San Francisco, CA, got a harsh economic lesson after boycotting businesses with companies in 30 states and restricting travel to the states with so-called conservative laws. The boycotts started in 2016.
It turns out that people with common sense were right. The boycott hurt San Francisco and did nothing to force businesses and states to change.
The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted to repeal a local law that prevented city employees from traveling to or doing business with companies based in states that had passed laws limiting LGBTQ rights, voting rights and abortion access.Supervisors rolled back the entire law in a 7-4 vote just one month after the board agreed to exempt construction contracts from the boycott. Mayor London Breed has already said she supports repealing or reforming the underlying law.“It’s not achieving the goal we want to achieve,” said Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who sponsored the legislation that repealed the whole boycott. “It is making our government less efficient.”
San Francisco officials truly thought the businesses and states would listen to them. The officials removed one state. The boycott added more bureaucracy, making contracting a hard and expensive process:
An earlier report from the board’s Budget and Legislative Analyst found that implementing the boycott had cost the city nearly $475,000 in staffing expenses. And the city was approving a large number of exemptions to the boycott anyway: Departments granted 538 waivers for contracts worth $791 million between mid-2021 and mid-2022, the report found. The legislative analyst said the full effect of the boycott on the city’s contract costs was difficult to pin down but pointed to past research that had found that a fully competitive process could produce savings up to 20%.“We haven’t changed a single law. We have made competitive bidding less competitive,” said Supervisor Matt Dorsey. “I think San Franciscans would be angry if they knew the amount of hoops that have to be jumped through and the added cost to city contracting.”
I’m laughing so hard. These people don’t think. They live too much in the now and do not give a thought about the future.
State Sen. Scott Wiener pushed for the ban in 2016. But last year, his feelings changed to “mixed” because it didn’t have “any exceptions for businesses in the banned states that are owned by the very groups the city is trying to defend, such as LGBTQ people.”
Think, people, think.
I also find it funny that San Francisco thought it could change anything. You’re not New York City or Chicago or Los Angeles. Hush.
The plan to repeal the boycott began in February.
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