Mayor Daniel Lurie has come out against Proposition I, the November ballot measure that would steer San Francisco's real-estate transfer tax toward affordable housing, joining the police and firefighter unions in branding it an "unaccountable slush fund."

The opposition, reported Wednesday by the San Francisco Chronicle, pits the mayor against a measure that would lock in the intent of a 2020 tax hike voters approved to build housing — money that instead flows to the general fund. What the framing obscures is that Lurie is himself a backer of a competing transfer-tax measure on the same ballot, and that the two first-responder unions standing beside him just secured raises drawn from the same general fund they say Prop I would drain.

Mayor Daniel Lurie, San Francisco Firefighters Local 798 and the San Francisco Police Officers Association issued a sharply worded joint statement Wednesday opposing Proposition I, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The measure, also called the Affordable Housing Guarantee Act, would earmark proceeds from the city's tax on real-estate deals of $10 million or more to build, buy and preserve affordable housing and to fund homelessness-prevention programs.

Lurie and the unions said the measure would blow a "massive, permanent hole" in the roughly $7 billion general fund — the discretionary account that pays for police, firefighters and paramedics, among much else. "I do not believe that this measure will lead to any affordable housing being built, but it will redirect $120 million of public funds away from investing in clean and safe streets, emergency response and better city services," Lurie said in the statement, according to the Chronicle. He called Prop I "an unaccountable slush fund for the groups that wrote it" and warned voters not "to be fooled by yet another intentionally misleading ballot measure thrown on at the last minute."

The dispute traces to 2020, when voters roughly doubled the real-estate transfer tax. Proponents hoped it would seed a permanent revenue stream for affordable housing, but the measure never legally dedicated the money, so it lands in the general fund where City Hall spends it as it likes. Prop I's backers say the initiative simply enforces what voters intended. In their telling, any budget "hole" is an accounting artifact: "Because this tax was passed in 2020 to finance affordable housing, any claim of a deficit by using that money for affordable housing is a manufactured deficit," a supporter argued in the Chronicle's account, accusing the administration of "doubling down on the city's refusal to spend the revenue the way that the voters intended."

Two facts complicate the mayor's fiscal-discipline framing. First, Lurie is not a transfer-tax opponent on principle. Mission Local reported in June that Lurie and Supervisor Bilal Mahmood introduced their own November measure — a "foreclosure tax" that would newly tax sales of foreclosed commercial buildings by undoing a 1984 exemption, projected to raise $200 million over three years. Prop I is the rival transfer-tax approach The Dissent previously identified with former Supervisor Dean Preston's Affordable Housing Guarantee Act. San Franciscans, in other words, may weigh two competing transfer-tax questions on the same ballot — with the mayor backing one and attacking the other.

Second, the timing of the union alliance is pointed. As the Chronicle noted, Local 798 and the POA "recently secured generous new contracts from Lurie" — deals that themselves draw down the general fund the unions now warn Prop I would raid. The mayor's administration is in the middle of a push to hire more first responders, giving both unions a direct stake in keeping discretionary dollars unencumbered.

The Dissent could not independently reach Prop I's campaign for comment, and no other local outlet had matched the Chronicle's report as of this filing. The measure's precise revenue impact — the $120 million figure Lurie cites — has not been vetted against a public Controller's analysis. Voters will decide on Nov. 3.