Fog in Channel, Continent Cut Off

city of righteousness by the sea

San Francisco is now boycotting most of the United States

A raging San Francisco handwringer expresses doubt about his city’s effort to bring its values to Amerikka;

San Francisco makes this hard. It makes it expensive. A March 4 memorandum from City Administrator Carmen Chu reveals that San Francisco will not enter into contracts with businesses headquartered in most of the United States — 28 states in all. Official travel to those states is also forbidden. And this list includes some surprises: Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Wisconsin.

As a result of this vast boycott, San Francisco is constraining the number of businesses it can ink deals with, which all but certainly inhibits quality and drives up costs. It also adds onerous time constraints to the contracting process, which leads to poor outcomes and also drives up costs. 

“It limits our ability to procure products and receive services and contract services we need to run,” explains Chu. “It limits competition for our work.” 

Why would we do this? As is the case with so many San Francisco misadventures, it all started with the best of intentions. 

…. [I]n the ensuing years, we’ve broadened this law (collectively “Chapter 12X of the Administrative Code”). In 2019, the city expanded it to states with repressive anti-abortion laws. And, last year, we expanded it again, to encompass states engaging in voter suppression. And that’s how, for the first time, we found ourselves boycotting and forbidding official travel to most other states. Which is wild. Mind-boggling, even. 

None of which is to say that the underlying motivation is not good or right. Anti-LGBT discrimination is insidious. Limiting women’s reproductive health is insidious. So is voter suppression. There’s no doubt about that. But are San Francisco’s measures helping? About that, there is much doubt. 

Including from Wiener, the man who started it all. 

“I’ll be honest, over time I have come to have mixed views on the approach,” says Wiener, now a state senator. “On the one hand, I believe in using our dollars to express our values. When you have a state like Florida right now, which is about to enact its horrific ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law, the idea of spending our public dollars in Florida is an affront.”

“But on the other hand,” Wiener continues, “we know that an awful lot of Floridians, maybe the majority, don’t support that law. There is a huge LGBTQ community in Florida, including many LGBTQ-owned businesses. We are sweeping in an entire state, and sweeping in businesses owned by people who are trying to help. So, it’s complicated and I have become very conflicted and I argue with  myself. It is fundamentally not as straightforward an issue as I once believed.”  [Hahahah]

And then there’s this problem:

It will come as little surprise to anyone familiar with the M.O. of San Francisco government that we have no tests nor audits nor analysis nor methodology to determine if our travel bans or boycotts are making any difference for the good. 

I think we can spare the city the expense of conducting an analysis of the effect of its citizens’ posturing and just give it the hard truth: no one cares, so … no.