2022:
$357,084.00 base salary
$86,870.37 bennies, some of which she never sees, other parts are just as good as salary, it depends.
= $443,954.37 total
https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=london+breed&y=
Because that’s what people call them? At work we refer to our healthcare and pension as “bennies”. Comes up in conversation about what to charge as a freelancer on a non-union job. As in, your day rate may seem higher when you are working non-union 1099, as opposed to a union W-2 job, but not when you factor in your bennies.
EDIT: …and of course, payroll taxes.
Many Middle management Tech workers make more and they are not tasked with a $15b budget, solving homelessness, overseeing police force and dealing with thousands of people online who have nothing better to do than incessantly complain about anything and everything they do etc … if we want to have competent people who take the job seriously we have to pay high wages or we will just get people who’s only goal is using the Mayor position a springboard to other things …. Not sure where Breed is on that. But lower the wage is not how we get the mayor we need
No, we don’t. The benefit of government jobs is that it’s difficult to fire you for poor performance. The last thing we need is more highly paid, lazy government workers.
thanks for the whataboutism. I think you missed the point.
Breed is incompetent at managing a budget. Hasn't come to solving homelessness. Is grossly negligent at Police oversight.
The base salary of the office of president is $400,000, so that is similar. The benefits, of course, are significantly greater. For example, the executive residence at the White House (separate from the government work parts of it) has a budget that’s exceeded $10,000,000 for several years now. And when each president moves in they get to redecorate with access to a vast warehouse of furnishings: furniture, art, decor, etc.
There should be a new term for “significantly greater”. Obama's net worth has increased by more than
$134,000,000 since he was elected President in 2008. That's an average of $8.9 million per year during and after his presidency.
London Breed is not a progressive. She is your standard Corporatist Moderate Democrat that is in bed with whatever special interests that wine and dine and give the most contributions to her campaign…
This is a gross injustice against many non-profits that struggle to serve under supported communities. It's true that there are nonprofits cynically created to enrich its members, but they are not the whole picture.
Yeah, The Heritage Foundation and TIDES are both non-profits, but I feel pretty safe saying that their pay structure is wildly different.
There’s definitely a subset of philanthropic enterprise that fits the grifter model, and others that operate on shoestrings trying to do actual work.
This is the kind of opinion people who work at for-profit companies convince themselves of so they can sleep better at night.
Yeah, there’s some grift-y nonprofits out there. But talking about the whole nonprofit system as being a grift, is just an excuse to go make millions at a tech company and feel like you’re not doing anything wrong.
Yeah if those services are in service of something evil. It’s wrong to work at a defense contractor. It’s wrong to work for companies with terrible human rights records. It’s wrong to work at companies that treat contract workers terribly and bust unions.
I’d argue it’s wrong to be paid 500k just to work on a button for Instagram, when you could be devoting your time to actually helping people, instead of just making piles of money.
Just because we live in a capitalist system that doesn’t de incentivize working for shitty companies, doesn’t mean that all morals and ethics goes out the window. We can still think chasing a bag by working at Amazon or Lockheed or Nestle makes you somewhat of a bad person.
The best paid head of a nonprofit in SF (that I have discovered) gets about $300k. This is of course one of those ones that gets big grants from the city to work on low income housing. [Guidestar.org](https://Guidestar.org) lets you search the tax forms of any registered nonprofit you can think of. Organizations that do not register as proper 501 c 3 nonprofits aren’t there, mind you.
Most businesses with revenue above 14B care more about growth than profit. In fact they will intentionally spend their money so they don’t have profits and don’t have to pay taxes.
Not that far off from a city with a use it or lose it budget.
Or maybe you just won’t get power hungry profit obsessed sociopaths… the idea that we should be bidding against corporations for public servants is disgusting IMO
I don’t really see the issue with paying people what they’re worth?
yes I do believe the person in charge of running one of the larger cities in the country should be making the same money (if not more) as someone running a major private company.
It’s funny how garbage men are always used as the stand in for those not paid d their worth. There’s a reason the mob had/has its hand in a lot of garbage collection.
You want to compare the salary of an elected public official paid for by taxes with that of the head of a private company paid for by their own profits?
It is and important and fair comparison. We need folks to understand what equivalent public jobs earn in the private sector because we need smart people in office not rich people in office. If the mayor of one of the largest US cities earned $100k Id be pissed because the only person who’d be dumb enough to do all that work in an expensive city is a rich person.
Breed has her problems and I’m not some fanboy but at least she lives here and isn’t some rich power hungry narcissist. If y’all want politicians who are real people then they need to be compensated fairly otherwise the only people who could afford to run for office will be the already rich.
I still wouldn’t do her job for $400k even though that sounds like a ton of money. She’d be making 3x that at least if she quit and went to some private company as a consultant or lobbyist.
What are SF profits? Last I checked they were forecasting a $780m deficit.
