See our November 2024 SF Voter Guide for a nonpartisan analysis of measures on the San Francisco ballot, for the election occurring Nov. 5, 2024. The following measure is on that ballot.
Proposition F aims to bolster police staffing by giving retirement-eligible officers a financial incentive to continue working: They could begin drawing pensions early, alongside their salaries, for up to five years.
Support
Proposition F would help sustain the San Francisco Police Department’s personnel levels while recruitment and training worked toward filling widespread vacancies resulting from attrition, according to the measure’s co-authors, including supervisors Matt Dorsey and Aaron Peskin, who is running for mayor.
If current rates of hiring and retiring hold, the department could be 40% under-staffed within five years, Dorsey says in the measure’s official proponent argument, co-signed by seven of the city’s 11 supervisors. Other supporters include Mayor London Breed and Sheriff Paul Miyamoto.
“We are facing a retirement cliff,” said Dorsey, a former police department spokesperson, at a July meeting that the Board of Supervisors held to discuss the measure. Proposition F could prevent up to 50 retirements per year, Dorsey said.
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Opposition
The proposition’s opponents call it “wasteful,” “ineffective” and “unfair” in the official argument against it, co-signed by supervisors Hillary Ronen, Shamann Walton and Dean Preston, as well as Police Commissioner Jesus Yanez, Public Defender Manohar Raju and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
The city has previously tried Proposition F’s dual salary-pension approach, but it did not increase officer retention, the opponents said. Now faced with persistent budget deficits, the city “cannot afford” to implement this measure, they said.
In a presentation to her board colleagues at the July meeting, Ronen said Proposition F could “start to build a resentment” from other city workers. That’s because the benefiting officers’ salaries would average between $400,000 and $500,000 in the first year — money that could instead go toward easing staff shortages among transit operators and many other quarters of City Hall, she said.
“If I was a social worker or a 911 call operator, and I saw these figures, I would say, ‘Why don’t they care about me?’” Ronen said.
What it would do
Proposition F would try to address the police department’s staffing woes by resuscitating the Deferred Retirement Option Program. Voters approved this program through Proposition B in 2008, but officials abandoned it after it failed to meet its goal of being cost-neutral. Dorsey said that, this time around, the public should expect the program to cost money.
Full-time sworn officers, sergeants and inspectors would be eligible to participate in the deferred retirement program if they were at least 50 years old and had accrued at least 25 years of service. Participants would patrol neighborhoods or conduct investigations for up to five years, after which they would retire. While in the deferred retirement program, they would receive salaries, as well as pension payments that the city would hold in a tax-deferred, interest-bearing account for participants to access after leaving the program.
To minimize administrative burdens, Proposition F would reduce how frequently the chief of police must report staffing levels to the city’s Police Commission, an oversight body, from every two years to every three years. The commission would report annually to the Board of Supervisors on police staffing goals, which include increasing female representation to 30% of recruits by 2030.
Cost
The Deferred Retirement Option Program annual cost would depend on how many officers participated and at what levels of their careers. Officers nearer the ends of their careers would receive greater compensation, with annual pension payments equaling up to 90% of their salaries upon joining the program. Younger officers would receive smaller salaries and pensions at lower percentages of their pay.
The deferred retirement program’s tab in its first year could range from $600,000 to $3 million, according to an analysis by the city controller’s office. After that it could cost up to $3 million annually, but it’s possible that the program would instead save the city up to $300,000 per year, said Alison Romano, chief investment officer of the San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System. That could happen if its pay structure enticed officers to participate before they reached their maximum salaries, calibrating their retirement packages to provide lower total payouts over time.
At best, retaining officers through the deferred retirement program would address only part of the police department’s staffing problem. Retirees are just a fraction of officer attrition, which far outpaces the department’s hiring and training process, according to the San Francisco Police Officers Association. Last year, the police department hired 33 full-duty sworn officers and lost 417.
Campaign finance
As of Oct. 7, the “Yes on F” campaign committee had raised $231,630, according to data from the San Francisco Ethics Commission.
No group opposing Proposition F had reported fundraising activity to the city.
History and context
The police department is about 500 people short of its staffing goal of 2,074 full-duty sworn officers, determined by its 2022 analysis in partnership with Matrix Consulting Group. Some crime researchers criticized the analysis since it relied on data from calls for service and police response times, rather than on the industry standards of population or crime levels, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
To staff shifts despite having too few personnel, the department is spending heavily on overtime pay. One officer earned $450,000 on top of his $207,000 annual salary, the Chronicle reported.
The Board of Supervisors has funded recent attempts to curtail attrition. It increased wages and retention bonuses with a $17 million payment to the police department in 2022, followed by an April 2023 payment of $166 million, to be paid over three years.
Votes needed to pass
Proposition F requires a simple majority of “yes” votes to pass.
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