Firefighters are demanding the most lavish perks in the city — and politicians are falling in line

By Adam Lashinsky

Editor-at-large

The San Francisco Standard

Published Jul. 22, 2024 • 6:00am

It is silly season on steroids at San Francisco’s City Hall, what with the annual budgeting process colliding with election-year shenanigans. 

Sometimes, elections have a positive effect on governance. Witness the noticeably increased sense of urgency these past months by Mayor London Breed, who is scrambling to change the doom-loop narrative that threatens her job. 

But politicians currying favor with voters — particularly powerful groups like labor unions — often provoke the opposite effect: bad-faith policy meant to score political points in the moment that will lead to costly ramifications in the future. 

Nowhere is this clearer than in the explosive battle that is playing out over a cash grab by San Francisco’s already lavishly-paid firefighters. The firefighters — through their influential union, Local 798 — recruited two termed-out members of the Board of Supervisors, Catherine Stefani and Asha Safaí, to carry their water buckets in the form of an expensive ballot measure this fall that would garnish their pension benefits.

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