SF Approves Twitter Tax Break Deal

IMHO, this entire 1.5% payroll tax should go. And while we're at it, lets bring the property tax below 1%. And sales tax should go back to the 8% that it used to be.<p>Yesterday I got an email from SEIU (the government employees union), asking me to write in opposing this deal. It turns out there are over 14,000 city employees in the City + County of SF. For a population of under 800,000 . Wow. And in last years election, they were pushing hard for a ballot initiative that would have slapped an additional tax on hotel rooms.<p>There is just too much bureaucracy in this city. As revenues have gone up, the bureaucracy has ballooned. The City's annual budget is $6 Billion; and yet they can't find the $300K to support the SF Botanical Garden? In the meantime, personnel costs keep skyrocketing. Politicians keep hiring their cronies. For example: a local politician served before there was a law providing for healthcare benefits upon retirement for politicians. So he was hired for a month on the City payroll; his previous service counted, and voila! Now he has subsidized healthcare for the rest of his life. Lucrative Parking Garage management contracts are awarded at below market rates to cronies, who make a tidy profit.<p>Abuse is rampant all across San Francisco. The only way to stop is to stop the flow of funds that enables such abuse.<p>[edit: I had written 34,000 earlier; corrected it to 14,000 <i>City</i> employees]

Actually, San Francisco got it right.<p>Instead of giving Twitter a tax break, they're giving anyone who moves into mid-market or the Tenderloin a tax break. Mid-market has been a blight for decades and plans to revitalize the area have never panned out. The Tenderloin (especially lower Tenderloin), isn't any better.<p>I think this is a great alternative to the city dumping money into the area. It'll create a powerful incentive to move there regardless of the blight and the effect of a few thousand engineers moving into that area will be dramatic.<p>I just wish it was for more than 6 years since I think it'll take longer than that to revitalize the neighborhood.

Bureaucrats and politicians who make ad-hoc decisions like this do a lot of indirect damage to companies. What they have effectively done is raised uncertainty for businesses in SF. Will we get a break? Will our competition? Etc, etc. Uncertainty adds to risk and risk adds to costs.

Apologies in advance for sounding so pessimistic, but this is just another example of <i>beggar-thy-neighbor</i> tax/tax-break policies that limit government revenue potential.

This is outrageous and, in my opinion, is unconstitutional. Americans and American businesses are entitled to equal protection under the law, and handing out customized tax breaks to a couple neighborhoods in order to benefit a specific company is shameful and corrupt.