An interesting thing about a situation like this is that the massive 'waste' described actually has some elements of the very liberal notions of high salaries for workers - 'wealth redistribution'.
And by that measure, you can see the economic effects - somehow the money going to the workers leaves the city very prosperous overall, even though the 'waste' issue isn't addressed.
Unfortunately, it's a lot easier to get big waste, than big money for workers by policy. FWIW it's worth, I wouldn't point to San Francisco as a model for efficiency b any means.
But before saying it's 'worse' than other cities, I'd pont out that many other cities are lacking in government in areas San Francisco is trong, including the efforts to be progressive and a sense of 'democracy'.
For example, compare it to the much larger Los Angeles. Quick, name anything about Los Angeles' city government. Who's the mayor? What are their policies?
New York City is largely praised more for broken things they do better at than anything - Bloomberg may be a better excepton, but the 'corruption' and 'waste' there seem massive as well.
Giuliani was a joke IMO.
Chicago? Ha. If righties need their anti-Obama criticisms of Chicago criticism repeated back...
Most cities seem to have the occassional corruption story, and to have moderate amounts of 'waste'.
There is a right-wing city in the south - was it Atlanta? - that got a bit obnoxious, where the rich section re-incorporated itself so that its larger tax base could stop paying for schools and services for the rest.
There was an experiemt to sort of abolish the city government and replace it with all contractors.
Of course, that's sort of what Palin's city where she was mayor did, as we saw on the Daily Show - the mayor shows up Thursday afternoon for a quick staff meeting and to sign checks. Doesn't run the schools, the police, the services, not much at all. I don't think 'well run' city government is really a democrat or republican thing. Those seem more accidental labels to fit the local populace. Theyre more for the national and to a lesser amount the state level governments.
The basics, running trash service, street lights, local police, and so on just don't really seem like a party issue. San Francisco has good and bad. The residents like some things about it.
The articlle here misses a lot of the good, but makes some very valid crticisms.