City Hall Digest: SFUSD Considers Scrapping New Payroll System, and State Cash to Combat Retail Theft

City Hall Digest is TogetherSF Action’s weekly dispatch from San Francisco’s City Hall, broken into bite-sized pieces—because understanding local government is your fundamental right.

SFUSD May Scrap New Payroll System After Less Than Two Years

For the last year and a half, educators and administrators alike in the San Francisco Unified School District have been dealing with an enormous, multi-million dollar headache. Software glitches in EMPowerSF—SFUSD’s new custom payroll system from SAP—have resulted in thousands of employees not getting paid, vanishing health benefits, and improper tax withholdings. 

The pre-2022 Board of Education approved the problem-riddled contract, and since the software went live in January 2022, the district has paid another $15 million to outside consultants to clean up problems with it. Despite these efforts, there are currently still 3,000 open service claim tickets from employees. 

In short: the new system is a complete mess that negatively affects some of our city’s most important employees, and change is needed. 

That change may come by completely scrapping the enterprise resource planning software—while painful, this could be the best course of action. Over $40 million in implementation and consultant costs plus a year and a half of maintenance have yet to solve the problem. Combined with the thousands of service requests still open, there’s little likelihood that more time and money will fix it. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but reverting to the district’s old software and updating it may prove to be more financially sound in the long run.

Last week, SFUSD Superintendent Matt Wayne signaled his willingness to explore other options, asking a rhetorical question: “Is this the right system for SFUSD?” While the district still has problems related to student performance, enrollment, and teacher retention; the broken payroll system is a serious situation that has gone unresolved for too long. 

City Gets Infusion of Cash From State to Combat Rampant Shoplifting

Last week, the Mayor, Chief of Police, and District Attorney announced that San Francisco received a $17.3 million grant from the State of California to fight organized retail theft—a significant boon at a time when local businesses have been steeply impacted by this crime. 

The grant is part of a larger, $267-million statewide effort by Governor Gavin Newsom to combat retail theft across California. These funds are tailored to each city’s particular needs—for San Francisco, the goal of the grant is to crack down on crime and the resale of stolen goods. But how exactly will it do that? Let’s break down the money.

Of the total pool of funds, $15.3 million will go to the San Francisco Police Department to fund more personnel, crime analysts, and equipment to get at the heart of organized retail theft rings that have been running rampant lately. A crucial piece to these rings is their reliance on vehicles to move goods and people in and out of the city quickly—part of these funds will go toward technology that allows officers to automatically read and register license plates through state databases. This helps identify stolen vehicles as well as any incidents associated with the vehicle.

The remaining $2 million will go to the District Attorney’s office to fund an attorney and an investigator dedicated solely to retail theft. Currently, retail theft cases are handled by prosecutors in different branches of the office—having a dedicated prosecutor will allow for retail theft cases to be processed faster. 

This grant is a significant investment in San Francisco’s public safety efforts by the Governor, and we’re appreciative of the office’s efforts to take the city’s retail theft problems seriously.