San Francisco Reconsiders Boycott of Conservative States; Adds 10-20% to Costs

The City of San Francisco is reportedly reconsidering its boycott on socially conservatives states, after the ban on travel and contracting failed to change those states’ policies and raised the city’s contracting costs 10-20%.

As Breitbart News has reported, San Francisco and the State of California as a whole have imposed boycotts and travel bans on Republican-governed states that have banned transgender bathrooms or restricted abortion.

Fox News notes that San Francisco’s original “2016 ordinance, Chapter 12X, was initially passed in the wake of the Obergefell v. Hodges decision to include states that passed anti-LGBTQ legislation, but was amended twice in 2019 and 2021 to add additional states who passed restrictive abortion and voting rights legislation.”

As the San Francisco Chronicle noted last week, the city’s ban applies to 30 states, only one of which has been removed from the banned list — and it did not refer to the San Francisco ban as the reason for having done so.

Meanwhile, Fox News observes, city officials have concluded that the ban has raised the city’s contracting costs.

A report released by City Administrator Carmen Chu earlier this month observed: “While it is difficult to quantify the exact cost of 12X to the City, the Budget and Legislative Analyst notes that a loss in competition is likely to increase the City’s contracting costs by 10 – 20% annually. These costs could continue to increase and compound overtime as the City’s potential contractor pool shrinks if the list of banned states grows.”

Chu has offered several alternatives, including repealing the boycott entirely, or amending it in various ways.

Several members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors have already introduced proposals to that effect, either urging the ordinance be repealed or that construction contracts be exempted from the red-state boycott.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.