Voters in San Francisco voted overwhelmingly to turn down a proposal to open up waste and recycling collection to competitive bidding.

It was a victory for Recology Inc., the long-time sole provider of services to the city where it is headquartered. For 80 years the city has operated a permitting system that is essentially capped. The issued was rejected by about 77 percent of the electorate.

 “This is really a testament to the relationship between Recology and the voters," said Gale Kaufman, a consultant for opponents of Proposition A, according to Recology.

The San Francisco advocacy group Keep SF Green said in a statement after the vote that it “demonstrated that there was no reason to fix something that wasn’t broken in the first place. The voters understood that this measure would have had derailed so much that is successful about the current system that has created the highest ranked recycling program in the country. “