☆ Moses: SJ Mayor Mahan is “rebranding scope creep” as “the basics”
Under pressure to address San Jose’s massive budget shortfall, CA gubernatorial candidate Mayor Matt Mahan talked up “charitable or commercial ventures” as if they were “core municipal functions.” They’re not, says Mark Moses, author of The Municipal Financial Crisis: instead of chasing the glamour of being a sports destination, leaders should first make sure you can park your car downtown without it getting stolen. An Opportunity Now exclusive Q&A response.
Opportunity Now: In his budget message Mahan talks about continuing progress in areas like housing production, homelessness programs, economic development, and neighborhood cleanup while protecting "core services." You've talked about how cities get in trouble when they take on too many nebulous goals that go far beyond the actual purpose of a city government. Does the Mayor's message show any effort to narrow the scope of city government?
Mark Moses: Actually, his message suggests the opposite. The Mayor is rebranding scope creep as "the basics." Housing production, homelessness prevention, and economic development are not core municipal functions; they are charitable or commercial ventures. By lumping them in with public safety, he is ensuring that the City stays stuck in a social service provider loop. A true narrowing of scope would mean admitting that the City cannot—and should not—try to manage the housing market or act as a universal landlord. Until the City separates governmental functions (protection of rights) from charitable goals and social engineering, the budget will always be in crisis, and the residents will not be properly served.
ON: Mahan points to the Super Bowl as a reason to keep building the city's reputation as a sports and entertainment destination. But during Super Bowl weekend there were two shootings and this guy got his car stolen. In a tight budget environment, what's the best move San Jose could make to build its reputation?
MM: Reputation is a byproduct of good choices and functional excellence, not a marketing campaign.
The best move San Jose could make is to stop chasing the glamour of being a sports destination and focus on becoming a city where a person can park their car without it being stolen or walk to dinner without fear of being accosted. When a city focuses on destination branding while failing at its primary duty—public safety—it’s like a restaurant with an expensive neon sign but a kitchen full of health violations. The City's reputation will take care of itself when it is a safe place to live and work.
ON: The Mayor talks about expanding the tax base through advanced manufacturing and data centers. Part of his plan is to streamline approval for advanced manufacturing in industrial zones. How realistic is economic growth as a strategy for solving a structural budget problem in a city like San Jose?
MM: Growth can be a wonderful thing for a community, but it is not a cure for a broken municipal services model. Such a strategy attempts to use economic growth as a bandage for an unbounded scope and a broken service-delivery model.
If you have a bucket with a hole in the bottom (legacy service delivery, structural deficit, and retiree obligations), pouring more water (new tax revenue) into the bucket doesn't fix the hole. In many cities, revenue growth leads to higher service demands and higher headcount, which means even greater spending and higher retirement costs. Banking on a tech windfall to save the city by 2030 is just another way of kicking the can down the road and avoiding the hard work of cutting the City’s unnecessary activities today.
Until and unless the Mayor reexamines the goals of the organization and its service delivery methods, he will never fix the hole. Without structural reform, new revenue will simply be consumed by the same systemic scope creep, inefficient systems, and rising legacy liabilities that created the deficit in the first place.
This economic strategy also reveals a failure of government neutrality. A proper government should act as a neutral referee, not an economic cheerleader or a venture capitalist. By streamlining approvals for favored sectors like AI, the City admits it has become a permission state—it creates a regulatory maze for everyone, then provides express passes to specific industries just to fund its own mission creep. It is irresponsible to make the City’s financial stability dependent on the success of a single sector. A properly designed and managed city doesn’t need a gamble to survive; it needs a sustainable, delimited mission that works regardless of which, if any, industry is currently booming.
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