serves as an at-large member of the State Board of Education and recently completed a term as interim superintendent of Durham Public Schools, where she provided critical leadership during a time of fiscal uncertainty, a WS/FCS press release said. From 2018 to 2023, Moore was the superintendent of the Wake County Public School System, the largest district in North Carolina. 'Fiscal uncertainty' barely begins to describe the problems facing WS/FCS, which have compounded alarmingly the past two months. What had been announced in March as an $8 million deficit facing the school district for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, now has become $42 million, according to a May 22 letter McManus sent the State Board of Education. The school board will entirely drain its unspent reserves and will still owe the state of North Carolina $18 million, the letter said. In addition, what had been in March a projected $16 million deficit in the fiscal year that begins July 1 has more than doubled. McManus told the school board Tuesday more than $23 million in cuts, which include a reduction of over 200 positions, has been identified for the 2025-26 fiscal year, but school officials are seeking another $13 million. Among cuts under consideration, McManus said: Eliminating transportation for elementary and middle school students attending choice, or magnet, schools would save the district $3.5 million; increasing class sizes by one student would save approximately $3.5 million; and increasing class sizes by two students would save about $6.6 million. Other possible measures include not completely covering employees' dental insurance, which the district currently does; eliminating out-of-state travel; eliminating staff cellphones; doing only black-and-white printing; and ending the waxing of school floors except for corridors. Two school board members, Robert Barr and Susan Miller, called for firing McManus and said that Chief Financial Officer Thomas Kranz should have been fired rather than allowed to resign on May 9. Barr said he often hears from local residents upset about the district's budget shortfalls. 'Our CFO was allowed to resign. In reality, he should not have been able to resign,' Barr said. 'He should be terminated.' Miller suggested firing McManus on the spot, but her motion violated the school board's rules of order, so it did not come to a vote. Board member Richard Watts called suggestion of firing McManus 'political grandstanding.' In a press conference after the meeting, board vice chair Alex Bohannon said firing McManus would be an overreaction. 'I think it can be very easy to look at ... the simple solution, which is, 'I need to find a single person to be able to blame for this, and then I need to hold them accountable and hold their feet to the fire,' and I understand that completely,' Bohannon said. 'I also would say that, like school system finance, the answer to that is really nuanced.'
Khaleej Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Khaleej Times
Musk to exit US government role after rare break with Trump
Billionaire Elon Musk on Wednesday announced he was leaving his role in US government, intended to reduce federal spending, shortly after his first major break with President Donald Trump over his signature spending bill. "As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President Donald Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending," he wrote on his social media platform X. "The DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government," he added. The South African-born tech tycoon had said Trump's bill would increase the deficit and undermine the work of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has fired tens of thousands of people. Musk — who was a constant presence at Trump's side before pulling back to focus on his Space X and Tesla businesses — also complained that DOGE had become a "whipping boy" for dissatisfaction with the administration. "I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing," Musk said in an interview with CBS News, an excerpt of which aired late Tuesday. Trump's "One Big, Beautiful Bill Act" — which passed the US House last week and now moves to the Senate — offers sprawling tax relief and spending cuts and is the centrepiece of his domestic agenda. But critics warn it will decimate health care and balloon the national deficit by as much as $4 trillion over a decade. "A bill can be big, or it can be beautiful. But I don't know if it can be both. My personal opinion," Musk said in the interview, which will be aired in full on Sunday. The White House sought to play down any differences over US government spending, without directly naming Musk. "The Big Beautiful Bill is NOT an annual budget bill," Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said on Musk's social network, X, after the tech titan's comments aired. All DOGE cuts would have to be carried out through a separate bill targeting the federal bureaucracy, according to US Senate rules, Miller added. But Musk's comments represented a rare split with the Republican president whom he helped propel back to power, as the largest donor to his 2024 election campaign. 'Whipping boy' Trump tasked Musk with cutting government spending as head of DOGE, but after a feverish start Musk announced in late April he was mostly stepping back to run his companies again. Musk complained in a separate interview with the Washington Post that DOGE, which operated out of the White House with a staff of young technicians, had become a lightning rod for criticism. "DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything," Musk told the newspaper at the Starbase launch site in Texas ahead of Space X's latest launch on Tuesday. "Something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it." Musk blamed entrenched US bureaucracy for DOGE's failure to achieve all of its goals — although reports say his domineering style and lack of familiarity with the currents of Washington politics were also major factors. "The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized," he said. "I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least." Musk has previously admitted that he did not achieve all his goals with DOGE even though tens of thousands of people were removed from government payrolls and several departments were gutted or shut down. Musk's own businesses suffered in the meantime. Protesters against the cost-cutting targeted Tesla dealerships while arsonists even torched a few of the electric vehicles, and the firm's profits slumped. "People were burning Teslas. Why would you do that? That's really uncool," Musk told the Post. Musk has also been focusing on Space X after a series of fiery setbacks to his dreams of colonizing Mars -- the latest of which came on Tuesday when its prototype Starship exploded over the Indian Ocean. The tycoon last week also said he would pull back from spending his fortune on politics, having spent around a quarter of a billion dollars to support Trump.
