County Supervisor Kathryn Barger cast the sole “no” vote Tuesday on a resolution to put a half-cent Los Angeles County sales tax to a vote later this year. The motion passed 4-1.
The tax, if approved by county voters in June, would be allocated to various health services throughout the county, in order to backfill cuts in the billions of federal Medicaid funding to California and new eligibility requirements imposed by the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” signed into law last year, according to the motion by Supervisors Holly Mitchell and Hilda Solis.
In a prepared statement released Tuesday, Barger – who represents the Santa Clarita Valley and other parts of northern L.A. County – said she opposed backfilling the county’s funding needs with a sales tax, saying the hike would increase the already significant financial strain on Los Angeles County residents.
“Backfilling federal funding cuts on the backs of county taxpayers is not acceptable. Los Angeles County residents are already stretched thin,” Barger said in the release. “This proposed half-cent increase would push (the sales tax rate) even higher, making our county less affordable for families and less appealing for consumers to shop and businesses to operate.”
In a presentation on the motion, Mitchell emphasized that, on the contrary, it was the county’s duty to fill in the gaps in health care services that’d been created by the federal government. Mitchell said the county was looking at clinic closures, hiring freezes, overtime pay and emergency fund use in the wake of those funding cuts.
According to the presentation, the county will face $2.4 billion in projected losses over the next three years.
“The burden is on the county to close the gap created by the federal government that pulled the rug out from underneath us. In our hyper-connected world … when your neighbor doesn’t have health care, it impacts us all,” Mitchell said in the livestreamed meeting, adding that she and Solis hoped to create a “bridge” out of the impending health care crisis.
Dozens of county health care workers submitted statements to the board in favor of passing the half-cent tax, saying the impact of reduced funding to the facilities that serve their patients would be devastating.
Several city leaders from municipalities that contract with L.A. County for services, known as contract cities, sent letters strongly opposed to the tax, including Glendale, Cerritos, Pico Rivera and San Fernando, citing an ongoing affordability crisis for L.A. County residents.
Yet county health care leaders said the half-cent tax alone, even if passed, wouldn’t be enough to fully make up for a structural health care deficit in the county.
Health Services Department Director Christina Ghaly said the half-cent tax amount was decided to meet the magnitude of cuts threatening the system as a whole – with the combined goal of filling the health care gaps created by the federal act and the creation of a new coverage program for people who are newly under- or uninsured.
“The funding that DHS would receive directly as it’s outlined in the spending plan is so essential for helping to safeguard the services that are offered by DHS, but it will not completely solve the gap that was created as a result of the state and federal action,” Ghaly said. “We still have that structural deficit in place.”
According to the spending plan in the motion, up to 47% of revenue from the tax would go to the DHS specifically to fund care for low-income L.A. County residents without health insurance, with various percentages going to other health programs.
