The Brief

It’s that time of year, when city, county and state governments are discussing budgets for the fiscal year. While some cities in Orange County are scrambling at the end of the fiscal year looking to cut corners and tighten spending on city services, others are able to make forward projections. Fiscal years typically start on July 1 and end on June 30 of the following year. Budget forecasts determine how your tax dollars are spent: law enforcement, city facilities like libraries and parks, water and sewer service, resources for the unhoused, seniors and childcare. City budgets will also include federal and state funding sources.

Here’s a look at the proposed budget for Orange County and some of its cities:

County of Orange

The total county budget for the next fiscal year is $9.5 billion. Around $3.7 billion of that will go towards the county’s Social Services Agency, Health Care Agency, child support services and for awarding city contracts and grants. The General Purpose Revenue – with around 93% of revenue generated from property taxes in the county - will go towards public safety with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department receiving most of the funding. In 2023, the Board of Supervisors approved a pay increase for Orange County sheriff deputies. The OC Health Care Agency gets over $100 million from the General Purpose Revenue.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a budget shortfall in the state budget and this could affect the county, according to the proposed budget put together by county staffers. At the county level, the Public Defender’s Pilot Program could lose out on its last year of funding. The program was created by a state grant to help public defender offices that were understaffed with case backlog specifically related to those who were eligible for early release. County programs for housing could also see cuts along with cuts to funding that addresses drug overdose prevention and MediCal.

To learn about the County’s budget, click here.

Santa Ana

The city of Santa Ana is yet to release its budget for the upcoming fiscal year. But earlier this year, city officials sounded the alarm as revenue generated from the Measure X sales tax is set to reduce in 2029. Currently, the sales tax is responsible for 22% of the general fund budget.

Voters in the city approved Measure X in the 2018 election, where Santa Ana’s sales tax went up by 1.5%. That tax is set to reduce to 1% in 2029 with the city set to lose $30 million.

What could this mean for your city services? Funds generated from the sales tax goes towards emergency response services, street repairs and the upkeep of parks and senior services.

At a council meeting in April, city staff said projections show that since expenses are increasing faster than money coming in, Santa Ana could see a budget deficit next year.

Old Santa Ana City Hall.

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Eli Pousson, CC BY-SA 2.0

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Wikimedia Commons

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The city council is set to discuss and adopt the next fiscal year budget at the June 4 city council meeting. If you would like to weigh in, you can attend the council meeting in person or follow along online to provide your feedback via public comment.

To explore Santa Ana’s budget in detail: www.santa-ana.org/budget.

Orange

The city of Orange is looking at a $19.1 million budget deficit and is exploring cutting services or raising the costs of fees for city services. To save on costs, city staff have proposed either selling Taft Library or not filling vacant positions, and cutting down on park clean ups.

Currently, visitors to Old Towne Orange can park at the parking garages for free. However, with the city down on money, that could soon change too.

City leaders have not decided which measures to go ahead with it as the fiscal year looms and could potentially bring it up at the next council meeting slated for June 11. The agenda for the meeting is yet to be posted.

Westminster

In the current fiscal year set to end on June 30, Westminster is facing a $9 million deficit. That could be partly alleviated with voters in the March election approving the ballot measure Measure E, which will increase Westminster’s sales tax by 0.05%.

Revenue from the tax is projected to add $8 million to the city’s coffers every year.

The Asian Garden shopping mall, also known as Phước Lộc Thọ in Little Saigon.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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In 2016, voters in the city approved Measure SS raising the sales tax by 1%. Again in 2022, they approved a ballot measure to keep that 1% tax increase through March 31, 2043. If the measure had not passed in 2022, city staff had warned that Westminster could face bankruptcy.

Westminster is set to adopt the next fiscal year budget later in June. Staff reports show expected revenue to be $143 million while the expenditures are expected to be $147.3 million.

Huntington Beach

Huntington Beach has been involved in a range of litigation with the state of California including over state housing mandates and voter ID requirements. For the 2023/2024 fiscal year, Huntington Beach’s city attorney Michael Gates’ office oversaw around 95% of litigation in house.

