San Francisco voters will decide whether the city should have a public bank after city supervisors this week approved such a proposal to appear on the November ballot.

The city would be the first in the nation to have a municipal government-owned bank. Only the state of North Dakota runs a major public bank in the nation.

But the city’s proposal gives no answer as to where the estimated $325 million in start-up costs will come from as the city faces a $643 million budget deficit.

“In a moment like this, asking voters to commit San Francisco to potentially running a financial institution is asking for trust the city has not yet earned,” said Supervisor Alan Wong, one of the two votes against placing the measure on the ballot.

“Our city’s track record shows that meeting those demands is harder than it sounds, even for institutions designed with the right intentions,” he added.

Socialist Supervisor Jackie Fielder, who just returned from a months-long mental health leave, indicated that future legislation would figure out a revenue steam. Supporters of a bank wanted to get ahead of a 2028 expiration date for a state law that gives cities the power to create their own public banks.

“It feels like an incredible tool to add to the city’s tool kit,” Misha Steier, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Public Bank Coalition, told the San Francisco Chronicle. The coalition was founded by Fielder.

“This is the culmination of years and years of movement effort,” Steier said.

A city bank, supporters say, would unlock financing for thousands of housing units that lack funding to address the housing crisis. It could finance climate goals or lend to small businesses in the area.

“This ensures we have an institution run by real bankers that is accountable, nevertheless, to public priorities and public policy priorities,” Fielder said.

“We can build a public bank that prioritizes reinvesting back into what we all need to sustain our local communities,” added Supervisor Chyanne Chen, who brought forth the measure. “Let us use every tool at our disposal to keep the city affordable and to drive an economic recovery that leaves no one behind.”

The bank would be run by qualified bankers appointed by an oversight committee whose members would be selected by local officials. While it does not establish a revenue stream, the ballot measure would at least enshrine the bank’s rules, structure and mission in the city’s charter — including a provision that it would never lend to fossil fuel corporations or weapons manufacturers.

How startup costs will be funded seems to be difficult to answer. Fielder in February attempted another ballot measure that would impose a higher tax on lending companies to help fund such a bank, though that effort was paused to focus on this new ballot proposal.

Any new taxes may be difficult in the current political environment; this past June, voters in the progressive city even voted down a tax hike on highly paid CEOs.

North Dakota’s bank sees deposits mostly from the state’s collections of taxes and fees and corporate accounts. A very small portion comes from residents as “it is the Bank’s policy not to compete with the private sector for retail deposits,” it said on its website.

The bank has mostly seen success and has turned a profit for many years, which can be returned to the state government’s general fund or used for economic development initiatives. A lot of the success can be traced to the the state’s fracking boom, according to research by University of Illinois Chicago professor Robert S. Chirinko.

But unlike commercial banks, deposits into the public bank are not insured by the federal government, which means North Dakota takes on all the risk. California’s law requires federal insurance, which will give the city more regulatory hurdles as no public bank has sought that approval before.

Chirinko said any success replicating North Dakota’s model will heavily depend on funding. San Francisco’s proposed focus on investing in climate-friendly technology or housing may also not pay off immediately.

“There could be a role there for government, but you have to recognize that you’re not going to get your money back,” he said.

Such banks also can face accusations of unfair political influence. In 2016, North Dakota’s bank financed local law enforcement’s militarized response to controversial protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, sparking liberal backlash.

Already, critics in San Francisco are saying the same political favoritism could happen for how loans and other financial products would get issued.

“What do they want? An SF Public Bank staffed by cronies of absentee SF Supervisor Jackie Fielder,” claimed tech figure and Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan. “It’ll be a tremendous grift mill robbing the city blind.”

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On this day in 1975, a moderate earthquake centered near Morris, Minnesota, shook parts of North Dakota, Minnesota and South Dakota, startling residents but causing no major damage or injuries.

Here is the complete story as it appeared in the paper that day:

An earth tremor at 9:56 a.m. today was widely felt in the Fargo-Moorhead area as well as other parts of North Dakota, Minnesota and South Dakota, but the National Weather Service here said it had no reports of damage.

The tremor lasted from two to five seconds, Keith Blessum of the Weather Service said, and ignited telephone reports from a wide area.

The earthquake measured 5.0 on the Richter Scale. Waverly Person of the National Earthquake Information Center in Denver, Colo., said: “The earthquake was moderate and was centered in the Morris, Minn., area. It could have caused much damage in a heavily populated area.”

The quake also was felt in northwestern Iowa. Carl Stover of the Earthquake Information Center said it affected an area 300 miles long and 180 miles wide in four states. He said the exact center of the quake was 10 miles west of Morris.

Person said the earthquake that struck California’s San Fernando Valley in February 1971, killing 54 persons and causing millions of dollars in property damage, measured 6.5 on the Richter Scale.

There were no injuries reported, but authorities in several communities in Minnesota and North and South Dakota reported that residents were startled, buildings shook, dishes rattled and books fell off shelves. Some residents in Alberta, Minn., and Wheaton, Minn., also reported cracked foundations.

Among the first to report locally was Mrs. Paul Dutt, 909 27th St. N., Fargo, who told the Weather Service pictures on the walls moved and a vase moved across the top of the television set.

Marjorie Henderson, who lives on a farm between Enderlin and Lisbon, N.D., reported that the house shook and windows rattled during the tremor, while Mrs. Wesley Belter, who lives south of Casselton, N.D., said that she and four neighbors had similar experiences.

Mrs. Earl Ernst, who lives eight miles east of Wolverton, Minn., also reported that the walls of her trailer home shook and dishes rattled.

Other reports received by the Weather Service at Hector Airport here were from Hankinson and Wahpeton, N.D., and Breckenridge and Ottertail, Minn.; Milbank, S.D., White Rock Dam on the South Dakota border and Canby, Minn.

The earth tremor shook much of northeastern South Dakota and parts of southeastern North Dakota and western Minnesota but apparently caused no injuries, the Associated Press reported.

Donald Johnson, Codington (S.D.) County Civil Defense Director, said the strongest tremors were felt in the South Shore area, about 12 miles northeast of Watertown.

Johnson said a school was evacuated in South Shore, but there were no injuries or major damage reported.

A University of Minnesota professor said that part of that state has a history of minor earthquakes, with about half a dozen reported since the mid-1800s.

Residents in the Willmar, Alexandria, Morris and Long Prairie areas all felt the tremor. It hit about 9:55 a.m., and lasted five to 10 seconds.

No major damage was reported, although the tremor startled many people and shook household furnishings. Some residents in Alberta, near Morris, reported cracked foundations.

Dr. Harold Mooney, professor of geophysics at the University of Minnesota, estimated the tremor would have measured 4 or 4.5 on the Richter Scale. Mooney’s seismograph wasn’t operating when the tremor struck, and he said his was the only such measuring device in the area.

“The motion of a fault in the western part of the state sent out seismic waves at thousands of feet per second, and that’s what the people felt,” Mooney said.

“There is a history of earthquakes in that area, so this one was not without precedent.”

The most recent was near Alexandria in 1950, he said. The most severe was near Brainerd in 1917; that one broke some windows and knocked things off shelves.

President Trump traveled to North Dakota on Wednesday to visit the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library before its official opening on Saturday.

“He had a freakin’ wild life,” Trump told an audience at a Western-themed amphitheater, the Associated Press reported. “He didn’t want to be quiet. He wanted to be great.”

The library is expected to be a major source of tourism in rural western North Dakota.

-The Hagstrom Report