The official who oversees San Francisco’s $14 billion budget — and who helped steer the city through a Great Recession, tech booms, COVID shutdowns and difficult recovery, all while navigating the relentless factional wars in City Hall — has announced plans to step down next year.

“I’ve worked on the last 26 city budgets. I’ve spent over half of my life on the city’s budget and finances,” City Controller Ben Rosenfield said in an interview with the Chronicle.

“It feels like the right moment for me to think about what’s next and what’s different,” Rosenfield continued, discussing a career milestone in the same measured tone he would use to write an audit, or break down intricate budget documents to a layperson. He has not hinted at his next move.

His exit after 26 years is a blow as San Francisco struggles to fill commercial vacancies downtown and adjust to the new era of remote work — the last issue Rosenfield will tackle before he transitions. Grappling with what they acknowledged will be a tremendous loss, city leaders were quick to praise Rosenfield. 

For years, everyone had known him as the bespectacled bureaucrat in dapper suits who accomplished wizardry behind the scenes with city budgets  and made people on all sides of the political spectrum feel like he was listening.

“Everybody trusts him — the mayor, the board, homeless advocates, labor unions, downtown businesses — they believe what he says; they know he’s an honest person,” said Ed Harrington, the previous controller, who passed the torch to Rosenfield in 2008.

Mayor London Breed echoed those sentiments.

“He’s a professional,” she said. “You don’t hear about leaks from his office or side conversations. They stick to the facts. They stick to the information. They stick to focusing on what’s in the best interest of the city.”

Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin marveled at Rosenfield’s ability to quietly root out corruption, often by pointing to systemic failures, and the lessons city officials should take away. Rosenfield’s tactful reports left no room for top officials to protect a swindling contractor or a staff person who was cheating, Peskin said.

“There was no aspect” of a staggeringly complex government that Rosenfield “was not a master and expert of, from the most minute financial details to the most complex pieces of public policy,” Peskin said. Above all, the supervisor noted, Rosenfield was resolutely nonpartisan and had “a magical way of bringing out the best in everybody.”

Comparable to a chief financial officer, the controller serves as a referee in the city budget process, managing accounts, paying vendors and employees, selling bonds and forecasting economic conditions. Additionally, the controller audits city departments and contracts and regularly makes recommendations. Last year, voters added another duty: monitor trash rates, after the city’s longtime waste hauler, Recology, was linked to a City Hall corruption scandal.

To fill such an elaborate role, Rosenfield has to constantly think about San Francisco’s overall health while managing a department of 300 employees. City controller appointments last a decade, requiring its holder to always play the long game, Harrington said. That means knowing if a decision that seems smart today could blow up five years from now. It also means managing the expectations of elected officials who compete — often ruthlessly — for resources.

“He’s an incredibly stabilizing, calming influence in a building that can often get very crazed by things going on,” Harringston said, referring to the divisions in City Hall. “Ben’s able to say, ‘Well let’s stop, let’s think about this. How do you move from here to here? How do you make it work? ’ ”

Rosenfield said his interest in city governance dates to his childhood in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, where his father worked as a university professor and his mother was a nurse. Growing up, Rosenfield saw Hyde Park as “an island of prosperity” in a city struggling with inequality — a conundrum that led him to major in urban studies at Brown University. 

At age 23, he sought an informational interview with the chief of staff for then-Mayor Willie Brown and landed a job as the city’s most junior budget analyst. From there, he got promoted to serve as budget director during the dot-com bust. In 2008, Mayor Gavin Newsom named Rosenfield to succeed Harrington as city controller. Mayor Mark Farrell reappointed Rosenfield in 2018 to a term that would have ended in 2028.

One example of Rosenfield’s ability to think calmly in a turbulent moment happened in March 2020, when top officials in San Francisco and five other Bay Area counties crafted shelter-in-place orders for residents to stay home as much as possible, curbing the spread of COVID-19. Rosenfield was among the people involved in the discussions and planning. 

At one point, he raised a concern about what time of day officials should issue the order. Because it might incite panic, the time of day mattered, he argued. It shouldn’t come in the late afternoon, as people prepared to rush home.  Ultimately, Breed’s office made the announcement at midday.

“It was so thoughtful,” said Breed’s communications director, Jeff Cretan, who also participated in the meetings. To Cretan, Rosenfield’s remarks showed that he’s not only a numbers person; he cared about how the shutdowns would affect regular people.

As San Francisco struggles to revive its downtown, the role of the city controller seems critical — and many of Rosenfield’s colleagues are dismayed to see him go.

“There will never be another Ben,” City Administrator Carmen Chu said. Two decades ago, Rosenfield hired her as a budget analyst. It was Chu’s first job in city government, and one of her favorites. She remembered Rosenfield asking hard questions and making her feel the work was consequential.

“Whether it’s the current economic downturn, prior recessions, the passing of Mayor (Ed Lee), or COVID, he has always been the steadying force in the city,” Chu said. “You felt that if Ben was here and involved, then things would be OK.”

Reach Rachel Swan: rswan@sfchronicle.com