When Even Lefties Get It ::: [San Fran] The Worst-Run Big City in the U.S.

This was a great read. Here's part of the first page:

Despite its good intentions, San Francisco is not leading the country in gay marriage. Despite its good intentions, it is not stopping wars. Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, its homeless problem is worse than any comparable city's. Despite its spending more money per capita, period, than almost any city in the nation, San Francisco has poorly managed, budget-busting capital projects, overlapping social programs no one is certain are working, and a transportation system where the only thing running ahead of schedule is the size of its deficit.

It's time to face facts: San Francisco is spectacularly mismanaged and arguably the worst-run big city in America. This year's city budget is an astonishing $6.6 billion — more than twice the budget for the entire state of Idaho — for roughly 800,000 residents. Yet despite that stratospheric amount, San Francisco can't point to progress on many of the social issues it spends liberally to tackle — and no one is made to answer when the city comes up short.

The city's ineptitude is no secret. "I have never heard anyone, even among liberals, say, 'If only [our city] could be run like San Francisco,'" says urbanologist Joel Kotkin. "Even other liberal places wouldn't put up with the degree of dysfunction they have in San Francisco. In Houston, the exact opposite of San Francisco, I assume you'd get shot."

Who is to blame for this city's wretched state of affairs? Yomi Agunbiade, that's who. Metaphorically, that is.

An engineer by trade, Agunbiade was appointed by Mayor Gavin Newsom to head the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department in 2004. Even before Agunbiade's tenure, Rec and Park was the department other city departments pointed and laughed at — but under Agunbiade, it became Amy Poehler funny.

During his reign, an audit revealed, rec centers frequently didn't open, because staff simply didn't show up — and the department had no process to do anything about it. Good news: New rec centers were slated to open. Bad news: Agunbiade's department had no plan for how to staff them. But that wasn't enough to cost Agunbiade his job.

When the city controller's office made the common-sense recommendation that groundskeepers ought to be where they were assigned to be when they're supposed to be there, Agunbiade fought them on it for three years. Running a department where no one knows where anyone is — and no one even wants to know? Not a problem.

Then a report by the city's budget analyst found massive fiscal mismanagement at the Marina Yacht Harbor, which is run by Rec and Park. Perhaps so much money wouldn't have gone unaccounted for, the audit suggested, if the department had installed a cash register. Still, not a problem for Agunbiade. Other reports exposed one organizational or fiscal snafu after another, but his position was secure. In San Francisco, running a city department like a Franz Kafka nightmare doesn't cost a decisionmaker his job.

[snip]

Here are a few examples of the best of San Francisco at its worst.

Finding books in the library is easy: There are logical, organized systems in place. Finding where the money to build libraries went — that's hard. Last year, the Civil Grand Jury could not find — we reiterate, could not find — up-to-date budget numbers for the city's Branch Library Improvement Program. The numbers that were available aren't pretty: Voters approved a $106 million bond in 2000 to rebuild 19 libraries, and $28 million more was ponied up by the state and private donors. That money was spent without a coherent building plan being formulated between the Library Commission and Department of Public Works — leading to such large cost overruns and long delays that the commission abandoned five of the projects. In 2007, the city went back to the voters, asking for another $50 million for libraries — without publicizing that this would fund the five unfinished projects voters had already paid for. Voters approved it. After all, who doesn't like libraries?

Read it all, starting here: San Francisco News - The Worst-Run Big City in the U.S. - page 1