San Francisco Chamber of Commerce v. City & County of San Francisco

Appellants are taxpayers in the City and County of San Francisco. They sought injunction, writ of mandate and declaratory judgment, in the superior court, the essence of their combined actions and special proceeding being a challenge to the validity of a certain salary ordinance. The ordinance fixes the salaries for the 1969-1970 fiscal year of “miscellaneous” employees; that is, all or nearly all except policemen, firemen, craft employees and streetcar and bus operators. The court denied the application for temporary injunction and for writ of mandate and declared the ordinance to be valid. Appeal followed.

Section 151 of the San Francisco Charter (Stats. 1950, ch. 4, pp. 46-49) provides that the board of supervisors shall have the power and the duty to fix salaries by ordinance and that compensations shall be in accord with the generally prevailing rates of wages for like service and working conditions in private employment or in other comparable governmental organizations in this state. The charter provides that the Civil Service Commission (hereinafter “Commission”) shall recommend schedules of compensation to the board of supervisors, solely on the basis of facts and data…