Let's be clear about what veterans court does: it's a diversion program that connects former service members with treatment, mentorship, and structured accountability instead of just cycling them through the revolving door of traditional criminal proceedings. It's the kind of targeted intervention that fiscal conservatives should love — it costs less per participant than incarceration, produces better outcomes, and keeps people from becoming long-term wards of the system.

And yet, here we are.

San Francisco's budget is a $14-billion-plus behemoth. The city spends staggering sums on homelessness programs with questionable metrics, on bureaucratic layers that would make the Pentagon blush, and on infrastructure projects that routinely blow past their budgets. But when it comes time to trim, we're apparently going after a program that serves people who volunteered to put their lives on the line for the country.

This is the fundamental problem with how San Francisco governs: there's never a shortage of money for new initiatives, pilot programs, and consultants, but existing programs that quietly deliver results are perpetually one budget cycle away from extinction. Nobody holds a rally for veterans court. There's no nonprofit gala. It just works — and that, ironically, makes it vulnerable.

If the city can't find room in its gargantuan budget to keep veterans court running, it tells you everything you need to know about priorities at City Hall. We're not talking about tens of millions here. We're talking about a rounding error in a budget that loses more money to inefficiency before lunch than veterans court spends in a year.

The men and women who served deserve better than being treated as a line item that's easy to erase. San Francisco should be embarrassed.