San Francisco District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey.
Photo: Courtesy the subject
San Francisco currently prohibits a growing majority of businesses from competing for the $5.8 billion in taxpayer dollars we annually spend on city goods and services contracts.
The reason?
Because since marriage equality for same-sex couples became the law of the land a decade ago, fewer and fewer employers still offer the domestic partner benefits that our 1996 equal benefits ordinance, or EBO, still requires to become a qualified city bidder. That makes our competitive bidding less and less competitive – and our goods and services more and more expensive.
This phenomenon isn’t hypothetical. Last year, our City Administrator reported that 46% of city bid solicitations issued the year prior received one res