City Treasurer’s Office – BGA Policy 2027 Budget Snapshot

The City Treasurer's Office has seen one of the highest rates of budget growth in recent years among non-ARPA funded departments, and relatively high sustained rates of growth in budgeted headcount as well.

From 2011-2026, CTO's budget grew at an average rate of 8.6% annually, or 6.3% when adjusted for inflation through 2025, compared to a citywide average rate of 5.5% (inflation-adjusted 3.2%). The current proposal would increase the department's appropriations by 32.8% from the previous year, one of the largest proportional increases in the proposal.

Estimated Fringe Costs

City budgets do not break out "fringe" pension and benefit costs for non-grant positions by department, instead grouping them together as citywide expenses under the Finance General section of the budget. To better reflect the real cost of service for departmental operations, BGA Policy has included an estimate of pension and benefit costs for the years 2018-2026, using Department of Finance fringe memos from each relevant year. An estimated fringe cost for the 2027 proposal uses the average annual rate of increase for each of the inputs into the fringe formulae.

Based on the city's fringe formulae, the CTO fringe cost for nongrant employees averaged 34.0% from 2018-2026, compared to a citywide average of 26.8%.

Local Fund Actual Spend

Over the past four complete budget years for which local fund actuals/encumbrances data is available, CTO spent on average 83.6% of its locally funded budget, compared to the citywide average 86.6% local fund spend.

Budgeted Positions & Vacancies

Staffing levels at CTO have followed roughly the same path as appropriations, with a rise in 2016 followed by a relative plateau until steeper increases beginning in 2022 and continuing on up to a 2025 high of 43 budgeted positions.

Overall, the department's budgeted headcount grew at an average annual rate of 4.5% from 2011-2026, compared to a citywide average annual change of -0.1%. The current proposal would maintain the previous year's budgeted headcount.

From January through September of 2026, the months for which full-time position vacancy data is currently available, CTO averaged a 12.2% vacancy rate, compared to the citywide average of 11.2%.

Three of the department's budgeted full-time positions were persistent vacancies (defined as the number of positions within the same combination of title, subsection, section, division, department, and fund codes that remained vacant in all nine months of available data):