San Francisco Supervisor Jackie Fielder will introduce a ballot measure on Tuesday that would tax financial institutions to create a municipal public bank, the first of its kind in the country.
The public bank would let the city issue low-cost loans for affordable housing, small businesses, and green infrastructure.
The measure is the most concrete step a city official has taken to create a public bank here since 2023, when the Board of Supervisors unanimously greenlit a plan to stand one up. Fielder said a public bank would help entities that have struggled to get funding from traditional banks get loans from the city instead.
While Wall Street is oriented towards profit, Fielder said, “a San Francisco public bank is not out to seek to maximize profits, but to support projects and industries that Wall Street can’t extract much profit from.”
Fielder’s proposal would increase the gross receipts tax on companies that are not banks but are involved in arranging loans and linking lenders and borrowers, such as certain credit card companies, consumer lending companies and mortgage brokers. The tax would increase from its current range of 1.5 to 3.36 percent, to 1.69 to 3.85 percent.
The measure would need the support of at least three other supervisors to make it onto the ballot. She said she will lobby her colleagues to sign on in the coming months.
In October, supervisors unanimously passed Fielder’s resolution for a “green bank,” a smaller-scale entity that would also provide low-cost loans. Supervisors Rafael Mandelman, Shamann Walton, Connie Chan, Matt Dorsey and Myrna Melgar were among the 11 who voted in 2023 to accept a plan created by a city working group for standing up a public bank.
Once on the ballot, the measure would need to be approved by two-thirds of San Franciscans, who are also being asked to consider two other tax measures in November: a parcel tax and a regional sales tax, both of which are intended to help address a Muni deficit.
Fielder is optimistic. An Oct. 6 poll commissioned by the San Francisco Public Bank Coalition, which Fielder led before her turn to elected office, showed that 67 percent of San Franciscans support creating a public bank.
The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, a business advocacy group, is skeptical.
“The city is managing serious fiscal pressures and considering several record-setting new taxes. We think it is worth asking whether now is the right moment to create a new regulatory institution while even further taxing our largest employers to fund it,” David Harrison, the chamber’s public policy director, said.
Starting up a public bank requires $400 million in initial funding, according to a working group. It is an involved process: First, the city must form a “municipal financial corporation,” a precursor to a full bank that can issue loans but cannot take deposits.
Fielder’s measure would raise $40 million to $50 million annually for that corporation; the tax funds would be earmarked for the city’s “Public Bank Fund” until 2035. The money would mostly be used to fill the municipal financial corporation’s coffers so that it could begin issuing loans by 2029, Fielder said.
If the municipal financial corporation proves successful, the city would then apply to the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation and obtain FDIC insurance to convert the entity into a fully-fledged public bank by 2032.
The tax would not go away, however. After 2035, revenue raised by the measure would go to the city’s general fund.
Public banks are not retail banks; individuals would not be able to open accounts and make deposits. But a public bank would give the city the option to manage and store its money in-house, which would let it avoid a reliance on Wall Street banks, Fielder said.
The city has been contemplating creating a public bank since 2019, when California passed a state law that allowed cities to create them. In 2021, San Francisco launched a working group to develop a proposal for creating a public bank. The plan created by the working group was passed by the Board of Supervisors in 2023.
Though public banks are common worldwide, the only one that currently exists in the United States is a state bank, the Bank of North Dakota, which was founded in 1919.
“This measure is a monumental first step to start a public bank,” Fielder said. “It’s part of a larger vision of taking San Francisco back for working people who are not wealthy and still deserve a place in the city.”
private financial institutions have ruined the planet and society. a public bank is just what we need to take control of our city back from the billionaire class and their accomplices and make developments in the interest of the public and not shareholders. mayor lurie would auction off city hall if we let him.
The mission is in desperate need of affordable housing and we’re never going to meet CA housing element goals for San Francisco without a sharp financial approach that stops depending on developers to deem affordable housing profitable. This is a good approach.
Let’s goooo! The city has needed an institution like this for so long.
I thought that the main point of a public bank was not to compete with retail banks, but to replace the bond houses, to take city deposits to serve as collateral for fractional reserve lending for that which San Francisco currently goes to Wall Street to sell bonds like affordable housing and infrastructure.
The primary impediment is how to structure governance to insulate a public bank from rank municipal corruption that permeates the political class. Failure to do this means we’re fleeced 9:1 on collateral deposits.
The SF Public Bank makes so much sense! It would make it radically easier to get funding to build social housing, invest in green projects, and help small businesses get started and grow. Banks like Chase or Bank of America make huge sums of money from San Francisco, and this is our opportunity to bring those dollars back into our community.
