Campaign rhetoric is heating up around , the open-ended, half-cent sales tax increase that will appear on the November ballot throughout San Diego County.
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Proponents of the measure gathered at the county administration center Tuesday, launching a “Yes on B” campaign that is backed by a coalition of health care organizations and labor unions pushing for a majority vote that would collect an estimated $400 million to $450 million per year designated to fund local health care coverage, Tijuana River pollution control and emergency personnel and fire-prevention programs.
Assemblymember Carl DeMaio and county Supervisor Jim Desmond, who is running for Congress, are pursuing a No on B campaign while county Supervisors Palomar Aguirre and Terra Lawson-Remer are scheduled to promote the sewage-crisis aspects of the measure in an event Wednesday.
Tuesday’s pro-B event focused on the effects of H.R. 1, also known as President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” on local services.
“Measure B is about protecting the future health and safety of San Diego County,” said John Clark, deputy district vice president of Cal Fire Local 2081. “Without it, we are left completely exposed to growing wildfire threats, we will face weakened 911 response times, overloaded and overworked hospitals, and an economy at risk.
“Measure B prevents that.”
But DeMaio has pushed back against further increasing local sales tax rates at a moment when consumers face rising prices everywhere.
“San Diego families are already being crushed by the cost of living, and now county politicians want to hit them with another massive tax increase,” DeMaio said in a statement. “Measure B would take hundreds of millions of dollars more out of taxpayers’ pockets every year without fixing the waste and mismanagement that have plagued county government.”
It is clear that many state and local programs face funding shortfalls in the coming years as the federal budget makes changes that are expected to affect health care, fire response, and food programs.
Estimates have indicated that new policies for twice-annual recertificaion of Medi-Cal benefits and work documentation requirements for some beneficiaries could cause more than 95,000 in the county to lose coverage.
A county update in July indicates that enrollment in CalFresh, the food program for needy Californians, had fallen from about 400,000 enrollees to 365,000 countywide since H.R. 1 implemented new work requirements and noncitizen eligibility restrictions earlier this year.
All told, including impacts on firefighting resources and public safety services, a January analysis that H.R. 1’s effect on the county’s budget could reach $300 million per year.
Measure B attempts to backstop the funding loss by levying an open-ended sales tax increase with specific earmarks: 60% for health care, nutrition and food security services, 22.5% for environmental mitigation of the “toxic sewage crisis” underway in the Tijuana River Valley and 17.5% to bolster public safety, wildfire prevention and crisis response services.
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Those categories are further broken down, allocating specific percentages of each categories’ revenue, such as 22% of the health care block for childcare and childhood development, 17% for reimbursement of medical services provided to uninsured residents and 5% to help pay for in-home health services.
Campaign spokesperson Dan Rottenstreich said that the categories are designed to correspond to areas directly affected by budget cuts. For example, one allocation would help increase the number of workers who conduct Medi-Cal eligibility determinations, making it easier for those already enrolled to avoid losing their coverage.
“The primary focus is to keep as many people insured as possible and prevent San Diegans from losing health coverage,” Rottenstreich said. “The best way to ensure people get the care they need and to ensure that the hospitals are getting reimbursed is to keep people insured.”
Some, DeMaio included, have pointed out that the half-cent sales tax imposed by Measure B, if it is successful at the ballot box, never expires. Unlike similar half-cent sales tax initiatives, this one would impose the tax continuously unless the public votes to repeal.
The lack of a sunset date is a main reason why the San Diego County Taxpayers’ Association opposes Measure B.
“We just feel like that is a valuable taxpayer safeguard that really should have been in the measure,” said Mark Kersey, the association’s executive director.
The measure’s strict allocation of funds for specific uses, he added, is another reason why the measure did not earn an endorsement.
“When it’s done on a measure in perpetuity, what you’re saying is that the funding solution you’ve come up with today is going to always be the solution that the region needs,” Kersey said.
Rottenstreich said that the lack of an end date was more about ensuring that an ongoing funding source exists, given that some of the possible actions, such as hiring more firefighters and law enforcement officers, or putting pollution control devices in place, would not be short-term fixes.
“It felt disingenuous to make it sunset, because the needs are serious and, particular in public safety, short-term funding is not an acceptable strategy,” he said. “We don’t want to see wait times go down for five years only to spike again.”
Measure B, which would need majority approval to pass, specifies a separate account for all revenue collected. It would also require an 11-member citizen’s oversight committee. The San Diego County Board of Supervisors would appoint committee members and would also decide how funds are allocated as part of the county’s annual budget process.
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