☆ Moses: short term service reductions and “efficiency gains” won’t save San Jose
“I can’t think of anything less strategic,” says Mark Moses, in response to San Jose’s promise to eliminate vacant positions. In an Opportunity Now exclusive Q&A, the author of The Municipal Financial Crisis argues that this org-chart-by attrition approach, along with short term service cuts and “disingenuous” calls for efficiency gains, do nothing to fix the city’s long-term budget problem.
Opportunity Now: In your 2026 prediction for Opp Now, you warned of a budget and services reckoning by the end of the decade for cities that fixate on short term fixes and ignore neglected liabilities and deferred maintenance. Does this year’s $65 million shortfall mean the reckoning has come early to San Jose?
Mark Moses: I think what we see is dancing with the reckoning. No one really wants to confront it head on. The reason these are difficult choices is the entrenchment of the status quo. The decision makers pretend that the music is still playing and that there are still plenty of chairs.
ON: Mayor Mahan said the city will have to “discuss service reductions. None of the tradeoffs will be easy.” Is there any way these short-term “tradeoffs” will do anything to prevent severe austerity in the not-too-distant future?
MM: No. There are several red flags that indicate that there is nothing strategic or substantive about this approach. What tradeoffs? What is being traded for what – and what standard will be used to evaluate whether a given tradeoff is worthwhile? Observe the unstated assumption here: We really don't have to rethink the goals and assumptions that got us to where we are now. We don't have to challenge the manner in which we deliver services. We don't have to reclaim management's rights with respect to how the workforce is deployed. We can survive this by shaving some services and enduring some difficult “tradeoffs.”
ON: City Manager Jennifer Maguire is looking for “cost savings through efficiency gains.”
MM: The idea that "efficiency gains" will help is disingenuous. True efficiency gains are not possible when management's rights to direct the workforce have been bargained away in the labor agreements and an arbitrary value is placed on retaining existing employees.
ON: When the city manager also talked about “eliminating vacant positions.” Doesn’t that just mean wait till people retire and then don’t rehire anybody?
MM: Yes, it means wait until people leave or retire and then pretend, or admit, that you don't need the position. I can't think of anything less strategic. The organizational chart is then shaped by the accident of who leaves the organization. Department heads are forced to improvise. Very few things in municipal government ever get a fresh look. Department budgets build incrementally year after year. Staffing is adjusted incrementally year after year. When someone with fresh eyes looks at it and asks why these things are the way they are, no one can explain.
ON: The Spotlight article quoted people from interest groups looking to protect jobs and funding, but they didn’t quote any taxpayer advocates or fiscal hawks. What’s the single argument you would make to force a more honest conversation about the long-term trajectory?
MM: I would point out that the city's funding is derived by extracting resources from the local economy – i.e., taxing the residents and business owners. The city organization is not a local center for make-work jobs. The reason we have municipal government is to maintain the conditions needed by the residents and businesses to flourish freely. That is, the government is a means to the ends of the residents and business owners. It is a perversion to see the taxpaying residents and business owners as the financial means for the survival of an unbounded local bureaucracy.
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