On September 13 Supervisor David Campos re-introduced his amendments to the Health Care Security Ordinance that would effectively eliminate the use of Health Reimbursement Accounts as a means of compliance with the health care security ordinance. Supervisor Campos was joined in support of the measure by Supervisors Avalos, Cohen, Kim, Mar, and Mirkarimi. Supervisor Campos’s new measure is slightly amended from his original proposal but not improved and will still cost approximately $50 million a year without any demonstrable increase in health care or health outcomes.

During the 2008 recession, San Francisco lost over 30,000 jobs. Since the recovery, we have only added back approximately 500 jobs, leaving us with a 29,500 deficit in just three years. Now is not the time to put an additional $50 million annual cost on employers.

Today, Board President David Chiu introduced an alternative amendment to the Health Care Ordinance that would address many of the concerns expressed by Supervisor Campos, without devastating the local economy. While we may not agree with everything in Supervisor Chiu’s amendment, we do believe it is a much better approach than that of Supervisor Campos.

We look forward to working with the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors in supporting a solution that improves the current law without closing hundreds of businesses and killing thousands of jobs.

We expect that both measures will be heard at the Government Audit and Oversight Committee (Campos, Chiu, Farrell) on September 29th at 10:00am. It is essential that you let the Board of Supervisors know how Supervisor Campos's measure will negatively impact your business. Please take a moment and copy the email addresses below and email the Supervisors about your concerns.

• Eric.mar@sfgov.org
• mark.farrell@sfgov.org
• david.chiu@sfgov.org
• Carmen.chu@sfgov.org
• ross.mirkarimi@sfgov.org
• jane.kim@sfgov.org
• sean.elsbernd@sfgov.org
• scott.weiner@sfgov.org
• david.campos@sgov.org
• malia.cohen@sfgov.org
• john.avalos@sfgov.org

We will continue to contact you in the coming days to update you on the status of the ordinance and to ask you to get involved. Without your involvement, this measure could become the law - putting thousands of San Franciscans out of work. For any questions, please contact Rob Black, GGRA Executive Director at rob@ggra.org or at (415) 781-5348 x 1.