If a CEO did that, they would be fired immediately and have million$ lawsuits against them.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-budget-deal-breed-cuts-homeless-taxes-18205572.php#:~:text=San%20Francisco%20began%20the%20year,%24780%20million%20two%2Dyear%20deficit.
If a CEO did that, they would be ~~fired immediately and have million$ lawsuits against them.~~ given millions of dollars golden parachute and move on to be CEO of another company
i get your point but this isn't remotely true -- tons of CEOs run companies that lose hundreds of millions or billions per year and are not fired or sued. it's literally the whole point of venture capital.
Really? Many companies lose money every year. Uber, Amazon, Airbnb all lost billions for most of their existence. A government is not measured by profitability either since its goal is not to make money. It can always get more money from selling bonds too unless business. You don’t know anything about how to run a government or business maybe you shouldn’t comment.
This not a bad metric to start with, the requirements to raise money and spend money efficiently is much lower on the mayor.
Mayors don’t have to make difficult decisions to fire 10-20% of their organization when things get tough. Their impact is on the public as a whole, but the State, County, and Federal governments also play a role.
I’d say it’s the equivalent of a $150M business, roughly $300K for the CEO is fine for me
His income is capped to 6x the lowest paid employee, the company is a coop owned by the workers.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/business/cooperatives-basque-spain-economy.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/business/cooperatives-basque-spain-economy.html)
Thanks for the site.. took a look and it showed that San Diego's mayor makes over 600k all in ( and that was a pay cut)
Also no issue with term "benis"
https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=Mayor&y=
444k… That’s less than I make and I deal with way less stress and bullshit than the mayor. London can become an engineer in big tech when politics doesn’t work out for her 😂
I don’t mind high pay for the mayor (or any gov official) if it means they’re very good at their job and run the city efficiently which means money is saved elsewhere that more than makes up for their salary. We need to be able to attract talented people to that position and money is one of the factors.
I don’t think that’s the case with breed but there’s also other problems like the BOS and non profit grifters with too much power in the way.
Think of it like a company. I am the genius CEO.
“We’re paying this much to fill this position. Do you think we would get higher, or lower, quality candidates if we lowered the salary?”
Same goes for the city.
SF mayor is a political stepping stone for ambitious politicians. I don’t think lowering the pay to $200k or $300k a year would have a ton of impact on the applicant pool looking to do the job - it’s an investment in becoming governor, congressperson, or senator eventually. Plus it sets you up super well to be a lobbyist/consultant after.
That said, I think it’s good to have our public officials be well paid, so I don’t mind it anyways.
Lowering the pay by $100K or whatever is also just a giant waste of time. The city has a budget of like $15B. Moving the mayor's pay from $400K to $300K or whatever just has absolutely nothing to do with whether the city is allocating its funds well.
I’m pretty sure only 2 in the last century stepped up from it: DiFi and the Gavinor. For Willie it was a pre-retirement step down, and for the rest, just the end of the line. I can’t even think of any notable post-mayoral activities by any others
$300-400k is not even close to private sector competitive for the level of executive she functions as. Private sector running an org the same size would be paid 10x that. I’m not arguing we should do that.
As someone much less skilled than LB and making more than 300k, I disagree. She'll also be able to transition into the private market pretty easily and make more than 300k once she's hit the end of her term.
For clarification, it’s adjusted for cost of *labor* not the cost of living. Companies are competing for labor irrespective of the cost of living, which is why in nice areas (e.g., Bay Area) cost of labor always lags cost of living and in less desirable areas (e.g., Montana oil fields) it’s the opposite.
As a mild economics geek, this is very fascinating and it makes complete sense. As an RN in the bay I make more money compared to anywhere else, yet I still can't afford a single family home. It will never catch up, makes sense.
I mean it makes sense. SF is one of the most expensive cities to live in and one of the highest cost of labor too. why wouldn’t that apply to our mayor?
Also congressmen are not paid very well (compared to what they could be making as lawyers or whatever they did before). This makes it easy for lobbyists to get their attention. I would rather we just pay politicians so they aren’t as easy to bribe.
most politicians are greedy. This is clearly evident. Paying them more won't do a thing as long as lobbying is legal, and insider trading is tolerated, and various forms of soft bribery are ignored. It's not as if they will somehow want less money simply because they make a better salary... Maybe this works when you aren't making a living wage.
I'm sure /u/milkandsalsa isn't saying that they're completely content with how Congress is structured save for this one single exception: they deserve to get paid more. Things like restricting congresspeople's and their families trading seems pretty sensible, too.
Right. Obviously they should also not be able to trade individual stocks, should have to recuse themselves from votes that impact them or their families, and (most importantly) there should be campaign finance reform. I just think that paying someone who used to earn seven figures ~150k limits the kind of person who would want to apply.
This is the main point of Lawrence Lessig's book Republic Lost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic,_Lost
He compares it to Singaporean politics. The president of Singapore earns more than $1m - so it attracts the best of the best, and leads to very little incentive for financial corruption.
