LA County Supe: healthcare cuts are devastating, but a “regressive” sales tax hike isn’t the solution.
Just like in SJ and SCC, LA County BOS recently approved a half-cent sales tax for the June ballot to backfill federal, and state, healthcare funding cuts. But here’s the difference: 5th District Supervisor Kathryn Barger stood tall and argued forcefully against measure. She was the only Supe to vote No, because taxing Angelenos, she says, is the “tail wagging the dog.” Excerpted below are her comments at the 2/10/26 LA BOS meeting.
I grew up in the county working with public health, health, and mental health. When you look at our budget, almost three quarters of it goes toward those areas. So, the impact is going to be devastating. One of my frustrations is, the state should have taken the lead. This is not unique to LA County. You have hospitals closing up in rural areas. And yet, crickets. (1:35:29)
My frustration is not the why, I know why: the devastation to our healthcare system on the heels of a measles outbreak, what next?
But then you open up the LA Times and the headline is “Los Angeles and Long Beach are among the least affordable cities in the county.”
No good deed goes unpunished…the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale raised their sales tax to prevent us from going in and taking what was left of their cap so that they could protect within their own city limits. Now with the legislation…Lancaster and Palmdale will be the highest taxed cities in the nation. I don't know if that’s something that they will be bragging about but that is the reality…Lancaster and Palmdale, which used to be the most affordable places in the county, are now going to be the most highly taxed as it relates to the sales tax. (1:39:59)
This is a regressive tax. I don’t care what anyone says…we are backfilling a federal obligation and a state obligation, and it’s been crickets. CSAC at the last minute put together a chart highlighting what the impact is going to be. But we all know what the impact is going to be. I want to know what are you doing statewide to address this crisis, and it's crickets…it should be frustrating to all of our healthcare providers, because this is the tail wagging the dog. And not the way you should go about good public policy. I look to our healthcare providers from the standpoint of the devastating impact it's going to have. No one can argue otherwise.
I have to wonder if the cost per person would be better shifted to an ability to pay for people who're accessing our healthcare system…
When I talk to cities they poll because they want to do their own sales tax increases. It does not poll well. At two-thirds it probably wouldn't. General tax, yeah. But I will tell you, and it pains me to say this, there’s not a lot of trust amongst voters as it relates to government and how they’re going to spend their tax dollars.
As a general fund my concern is, we can adopt a plan. The trauma tax was actually voted by the voters and then we did a divide by five on that.
From a credibility standpoint it's not like we are as a whole are credible when it comes to promises made, promises broken…if this was a specific versus a general, it’d be a different discussion. I’m really having a hard time, because…it's going to impact everybody, because the safety net as a whole is going to be put in a position that quite frankly is unsustainable. …but again, I look to the state. Where are you? Knock-knock?…pre H.R. 1 we were having this discussion…the state changed some policies in terms of who can sign up, and we were concerned about it then. This is not new. We watch Sacramento. They sneeze, we get pneumonia. (1:46:27)
Read Kathryn Barger’s official statement here.
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