J.D. Morris

San Francisco voters now have a clearer picture of the financial backgrounds of the five leading mayoral candidates after two of them recently filed their required economic disclosure forms with the city. Daniel Lurie and Mark Farrell, two of the wealthiest people running for mayor, had a later deadline to file their statements of economic interest because they do not currently hold elected office. The other three major candidates — Mayor London Breed and Supervisors Aaron Peskin and Ahsha Safa…

Mayor London Breed unveiled a record $15.9 billion budget proposal Friday that would erase San Francisco’s huge deficit through a variety of measures that include limiting the hiring of new city workers, cutting some nonprofit contracts and spending less on infrastructure projects than planned. Breed’s office said the mayor’s latest proposed budget would close the nearly $790 million shortfall projected over the next two fiscal years through a mixture of belt tightening and getting creative wi…

The five leading candidates in the San Francisco mayor’s race appeared in a joint town hall Tuesday night and made their best cases for why they should win the November election. Mayor London Breed, along with challengers Daniel Lurie, Ahsha Safaí, Aaron Peskin and Mark Farrell, answered a series of questions — one at a time — from the president of the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club, a progressive political group in the city that plans to make an endorsement in the race next month. It was the…

Mayor London Breed wants to spend tens of millions of dollars to respond to a surge in homeless families that has overwhelmed city shelters and forced immigrant parents to sleep in cars on the street. Breed said Tuesday her upcoming budget would address the crisis by funding a mix of rent subsidies and vouchers to pay for emergency shelter in hotel rooms. The total cost of the mayor’s plan amounts to about $50.4 million, with much of the funds expected to be used in the coming two fiscal years,…

San Francisco has announced the next wave of city-backed pop-up businesses opening in empty downtown storefronts, part of an ongoing initiative from Mayor London Breed’s administration to inject more energy into the struggling urban core. Starting in June, eight new pop-ups will debut in rent-free commercial spaces around the East Cut, Financial District and Yerba Buena neighborhoods for three months each, with the option to extend their leases if all goes well, officials said Thursday. The li…

Mayor London Breed is adding funding for a public health clinic to a bond she wants to get on the November ballot after LGBTQ activists fought for the project to be included. The city controller said Thursday that the bond, originally proposed at $360 million, can grow by $30 million without raising taxes. The change caused Breed’s office to announce that she would alter her proposal so it includes money to finance a new home for the San Francisco City Clinic, a SoMa facility that provides low-…

Mayor London Breed hopes to send a $360 million bond to San Francisco voters in November to fund a variety of infrastructure projects and public space improvements, including seismic safety work at the city’s public hospital and upgrades to two key transit plazas. Breed announced Monday that her proposal would provide $167 million to help finance retrofits at San Francisco General Hospital and the Laguna Honda public nursing home that recently survived a threatened closure by the federal govern…

Mayor London Breed is eager to start the next phase of bringing giant pandas to the San Francisco Zoo: fundraising for the enclosure that will host the iconic bears next year. But first, she needs to get the Board of Supervisors to temporarily lift restrictions on City Hall officials seeking private donations. Breed announced Tuesday that she was introducing legislation to do just that, a move her office described as a pivotal step in delivering on the panda agreement she secured during her tri…

San Francisco has reached tentative labor contracts with several of its largest unions, reducing the chances of a widespread public-sector strike as the city tries to close a huge budget deficit during a mayoral election year. Full details of the agreements were not immediately available, but SEIU Local 1021, San Francisco’s largest public-sector union, said its contract would establish a $25 per hour minimum wage for city workers, among other provisions. The lowest hourly pay rate for SEIU mem…

Aaron Peskin, the progressive president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, says he is entering the city’s already-crowded mayor’s race partly because of what he sees as a chaotic governing strategy from incumbent London Breed.Peskin, who plans to formally declare his candidacy with the city’s elections department on Friday, told the Chronicle in a Thursday morning interview that he would be a mayor who “loves the city and doesn’t beat up on it for cynical political gain.” He criticized B…