Transgender Job Program Faces Hurdles

An initiative to help transgender people find and keep jobs in San Francisco may still be in trouble, despite the support of several local lawmakers.

The three-year-old program was temporarily saved from budget cuts when the San Francisco Human Services Commission voted unanimously on April 22 to keep the Transgender Economic Empowerment Initiative fully funded. According to the Los Angeles Times, half of the program's $450,000 budget comes from the city, a small drop in the bucket compared to the city's $483 million budget hole.

While the line item was secured in the commission's section of the city budget, a spokesman for Mayor Gavin Newsom said, "There will be some very tough and unpleasant choices that the mayor is going to have to make" before the budget heads to the board of supervisors June 1. He also added even with backing from several community organizers, the chair of the Human Rights Commission, and one of the supervisors, no single program has a complete guarantee for survival.