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today's online San Francisco Chronicle

How many bureaucrats does it take to create a job? Well, if the "hire local" ordinance coming before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors this week is any indication - quite a few. And they don't come cheap.

Under the proposed ordinance coming up for a final vote Tuesday, building contractors doing business with the city would have to hire as many as half their workers from within the city. Half the new hires will also have to come from the ranks of the "disadvantaged." The goal is to see that 355 locals are trained for work through the hire-local program. But, of course, any new program requires a bureaucracy to administer it. In the case of the local-hire program, that means the city bringing in a new:

-- $59,000-a-year junior analyst.

-- $80,000-a-year community development specialist.

-- $87,878-a-year accountant.

-- $88,660-a-year contract compliance officer.

-- And a $116,246-a-year contract compliance officer II.

Add in fringe benefits, paper, pencils and the like, and you're talking $1.3 million annually. But wait, there's more. To prove that the applicants are indeed San Francisco residents, the county clerk wants them to have an official city-issued ID - which, in turn, means hiring an additional two clerks at $50,000 and $65,546 a year, plus a $57,044-a-year legal process clerk. Add in fringe benefits, work stations and the like, and you're talking another $923,000.

Total yearly administration cost: $2.2 million, or about $6,200 per job.

Now that's job creation.

It takes little imagination to see that this particular example has been repeated thousands of times around the country to administer this failed Administration's "shovel ready" projects. But wait, there's more. These new hires will also become dues-paying members of the local public employees union. In addition, let's not forget the under funded pension and healthcare costs associated with these new jobs.