Phil Ting Begins Organizing Campaign for Mayor to Reset San Francisco

San Francisco, CA – Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting today began organizing what he pledged would be “a different kind of political campaign focused on empowering San Franciscans to help make our city government work faster, fairer and smarter.”

Ting, accompanied by his wife Susan and two young daughters, pulled papers from the City Elections Department to begin organizing a campaign for Mayor in the November 2011 election.

Ting has been leading a growing online community, ResetSanFrancisco.org, dedicated to organizing San Franciscans from every neighborhood to promote the kind of “User Generated Government” that will help make our city more responsive to pressing issues like job creation, improving public transit and bringing solutions to the city’s endless budget problems.

“Politics is too important to leave to politicians alone. We need to engage the whole population to identify problems, to help fix them and most of all to hold government officials accountable for results,” Ting said.

“To put San Franciscans back to work, we need to make our government work more effectively. From attracting new high-wage jobs to creating successful public schools that are the key for long-term growth, our city government can and should do more – and do it better,” Ting said.

Ting, 41, has served as San Francisco Assessor-Recorder since he was appointed to that office by Mayor Gavin Newsom in July 2005. He was elected citywide in November 2005, again in November 2006 and re-elected this past November with nearly 80% of the vote.

Ting, a graduate of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, is the former Executive Director of the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco. Ting also served in the private sector as a business consultant advising government agencies and corporations on how to increase fiscal efficiency and be more responsive to constituents.

Ting serves as chair of ChinaSF, a pioneering partnership to help bring more high-wage jobs to San Francisco. He launched GoSolarSF to help promote green economic growth. And Ting has worked as part of a larger coalition of advocates to help homeowners and tenants facing foreclosure stay in their homes.

As Assessor-Recorder, Ting took over an office considered one of the city’s worst and turned it around. His work has already helped generate more than $245 million dollars in new revenue without raising taxes. Ting has worked to identify and collect unpaid assessments and transfer taxes, including over $30 million dollars from one of the largest unrecorded real estate transactions in the city’s history.

For additional information visit www.ResetSanFrancisco.org