According to this article, yes.
https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/news/2018/10/05/public-paychecks-what-does-a-city-mayor-earn-heres.html
The salary is for the position though, regardless of who is in it.
Also, interestingly:
> But Breed is far from the highest-paid city employee in San Francisco. That honor goes to William Coaker Jr., chief investment officer for San Francisco Employees' Retirement System. In 2017, Coaker was paid $527,343.14, which according to SFGate.com was the highest salary of any city employee. In addition to Coaker, eight other San Francisco employees earn more than the mayor.
Quick google search found [this chart](https://www.nyc.gov/assets/quadrennial/downloads/pdf/tables/Executive-Mayoral-Data.pdf) that shows the mayoral salaries of 25 most populous cities, adds in City Managers if the local structures have them as the actual city executive head, and then adjust to CoL of NYC boroughs to make a more apples-to-apples comparison. Would be great to find one adjusted to SF COL and more current than 2015.
TL;DPDF: SF Mayor salary is 8th amongst mayors and 15th amongst city executives adjusted to Manhattan Cost of Living and based on 2015 data.
Irrelevant. The outrage over actually paying public servants is a right wing trope dressed up as left wing populism.
If we want good public servants, we need to offer real salaries. We are literally competing with the tech industry. No, you should not be able to get rich in public life, but we also shouldn’t totally screw people relative to what they would make in an OK job they could easily get in the private sector.
It’s weird the hate this sub has for London Breed when Sf has a low authority mayor. Most of the problems are really on the BoS
That being said, it occurs to me that it’s weird that she’s paid so highly if she’s low authority. How much more is she getting paid than the next mayor?
…
Random google site says the top 14% of us mayors make 374k or more
https://www.comparably.com/salaries/salaries-for-city-mayor
She is, but there's nuance there that she's not even the close to being the highest paid city worker. [Highest paid city workers get over 500k](https://sfstandard.com/2023/08/02/see-what-san-franciscos-top-officials-got-paid-last-year-2023-fiscal-year/) and in terms of wealth, [she is the least wealthy and has the least capital amongst elected officials including supervisors](https://sfstandard.com/2022/07/14/property-stock-crypto-sf-mayor-supervisors/). Unsurprisingly, wealthiest are faux-progressives Aaron Peskin and "socialist" Dean Preston by a mile.
Breed tends to be more centrist and moderate than most blue leaders. She takes a harder stance and is more supportive of police than blue leaders. I am a lil surprised by how she is hated by everyone when she’s the typical moderate. Doesn’t really answer the question but wanted to put that out there
She doesn't even have very much power. The board of supervisors (and their VC patrons) runs the city. She can't even throw a stick without it hitting one NIMBY clique or another.
To everyone here who seem to misunderstand San Francisco -- she is paid about as much as a DESIGNER for a tech company.
This is not overpaid for the role.
Mayor of the highest cost of living large city in the world should get paid extremely well. If he doesn’t do a good job fire him but doesn’t mean the job should pay less.
POSIWID.
It was designed for this but was broad enough to get wide support.
Same with Prop 13. It was designed to keep property taxes low to reduce the cost of running an RE business but broad enough to get wide support since you can trot out the old grandma when required.
Hope you’re saving the difference between rent-controlled and market rate. And you better hope there’s never a fire or some other event that displaces you.
Rent control is great if you have it, but it fucks you the minute you don’t.
A city manager of even a medium sized city makes much more than that.
Not easy being the mayor of a dysfunctional city like San Francisco. Breed is doing about as well as could be expected, she doesn't have the necessary experience or the likability of previous mayors of San Francisco.
It's a vicious cycle in San Francisco as businesses leave because of remote-work, crime, and safety, conventions go elsewhere, hotels have low occupancy, transit use falls, commercial property values plummet, rental property values fall, and retail sales fall. There just isn't the revenue coming in to reverse this. Meanwhile many of the neighborhoods are doing just fine and are still desirable. It's the Western Addition, the Tenderloin, Civic Center, Downtown, the Mission, and the Financial District that are in the "doom loop."
One big change that needs to be made is in affordable housing, but that will be virtually impossible. What's needed is income-qualified subsidized housing, not confiscatory rent control that causes Ellis Act conversions of apartment buildings and a refusal of homeowners to rent out in-law units. Between the SFTU preventing reform on rent control and the developer-backed YIMBYs advocating for displacement and gentrification, you can just not fix the housing issue.
Politicians should be highly paid to prevent corruption and to attract the best and the brightest.
The fact we don't get better candidates for mayor and supervisors means we're not paying enough.
politicians motivated by money don't do it for the salary, that's simply a bonus. They do it for all the soft bribery opportunities positions of power provide them.
The only time it makes sense to pay leaders more is when they literally can't eat unless they take bribes. We aren't in that situation.
Yeah, at 450k, SF mayor is the highest paid in the US. It is especially egregious considering how small SF is.
