Case in point: San Francisco's approach to graffiti enforcement. The city can't seem to keep vandals from tagging every surface in sight, but it can slap property owners with citations and fines when someone else's spray paint ends up on their building. You read that right — if a stranger defaces your property, the city's response isn't to catch the vandal. It's to fine you for not cleaning it up fast enough.

As one SF resident put it: "So they have the lack of ability to enforce anything against criminals, or people causing civic disobedience, but they can fine small business owners and enforce those fines continuously?"

The enforcement mechanism is almost comically dysfunctional. DPW reportedly delivers these notices by taping them to building walls with blue painter's tape — not mailed, not certified, not delivered to an actual person. As one local described it, they'll "just tape it to the wall and hope the owner or someone responsible finds it and reads it." On a block-sized building. With multiple entrances. Good luck.

The absurdity runs deeper. The city's own code defines graffiti as markings made "without the consent of the property owner," which raises an obvious question one resident was quick to spot: can't an owner just claim they consent to the marking and call it an art installation? Add a little placard with a title and suddenly your citation-worthy eyesore is a cultural contribution.

This is San Francisco governance in a nutshell. The city has an enormous appetite for regulating the people who actually invest in property, run businesses, and pay taxes — while showing remarkably little interest in holding accountable the people who create the problems in the first place. It's victim-blaming dressed up as code enforcement.

On this May Day, here's a radical idea worth marching for: maybe direct your enforcement energy at the people doing the damage, not the people stuck with the bill.