The Stand Up for San Francisco coalition, which SEIU 1021 is a founding partner of, announced last Wednesday, Jan. 21, that it has officially collected the required number of voter signatures to qualify the Overpaid CEO Act for the June 2026 San Francisco ballot. Healthcare workers, caregivers, small business owners, and elected officials gathered at San Francisco General Hospital to mark the milestone and call on voters to protect essential city services threatened by deep federal cuts under the Trump Administration’s budget bill, H.R. 1. 

If approved by voters, the Overpaid CEO Act will generate more than $200 million annually to help protect safety-net hospitals and clinics like SF General Hospital, in-home care, first responders, and other critical public programs and services from cuts tied to H.R. 1, which has created a projected city budget deficit nearing $1 billion.

Frontline healthcare workers warned of the real-world consequences of further cuts. “At SF General, we care for patients regardless of income, insurance status, or housing,” said Jason Negrón-Gonzales, an SEIU 1021 member and emergency room nurse at SF General Hospital. “More than half of our patients rely on Medicaid. If funding is cut, that means longer wait times, fewer services, and lives at risk. The Overpaid CEO Act helps protect our capacity to care for people in crisis and ensures this hospital can continue to serve the community.”

The Overpaid CEO Act applies only to the largest corporations that do business in San Francisco: those with at least $1 billion in U.S. earnings, 1000 or more employees, and executives paid more than 100 times the median national wage at their company. Small businesses, working families, renters, and homeowners are not impacted.

“The principle of the Overpaid CEO Act is simple: we are asking the same companies that benefit from H.R. 1 to invest back into the city that gave them so much,” said San Francisco Supervisor Bilal Mahmood. “H.R. 1 reduced tax rates on corporate profits from 35% to 21%. That is a double-digit reduction. The Overpaid CEO Act raises the tax on gross receipts by 1%—a single digit. For the companies that make over $1 billion in revenue that this tax will affect, we are asking them to contribute just a fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars that they will receive under the savings of H.R.1.  Because only when everyone reinvests back into our city can we protect small business, working families, renters, and homeowners. The Overpaid CEO Act is about protecting people, protecting services, and protecting our future.”

For more information, visit www.StandUpForSF.com.