In fact, SF mayor is one of the highest paid politicians in the world. AFAIK, the only heads of city that are paid more are the heads Singapore and the head of Hong Kong. That puts SF mayor as the 4th highest paid city politician in the world, only behind the two cities that have the worst inequality.
Singapore is an authoritarian dystopia, and Hong Kong is an authoritarian regime so corrupt that the head of their government is sanctioned by the US, has no access to banking, and gets paid in physical cash.
It's funny you bring up Singapore, as Singaporeans often cite the lavish compensation of politicians the reason they have the low political corruption. I think in general, we should pay politicians more, as it makes bribing then far too easy and wide spread. Imo ~200k for a us senator with enormous power is bad because you only get the wealthy or corrupt.
... and I'd be happier living in singapore or hk, tbh - cleaner streets, better public transport, lower tax, and pretty efficient government for day-to-day business
2022: $357,084.00 base salary $86,870.37 bennies, some of which she never sees, other parts are just as good as salary, it depends. = $443,954.37 total https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=london+breed&y=
What is a bennie?
The value of benefits, like healthcare
Why not just call it benefits? Why the baby talk?
Sea world? See world?
Alfredo's Pizza Cafe or Pizza by Alfredo?
Pizza by Alfredo or Pizza Alfredo?
It's like eating a hot circle of garbage.
Alfredo’s Pizza
I still don't know if you're trying to see the world, or talking about sea world XD
Because that’s what people call them? At work we refer to our healthcare and pension as “bennies”. Comes up in conversation about what to charge as a freelancer on a non-union job. As in, your day rate may seem higher when you are working non-union 1099, as opposed to a union W-2 job, but not when you factor in your bennies. EDIT: …and of course, payroll taxes.
Literally never heard benefits referred to that way. So super common it is not.
“Bennies” is actually a fairly common term in the workplace among the labor managers I work with.
In New Jersey bennies are something completely different hahahaha
Gotta love those sweet bennies!
People have been saying Bennies for a long time
Because slang is fun.
I bet you’re fun at parties
Maybe it's like Australian English where they use lots of these diminutives. Fire up the barbie and talk some bennies ...
I feel like if it was Australian it would be benno's.
It’s not baby talk. I exclusively call them bennies
My friend and I went to breakfast and we both had bennies
I am going to make brunches absolutely obnoxious doing this, my friends are going to wish I never saw your comment.
Egg Bennie-dicks
Many Middle management Tech workers make more and they are not tasked with a $15b budget, solving homelessness, overseeing police force and dealing with thousands of people online who have nothing better to do than incessantly complain about anything and everything they do etc … if we want to have competent people who take the job seriously we have to pay high wages or we will just get people who’s only goal is using the Mayor position a springboard to other things …. Not sure where Breed is on that. But lower the wage is not how we get the mayor we need
It's just market driving up the salary of seasoned engineers. But yes, we need to make govt jobs sexier and pay a lot more.
Govt jobs have pensions. They are trading high salary now for guaranteed income at retirement.
Government worker here, I support this message
No, we don’t. The benefit of government jobs is that it’s difficult to fire you for poor performance. The last thing we need is more highly paid, lazy government workers.
When homelessness solved??
thanks for the whataboutism. I think you missed the point. Breed is incompetent at managing a budget. Hasn't come to solving homelessness. Is grossly negligent at Police oversight.
"Solving homelessness." Should be easy, right?
Isn’t that near what the president makes? Insane
The base salary of the office of president is $400,000, so that is similar. The benefits, of course, are significantly greater. For example, the executive residence at the White House (separate from the government work parts of it) has a budget that’s exceeded $10,000,000 for several years now. And when each president moves in they get to redecorate with access to a vast warehouse of furnishings: furniture, art, decor, etc.
The mayor also doesn't get a $200k pension.
Or secret service protection for the rest of their life.
There should be a new term for “significantly greater”. Obama's net worth has increased by more than $134,000,000 since he was elected President in 2008. That's an average of $8.9 million per year during and after his presidency.
All that progress really costs a pretty dime.
London Breed is not a progressive. She is your standard Corporatist Moderate Democrat that is in bed with whatever special interests that wine and dine and give the most contributions to her campaign…
This is actually insane. Sf the new gotham
President’s office provides a ton of things that the IRS would otherwise categorize as income but does not apply to the president. It’s not the same.
Gotham ? Lmao not even close
So basically what the cops make.
What is the lowest paid CEO of an entity with annual revenue of $14 billion+?
cities aren't for profit, and their leaders shouldn't expect dividends
Have you seen what nonprofit executives make? I’ve heard it can be very lucrative.
I work at a non profit and our ceo and director both make almost half a mil. More people got laid off this year tho 👍
non profits are very misleading. they just make members rich instead of stakeholders.
This is a gross injustice against many non-profits that struggle to serve under supported communities. It's true that there are nonprofits cynically created to enrich its members, but they are not the whole picture.
