Mayor Daniel Lurie’s proposed budget for the next two years will drop sometime before June 1, and with it the mayor’s vision for how San Francisco will close a projected $607 million deficit.
Cutting $607 million over the next two years isn’t going to be easy — Lurie has warned of “painful cuts” ahead — but it’s still a fraction of what the city spends in a given budget cycle.
Here, for example, is how the city parceled out its $16 billion budget in the 2025-26 fiscal year (up slightly from $15.9 billion the year before).
Explore San Francisco’s $16 billion budget
Click on each department to see more details and year-over-year growth.
Data from the Budget and Appropriation Ordinance published on May 12 2026. Data shows the budget for the 2025-2026 fiscal year.
Not all of that money got spent. The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing underspent its $280 million allowance by $34 million, for example.
But other city-funded institutions did the opposite. Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, which in the past largely paid for itself through charges for service, is projecting a $94 million deficit. The sheriff’s department is on track to exhaust its budget by early June, partly due to deputy overtime.
The budget for different city services also waxed and waned over the last two years. See how each department grew or shrunk below.
Where does that $16 billion come from?
Click on each department to see more details and year-over-year growth.
Data from the Budget and Appropriation Ordinance published on May 12 2026. Data shows the budget for the 2025-2026 fiscal year.
Balancing San Francisco’s budget is particularly tough because, during the Trump administration, federal funding has become a wild card.
The city receives roughly $3.7 billion annually from the federal administration, which the White House has attempted to cut into. City programs that deal with immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, clean energy and diverse populations have been hit the hardest.
The city attorney’s office has filed 14 lawsuits against the federal government in an attempt to protect these funds.
Here’s a closer look at that rise and fall by category.
Notice the double-digit drop in federal funding. Federal money flowing into San Francisco spiked dramatically at the end of the Biden administration, then collapsed. The city received 211 percent more in federal funds in 2024-25 than in the previous fiscal year, only to see that figure drop 53 percent this year.
The mayor and Board of Supervisors created a new federal and state revenue reserve in the 2025-26 and 2026-27 budgets, and stocked it with a projected balance of $487.3 million.
However, the city warns that the anticipated financial impact of federal legislation like H.R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which cuts federal funding for Medicaid and food assistance, could be much higher.
So far, Mayor Lurie has turned to a familiar playbook in order to reduce the looming deficit. The mayor’s office has frozen hiring across several departments, which his office says has generated $83 million in savings.
On the local level, revenue was mostly on the rise. Business taxes are booming, in part thanks to Proposition M (the grand bargain that voters approved in November 2024 to restructure how the city taxes businesses), as well as strong corporate earnings and the resolution of several long-running tax disputes.
Proceeds from the real-estate transfer tax is up $109 million, although the mayor’s BUILD Act, if voted in by the Board of Supervisors, would cut that revenue significantly. The “Overpaid CEO tax,” if approved at the ballot, could bring up to $300 million a year into city coffers.
What does the future hold? Watch this space. Like we said, budget season has only just begun.
Methodology
The data in this piece was obtained from the 2025-2026 Budget and Appropriation Ordinance and the 2025-2025 Nine-Month Budget Status Report published by the Controller’s Office.
The department totals do not include adjustments for interdepartmental transfers and recoveries. Those adjustments are included in the calculation of the $16 billion overall total.
Charts by Iryna Humenyuk and Kelly Waldron. If you spot any errors, please let us know at kelly@missionlocal.com.
San Francisco is hardly unique among US cities that are having to cope, for many reasons, with numbers that can’t add up.
As elsewhere, politicians claim they have no choice and must cut services because the arithmetic is clear: “there is no money.”
Less clear is who the arithmetic benefits (the financial aristocracy), and who must pay (us).
This is where genuine socialists part ways with all those who would cobble solutions that amount to becoming the “least worst”– solutions that will inevitably deliver worse outcomes requiring tougher and tougher decisions in the future.
We do not need a “better” mayor or a “more progressive” city council to tell us more lies.
We want to fight for real democratic control over the economy to reshape it in the interests of the many, not the profits of the few.
The crisis facing San Francisco’s city budget is of a piece with the crisis of capitalism today.
I *always* click through when I see data reporting at Mission Local – thank you for your attention to detail, design, and documentation, Ms. Waldron and Ms. Humenyuk!
There should be a policy in this budget that conditions contracts with nonprofits that receive at 60% of their revenues from city grants and contracts or by revenues from city funded assets, on their employees not being paid more than 60% of what the Mayor of San Francisco is paid.
Chop from the top.
Take a look at the salaries/pensions (updated through 2024) for SF City/County employees listed on Transparent California website and you may be able to discern one of the reasons why these budgets are so hard to control.
Less money coming in less going out
Inflated salaries and benefits
Nonprofits getting busted everyday
Tired of the waste fraud and abuse
The city with all the employees nonprofits and billions spent everyyear
Yet the place has been destroyed
Why cannot the city yet get control of the open drug sales and usage ?
The city policy and its citizens are in away supporting a death penalty by allowing people to use drugs and rot away and die .
Again really saddened and tired of this city which is enabling the harm .
Check out the Transparent California website for 2024 salaries & pensions of SF City and County employees and you will see why balancing the budget has become so difficult!