Also: on February 17, 2026, the District 5 Democratic Club will host the SF Public Bank Coalition’s Lead Organizer, Misha Steier from 6pm to 7:30pm at the SFPL Main Branch Library in the Latino/Hispanic Community Room to tell us more about this ballot measure and the work to build the first municipal public bank in the country! See details and RSVP at https://d5dems.org/
So excited for the public bank initiative! We should absolutely have the ability to finance our own public infrastructure projects and keep profits from loans inside public control.
Its about time this moved forward. We let our money sit in commercial banks whose leaders are busy partying with Epstein & collaborators, fund activities that poison us, then skim off the top to rig a political system so we can’t stop them. Not like any of these commercial banks don’t have histories of racism and criminality. And while its fun to bring up corrupt public officials, the difference is they went to jail after they were caught instead of to their other mansion.
Great. San Franciscans want and deserve better than they get from their electeds when it comes to social housing, green infrastructure and support for local businesses. If a small increase on a tax for hedge funds and fintech corporations can spark a new model for public investment in public goods along with municipal financial autonomy, at a time when the national gov’t uses funding as a brutish cudgel and the economy is rigged for shitty pedophilic billionaire goblins, I think it’s worth a try. Could be the start of something big if it works and we need something big. It’ll take time to prove itself but let’s stay the course!
No thank you.
Clean up the Mission Ms. Fielder, that is the job you were elected to do, and you have failed to date.
Hands off our money for your pet project. It will be a huge waste of our money.
The Bank of North Dakota offers basic checking and savings accounts to residents of North Dakota. There’s no reason why the Public Bank of San Francisco couldn’t offer the same services to currently unbanked/underbanked residents of SF, other than the state legislature’s capitulation to the private banking industry.
Why can’t the unbanked go to the Redwood Federal Credit Union at Fox Plaza to open up a savings or checking account at a nonprofit coop? Are there barriers I’m missing?
Because they’re trying to show no assets to avoid child support or other obligations placed on citizens participating in the financial system.
“public banks are common worldwide”. This is true, however, generally, they have underwriting standards and oversight like any other bank, and are not set up to “help entities that have struggled to get funding from traditional banks get loans”.
I am super suspicious of the creation of a public bank if it is to be subsidized by retail banks. The financial crisis of 2008 that wiped out my parents was caused in part by lenders lending to sub prime borrowers. I am even more suspicious of a public bank backed by SF dems given their inability to spend within their means and their capacity to overlook monetary fraud in the non-profit sector. The creation of an institute such as a public bank smacks of rent seeking motives festering in city hall.
It strikes me as a stopgap measure to prolong an unrealistic status quo without addressing the causes of why banks refuse to approve loans.
Natoma and 14th Streets, Sunday afternoon: Hardline addicts doing their thing amidst a pungent smell of shit. As it where – same picture anywhere, anytime in the neighborhood. This is what Ms. Fielder needs to look at.
Back on topic though. From the word go, the bank’s board would enter an environment of feeling pressured for “empathy” and “kindness” to keep floating loans supporting political prestige projects that have long gone upside-down. SF public bank, the New Grift.
Seems to me that trying to fund a public bank by taxing its competitors is a fairly blatant conflict of interest.
What is to stop the tax being successively raised until those competitors can no longer do business? And then the public bank has a monopoly? We all know what that means.
I really don’t see how this bank would benefit the city at all. Financing ventures that lose money isn’t a good use of the city’s budget.
There are a lot of small, straightforward problems the city could be working to address, but instead the supes seem to love these ambitious proposals that go nowhere and wouldn’t actually make our lives better if they did.
I am sure this will be a great slush fund for the next Mohammed Nuru, Stanley Ellicott and Dreamkeeper Initiative. I bet TODCO, the Parks Alliance, and the city’s bloated IT vendors are salivating at the opportunity to get a cut of the action.
There is a reason progressivism is suffering in America. Look to Europe and Canada: universal healthcare, pensions, and programs that work. In San Francisco and California, progressivism means slush funds, unaccountable nonprofits and identity politics that open the door to graft and corruption. Jackie’s ideas, including this “bank,” exemplify that broken vision of progressivism.
Fielder wants to add additional taxes to existing banks and financial institutions — that work — so she can fund her bank; which will not be profitable by design.
Clean up the Mission first.
What we have in the US is called fractional reserve banking. The bank takes in $10M in deposits and makes $100M in loans. The business of the bank is underwriting — making sure the $100M of loans are very, very likely to be paid back. If a small number of those loans don’t get paid back and the bank loses $10M, they go bankrupt. The idea that the SF government would be good at underwriting is laughable. Just as scary, the bank that takes in $10M and loans $100M could lose all $100M — allowing the government to lose 10x the money they actually have