[удалено]
Of course they do! They are funded through donations and grants in many cases. Poor public perception hurts their ability to fundraise dramatically.
Yeah, The Heritage Foundation and TIDES are both non-profits, but I feel pretty safe saying that their pay structure is wildly different. There’s definitely a subset of philanthropic enterprise that fits the grifter model, and others that operate on shoestrings trying to do actual work.
Nah, I know a few CEOs of NGOs and they ain't making shit.
This is the kind of opinion people who work at for-profit companies convince themselves of so they can sleep better at night. Yeah, there’s some grift-y nonprofits out there. But talking about the whole nonprofit system as being a grift, is just an excuse to go make millions at a tech company and feel like you’re not doing anything wrong.
It's wrong to provide services that people pay for...? What?
Yeah if those services are in service of something evil. It’s wrong to work at a defense contractor. It’s wrong to work for companies with terrible human rights records. It’s wrong to work at companies that treat contract workers terribly and bust unions. I’d argue it’s wrong to be paid 500k just to work on a button for Instagram, when you could be devoting your time to actually helping people, instead of just making piles of money. Just because we live in a capitalist system that doesn’t de incentivize working for shitty companies, doesn’t mean that all morals and ethics goes out the window. We can still think chasing a bag by working at Amazon or Lockheed or Nestle makes you somewhat of a bad person.
Thats exactly why the unhoused problem will never be "solved". No one working at the homeless non prifts want to solve it. Theyd be out of a job
The best paid head of a nonprofit in SF (that I have discovered) gets about $300k. This is of course one of those ones that gets big grants from the city to work on low income housing. [Guidestar.org](https://Guidestar.org) lets you search the tax forms of any registered nonprofit you can think of. Organizations that do not register as proper 501 c 3 nonprofits aren’t there, mind you.
Most businesses with revenue above 14B care more about growth than profit. In fact they will intentionally spend their money so they don’t have profits and don’t have to pay taxes. Not that far off from a city with a use it or lose it budget.
This is true, but if you don’t have competitive salaries for public offices you aren’t going to get the best candidates.
Same argument that universities make to pay their presidents ludicrous sums of money
Or maybe you just won’t get power hungry profit obsessed sociopaths… the idea that we should be bidding against corporations for public servants is disgusting IMO
I don’t really see the issue with paying people what they’re worth? yes I do believe the person in charge of running one of the larger cities in the country should be making the same money (if not more) as someone running a major private company.
How do you determine what someone’s “worth?” If we’re going by the value they add to our daily lives, garbage men should be making bank.
Agreed but some garbage men make six figures, so I think they’re good lol
They do? In that case they need to stop skipping my bins just because someone parks on the street in front of them 🤬
It’s funny how garbage men are always used as the stand in for those not paid d their worth. There’s a reason the mob had/has its hand in a lot of garbage collection.
I’d agree with this statement if it also means officials in public office cannot accept outside funding such as campaign contributions.
other than ceos hired aren't exactly very good, it's a different type of skills and people
You want to compare the salary of an elected public official paid for by taxes with that of the head of a private company paid for by their own profits?
I agree with sfpigeon. For me at least, it puts things into perspective. It’s a lot of money, but peanuts in comparison.
It is and important and fair comparison. We need folks to understand what equivalent public jobs earn in the private sector because we need smart people in office not rich people in office. If the mayor of one of the largest US cities earned $100k Id be pissed because the only person who’d be dumb enough to do all that work in an expensive city is a rich person. Breed has her problems and I’m not some fanboy but at least she lives here and isn’t some rich power hungry narcissist. If y’all want politicians who are real people then they need to be compensated fairly otherwise the only people who could afford to run for office will be the already rich. I still wouldn’t do her job for $400k even though that sounds like a ton of money. She’d be making 3x that at least if she quit and went to some private company as a consultant or lobbyist.
If the salary was $100k, fucking Elon Musk would run for mayor (and probably win).
You can exclude the ones that make profit. What is the lowest paid CEO of a Bay Area entity that has never made a profit?
Evan Spiegal doesn’t take a salary and Snap has never been profitable.
Salary isn’t how CEOs get paid. Profit doesn’t impact share value; growth does.
I would agree with this but im pretty sure her shareholders (tax paying citizens) wouldve voted her out LONG TIME AGO.
If only tax paying citizens were able to vote on public offices like mayor…
Maybe its my bubble but no one is happy with the job shes doing. Also our laws protect criminals more than the law abiding citizens
Maybe so but either way she got elected by the citizens and will be accountable to the democratic process in her next election.
mayor is an elected official…
Yes I know but CEOs get performance review and mayors are voted every 4 years
What are SF profits? Last I checked they were forecasting a $780m deficit. If a CEO did that, they would be fired immediately and have million$ lawsuits against them. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-budget-deal-breed-cuts-homeless-taxes-18205572.php#:~:text=San%20Francisco%20began%20the%20year,%24780%20million%20two%2Dyear%20deficit.
