Is San Francisco the worst run big city in America?

I can’t help but wonder if Los Angeles is this bad. An article from the San Francisco Weekly (“The Worst-Run Big City in the U.S.,” Benjamin Wachs and Joe Eskenazi, 14 December 2009): It's time to face facts: San Francisco is spectacularly mismanaged and arguably the worst-run big city in America. This year's city budget is an astonishing $6.6 billion — more than twice the budget for the entire state of Idaho — for roughly 800,000 residents . . . In 2002, the San Francisco Chronicle revealed that the city had, for decades, been siphoning nearly $700 million from its Hetch Hetchy water system into the San Francisco General Fund instead of maintaining the aging aqueduct. Several mayors and boards of supervisors used that money to fund pet causes, and the Public Utilities Commission didn't say no. Unfortunately, spending maintenance money elsewhere doesn't diminish the need for maintenance. By 2002, the water system was in such desperate condition that voters were asked to pass a $3.6 billion bond measure to make overdue fixes. Obligingly, they did — who doesn't like water? Since then, the projected costs have swelled by $1 billion. So far.

My Comments: There is so much juicy info in this article. If you like to read about government mismanagement, this is the article to read. But again one can't help but wonder if Los Angeles is in the same situation -- though perhaps via different means, because one has to admit that we have our own water maintenance issues in Los Angeles.