Back in April, Santa Barbara County Executive Officer Mona Miyasato outlined what on the political horizon kept her awake late at night; this Tuesday, she shared the bad news in freshly grim detail with the Board of Supervisors. Based on her bleak fiscal prognosis, all five supervisors might need sleeping pills to get any rest.
Looking ahead over the next five years, Miyasato explained that the county government was looking at $66 million in cumulative budget shortfalls. Of that, she said, $26 million can be explained by chronic deficits that have afflicted certain general fund operations, like the departments of Public Health and Social Services. Some of it stems from a projected increase in wages and benefits.
But $40.3 million, she said, will be caused by federal and state funding cuts to social safety net programs. If the supervisors want to keep those programs whole for the next year alone, it will cost them $23 million they currently do not have.
She recounted how at a recent gathering of county executives, one speaker noted, “The safety net was shrinking,” only to be corrected by someone saying, “Someone punched a hole in it.” For example, she said the county will lose $11.4 million in indigent care medical coverage over the next two years because of federal changes to Medi-Cal eligibility. Even so, she said, the county is still required to provide that service.
“The indigent care program was created by the state to provide medical assistance to uninsured, low-income individuals who cannot afford care. The county is the legally mandated provider of last resort for medically indigent adults, ensuring access to basic health services when other coverage options are unavailable.”
With the state looking at an $18 billion budget shortfall — that’s $5 billion worse than previously anticipated — she said there’s little hope that Sacramento can bail the county out.
After Miyasato and county budget director Paul Clementi unleashed the blizzard of bad budgetary news, the supervisors described their choices ahead as “grim,” “bleak,” “tough,” and “painful.” The prospect of putting a sales tax increase on the ballot so voters could decide was mentioned in passing but discussed not at all.
Likewise, the supervisors got a serious earful from six mental-health and criminal-justice-reform advocates arguing they could cut the number of new jail beds now proposed for the North County Jail by one-third and save $44 million without compromising public safety. That savings, they noted, did not include the millions saved in salaries for new jail safety personnel or the millions more spent on debt financing. While a majority of supervisors are open to this idea, not one of them broached the idea this Tuesday. Should they do so later, it will involve a significant showdown with Sheriff Bill Brown.
Between now and April — when budget deliberations begin in earnest — they will have to figure out what the most essential functions of county government are and what programs are simply nice but not necessary.
Supervisor Bob Nelson, the board’s reigning fiscal hawk, suggested the supervisors might reduce development restrictions to increase property tax revenues. He also noted the board majority’s hostility to oil development might be pinching the county in its bottom line.
Back in April, Miyasato explained that federal cuts to the social safety net is what kept her up at night. “If funding and/or access go away, the need for those services won’t,” she said. “Thinking it will affect just ‘those people’ is misleading,” she added. “It will affect ‘us people’ because 38 percent of our residents get public insurance. At the local level, we don’t have the resources or ability to backfill or compensate for those losses.”