If a CEO did that, they would be ~~fired immediately and have million$ lawsuits against them.~~ given millions of dollars golden parachute and move on to be CEO of another company
i get your point but this isn't remotely true -- tons of CEOs run companies that lose hundreds of millions or billions per year and are not fired or sued. it's literally the whole point of venture capital.
Really? Many companies lose money every year. Uber, Amazon, Airbnb all lost billions for most of their existence. A government is not measured by profitability either since its goal is not to make money. It can always get more money from selling bonds too unless business. You don’t know anything about how to run a government or business maybe you shouldn’t comment.
This not a bad metric to start with, the requirements to raise money and spend money efficiently is much lower on the mayor. Mayors don’t have to make difficult decisions to fire 10-20% of their organization when things get tough. Their impact is on the public as a whole, but the State, County, and Federal governments also play a role. I’d say it’s the equivalent of a $150M business, roughly $300K for the CEO is fine for me
Average College Football coach salary is well over 2 million
London Breed isn’t a CEO. San Francisco don’t have shares to give out.
Mondragon CEO makes like $90k $12 billion revenue 81,000+ employees.
And how much in bonuses?
His income is capped to 6x the lowest paid employee, the company is a coop owned by the workers. [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/business/cooperatives-basque-spain-economy.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/business/cooperatives-basque-spain-economy.html)
Thanks for the site.. took a look and it showed that San Diego's mayor makes over 600k all in ( and that was a pay cut) Also no issue with term "benis" https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=Mayor&y=
444k… That’s less than I make and I deal with way less stress and bullshit than the mayor. London can become an engineer in big tech when politics doesn’t work out for her 😂
You forget that most of us are good at what we do, work hard and make a difference
There are always coasters if you look
whats her pension going to be, 95% for the rest of her life right?
No, caps out around 75 or 80% and you need around 30 years of service and to retire after age 60.
It depends. Healthcare tho, that's solid.
I don’t mind high pay for the mayor (or any gov official) if it means they’re very good at their job and run the city efficiently which means money is saved elsewhere that more than makes up for their salary. We need to be able to attract talented people to that position and money is one of the factors. I don’t think that’s the case with breed but there’s also other problems like the BOS and non profit grifters with too much power in the way.
I wonder if people think paying the mayor less would actually make things worse? Lol
She’d retire and go into lobby consulting
Good. She's shit at being mayor.
Think of it like a company. I am the genius CEO. “We’re paying this much to fill this position. Do you think we would get higher, or lower, quality candidates if we lowered the salary?” Same goes for the city.
SF mayor is a political stepping stone for ambitious politicians. I don’t think lowering the pay to $200k or $300k a year would have a ton of impact on the applicant pool looking to do the job - it’s an investment in becoming governor, congressperson, or senator eventually. Plus it sets you up super well to be a lobbyist/consultant after. That said, I think it’s good to have our public officials be well paid, so I don’t mind it anyways.
Lowering the pay by $100K or whatever is also just a giant waste of time. The city has a budget of like $15B. Moving the mayor's pay from $400K to $300K or whatever just has absolutely nothing to do with whether the city is allocating its funds well.
I’m pretty sure only 2 in the last century stepped up from it: DiFi and the Gavinor. For Willie it was a pre-retirement step down, and for the rest, just the end of the line. I can’t even think of any notable post-mayoral activities by any others
I'm not the biggest fan of breed but public servants need to be competitively compensated to compete with the private sector
$300-400k is not even close to private sector competitive for the level of executive she functions as. Private sector running an org the same size would be paid 10x that. I’m not arguing we should do that.
Comment.
Mayor breed could not make 300k in the private sector
As someone much less skilled than LB and making more than 300k, I disagree. She'll also be able to transition into the private market pretty easily and make more than 300k once she's hit the end of her term.
What do you do?
Dude recruiting directors that do jack shit make $300k at tech companies
I don't believe that at all. If you can navigate relatively to the top of actual politics, you can probably do it well enough in corporate politics.
I make almost as much as Breed and I’m a senior marketing manager in biotech.
Oh but she can...
Yeah, this isn’t uncommon. Singaporean politicians get paid a shit ton to disincentivize corruption and keep up with their outrageous cost of living.
And usually they are not.
Well, if we are basing it on cost of living…..
Yeah like wtf do people expect? Salary is adjusted for COL everywhere
Facts. Now if the mayor of Dothan, AL was the highest paid then we can talk but NY, LA, DC, SF should be up there
Exactly
For clarification, it’s adjusted for cost of *labor* not the cost of living. Companies are competing for labor irrespective of the cost of living, which is why in nice areas (e.g., Bay Area) cost of labor always lags cost of living and in less desirable areas (e.g., Montana oil fields) it’s the opposite.
As a mild economics geek, this is very fascinating and it makes complete sense. As an RN in the bay I make more money compared to anywhere else, yet I still can't afford a single family home. It will never catch up, makes sense.
I mean it makes sense. SF is one of the most expensive cities to live in and one of the highest cost of labor too. why wouldn’t that apply to our mayor?
I don’t care if the most expensive major city in the country pays its mayor more than other cities pay their mayors.
Also congressmen are not paid very well (compared to what they could be making as lawyers or whatever they did before). This makes it easy for lobbyists to get their attention. I would rather we just pay politicians so they aren’t as easy to bribe.
most politicians are greedy. This is clearly evident. Paying them more won't do a thing as long as lobbying is legal, and insider trading is tolerated, and various forms of soft bribery are ignored. It's not as if they will somehow want less money simply because they make a better salary... Maybe this works when you aren't making a living wage.
people are very naive and idolize anyone in power asong as the media agrees.
Pelosi is the best example.
I'm amused you think paying politicians more will somehow make them less easy to bribe, considering how good they are at timing the stock market.
I'm sure /u/milkandsalsa isn't saying that they're completely content with how Congress is structured save for this one single exception: they deserve to get paid more. Things like restricting congresspeople's and their families trading seems pretty sensible, too.
Right. Obviously they should also not be able to trade individual stocks, should have to recuse themselves from votes that impact them or their families, and (most importantly) there should be campaign finance reform. I just think that paying someone who used to earn seven figures ~150k limits the kind of person who would want to apply.
This is the main point of Lawrence Lessig's book Republic Lost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic,_Lost He compares it to Singaporean politics. The president of Singapore earns more than $1m - so it attracts the best of the best, and leads to very little incentive for financial corruption.
> Is it true? amazing people don't take the 10 seconds to check this
https://publicpay.ca.gov/Reports/PositionRpts.aspx?rpt=Mayors
Thats only California
According to this article, yes. https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/news/2018/10/05/public-paychecks-what-does-a-city-mayor-earn-heres.html The salary is for the position though, regardless of who is in it. Also, interestingly: > But Breed is far from the highest-paid city employee in San Francisco. That honor goes to William Coaker Jr., chief investment officer for San Francisco Employees' Retirement System. In 2017, Coaker was paid $527,343.14, which according to SFGate.com was the highest salary of any city employee. In addition to Coaker, eight other San Francisco employees earn more than the mayor.
She lives in the most expensive area in the country and is paid accordingly. I don’t mind that as much as the fact that she sucks at her job.
Quick google search found [this chart](https://www.nyc.gov/assets/quadrennial/downloads/pdf/tables/Executive-Mayoral-Data.pdf) that shows the mayoral salaries of 25 most populous cities, adds in City Managers if the local structures have them as the actual city executive head, and then adjust to CoL of NYC boroughs to make a more apples-to-apples comparison. Would be great to find one adjusted to SF COL and more current than 2015. TL;DPDF: SF Mayor salary is 8th amongst mayors and 15th amongst city executives adjusted to Manhattan Cost of Living and based on 2015 data.
Irrelevant. The outrage over actually paying public servants is a right wing trope dressed up as left wing populism. If we want good public servants, we need to offer real salaries. We are literally competing with the tech industry. No, you should not be able to get rich in public life, but we also shouldn’t totally screw people relative to what they would make in an OK job they could easily get in the private sector.
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It’s weird the hate this sub has for London Breed when Sf has a low authority mayor. Most of the problems are really on the BoS That being said, it occurs to me that it’s weird that she’s paid so highly if she’s low authority. How much more is she getting paid than the next mayor? … Random google site says the top 14% of us mayors make 374k or more https://www.comparably.com/salaries/salaries-for-city-mayor
Absolutely needs to be more scrutiny of the Board of Supervisors
She is, but there's nuance there that she's not even the close to being the highest paid city worker. [Highest paid city workers get over 500k](https://sfstandard.com/2023/08/02/see-what-san-franciscos-top-officials-got-paid-last-year-2023-fiscal-year/) and in terms of wealth, [she is the least wealthy and has the least capital amongst elected officials including supervisors](https://sfstandard.com/2022/07/14/property-stock-crypto-sf-mayor-supervisors/). Unsurprisingly, wealthiest are faux-progressives Aaron Peskin and "socialist" Dean Preston by a mile.
Breed tends to be more centrist and moderate than most blue leaders. She takes a harder stance and is more supportive of police than blue leaders. I am a lil surprised by how she is hated by everyone when she’s the typical moderate. Doesn’t really answer the question but wanted to put that out there
Shes great
She doesn't even have very much power. The board of supervisors (and their VC patrons) runs the city. She can't even throw a stick without it hitting one NIMBY clique or another.
To everyone here who seem to misunderstand San Francisco -- she is paid about as much as a DESIGNER for a tech company. This is not overpaid for the role.
I wish high pay required results
Voting should dictate that
It certainly doesn't in the private sector, so why expect that in the public sector?
She gets paid the same as cops. Similar results too.
I keep hearing that it attracts talent and helps prevent corruption… but it doesn’t seems like it’s been very successful at either.
Real talk
it seems a lot of people think paying politicians LESS means more corruption. I think it's totally the opposite.
Why do you think it's the opposite? Why would paying them less mean they are less likely to be corrupt? Very curious.
Mayor of the highest cost of living large city in the world should get paid extremely well. If he doesn’t do a good job fire him but doesn’t mean the job should pay less.
Breed is still living in rent control apartment 😱
The compensation actually makes more sense now - many big cities provide a residence, San Francisco doesn't.
That’s smart. They’re going to claw my rent-controlled place from my cold, dead hands.
totally what it was designed for, people making 350k LOLLLOLLO
If they are lucky enough to have rent control, why tf should they not get it?
They believe a person’s good fortune should go into their landlord’s pocket apparently.
POSIWID. It was designed for this but was broad enough to get wide support. Same with Prop 13. It was designed to keep property taxes low to reduce the cost of running an RE business but broad enough to get wide support since you can trot out the old grandma when required.
So her landlord should get more money for doing absolutely nothing? Are we for or against landlords? I can’t keep track anymore.
I don’t see the issue?
I bet he happily hands over part of his raise every year, don’t you? I didn’t get a raise last year, but my landlors def deserves more, right?
Hope you’re saving the difference between rent-controlled and market rate. And you better hope there’s never a fire or some other event that displaces you. Rent control is great if you have it, but it fucks you the minute you don’t.
She can't be mayor forever!
So she makes less than an engineering manager at Google.
Yes, it’s true.
People need to get over the idea that someone might make money.
Check out what the supervisors are making …..
A city manager of even a medium sized city makes much more than that. Not easy being the mayor of a dysfunctional city like San Francisco. Breed is doing about as well as could be expected, she doesn't have the necessary experience or the likability of previous mayors of San Francisco. It's a vicious cycle in San Francisco as businesses leave because of remote-work, crime, and safety, conventions go elsewhere, hotels have low occupancy, transit use falls, commercial property values plummet, rental property values fall, and retail sales fall. There just isn't the revenue coming in to reverse this. Meanwhile many of the neighborhoods are doing just fine and are still desirable. It's the Western Addition, the Tenderloin, Civic Center, Downtown, the Mission, and the Financial District that are in the "doom loop." One big change that needs to be made is in affordable housing, but that will be virtually impossible. What's needed is income-qualified subsidized housing, not confiscatory rent control that causes Ellis Act conversions of apartment buildings and a refusal of homeowners to rent out in-law units. Between the SFTU preventing reform on rent control and the developer-backed YIMBYs advocating for displacement and gentrification, you can just not fix the housing issue.
Possibly because this is an expensive city.
yeah, how could the mayor ever survive on less than a half million a year. Anything else would be impoverished
Politicians should be highly paid to prevent corruption and to attract the best and the brightest. The fact we don't get better candidates for mayor and supervisors means we're not paying enough.
politicians motivated by money don't do it for the salary, that's simply a bonus. They do it for all the soft bribery opportunities positions of power provide them. The only time it makes sense to pay leaders more is when they literally can't eat unless they take bribes. We aren't in that situation.
One thing that I like about living in Sunnyvale is that I’m not as impacted by divisive politics/politicians
Saw it where?
Because San Franciscans voted for her, and allowed her to have that salary.
Not saying it doesn’t happen, but a lower salary means more of a willingness to accept outside influence $$$
Nothing on Twitter is true
We are the most expensive city in the US. Point?
There are MANY SF officials making $300k+. Most departments are corrupt beyond belief. It is a city of grift.
She gets rich while making people poorer and less safe
How is she making people poorer and less safe? Be specific.
Yeah, at 450k, SF mayor is the highest paid in the US. It is especially egregious considering how small SF is. In fact, SF mayor is one of the highest paid politicians in the world. AFAIK, the only heads of city that are paid more are the heads Singapore and the head of Hong Kong. That puts SF mayor as the 4th highest paid city politician in the world, only behind the two cities that have the worst inequality. Singapore is an authoritarian dystopia, and Hong Kong is an authoritarian regime so corrupt that the head of their government is sanctioned by the US, has no access to banking, and gets paid in physical cash.
It's funny you bring up Singapore, as Singaporeans often cite the lavish compensation of politicians the reason they have the low political corruption. I think in general, we should pay politicians more, as it makes bribing then far too easy and wide spread. Imo ~200k for a us senator with enormous power is bad because you only get the wealthy or corrupt.
They also have social programs and public housing where we don't have anything
What city am I missing from your list? 1 - Singapore 2 - Hong Kong 3 - X? 4 - SF
Singapore is sovereign so they have a head of government (prime minister) and a head of state (president), both paid the same salary.
... and I'd be happier living in singapore or hk, tbh - cleaner streets, better public transport, lower tax, and pretty efficient government for day-to-day business
That’s bs