In the fiscal year that will conclude on June 30, the budget allocation for the city attorney’s office increased by over 30% to over $3.7 million. For the proposed budget for the next fiscal year, the office is expected to see a 13% increase in budget to $4.2 million.

To learn more about Huntington Beach’s proposed budget, click here.

Anaheim

Anaheim is looking at a proposed budget of $2.3 billion, up 9% compared to the last fiscal year budget. The city continues to rely on the general fund for expenditures with the city expected to spend $490.9 million in the next fiscal year with over 60% of it going towards the police and fire department.

Majority of the funding for the general fund comes from a 15% tax that hotels, motels and short term rentals charge guests.

For the 2023/2024 fiscal year, the transient occupancy tax is projected to bring in the city over $256 million, a 14% increase from the previous and is the highest in Anaheim’s history. This is the first full fiscal year the tax is being collected since Measure J went into effect in January 2023. Under Measure J, online and travel booking companies are required to levy hotels, motels and short term rentals the transient occupancy tax based on the total amount a guest pays them. Previously, online and travel booking companies charged a flat tax fee agreed on with the hotels, motels and short term rentals.

Anaheim is slated to hold a public discussion on the proposed budget on June 11. For more information, click here.

Tustin

While Tustin sets its budget on a biennial basis, the fire in the North Hangar at the former Marine Corps Air Station has led to the finance director asking the city council to increase the revenue budget and allow payments related to the fire by a further $27 million.

Since the fire broke out last November, the city has spent $85 million to clean the debris, monitor air quality, sample air dust and soil and deconstruct the doors of the hangar, among other costs incurred.

The historic blimp hangar, at right, seen as it burned on Nov. 7, 2023.

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Jae C. Hong

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Associated Press

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“However, the true total fiscal impact on the City, County, and region remains unknown at this time and will continue to be assessed,” staff wrote in the report to the council.

The city has received $33.5 million in reimbursements from the Navy which owns the Hangar and is expected to receive a further $88 million.

California will not become the first state to levy a wealth tax on its richest residents — at least not this election.

Voters rejected Proposition 40, a proposal to tax billionaires based on their net worth and financial holdings, by 52.8% to 47.2%, according to The Associated Press Monday. The measure had trailed behind for days before The Associated Press confirmed results.

Leaders for Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the union pushing the measure, seemed to concede the race minutes before the polls closed but vowed to try again in 2028 if California’s Legislature “fails to deliver a real solution” to fund healthcare hammered by recent federal law.

“That’s not a hypothetical. That’s our plan,” said Dave Regan, president of SEIU-UHW.

Election Day was projected to be an all-around defeat for the union, known for aggressively pursuing ballot measures. Voters defeated union-backed Proposition 44, an effort to control how clinics spend money. Proposition 42, a billionaire tax countermeasure prohibiting future wealth taxes, was leading Monday evening by 51.6% to 48.4%. That measure could get in the way of SEIU-UHW’s future plans to try taxing wealth again.

The billionaire tax would have generated $100 billion for healthcare and education through a one-time, 5% tax on billionaires, according to SEIU-UHW. Opponents of the measure celebrated its defeat.

“Proposition 40 was a reckless experiment conducted on our state’s economy with little regard for the harms it would cause,” according to a statement from Evan Westrop, a campaign strategist for No on Prop. 40.

The opposition campaign, which was backed by wealthy tech investors and healthcare organizations, argued the measure had already driven billionaires from the state and permanently harmed income tax revenue. On Monday they said the state still faces “enormous pressure” to find other ways to fund healthcare hit by federal cuts.

Billionaire tax divided Democrats

From the outset, Prop. 40 revealed divisions among the Democratic Party and galvanized some of Silicon Valley’s wealthiest executives to spend hundreds of millions to defeat it.

Gov. Gavin Newsom became one of its earliest opponents, attempting through backroom negotiations to keep it off of the ballot altogether. He endorsed the billionaire-backed counter measure, Prop. 42, designed to ban all wealth taxes in California and kill Prop. 40. Newsom, along with Democratic allies such as Planned Parenthood of California and California Teachers Association, argued a one-time tax would not solve the state’s fiscal woes and would drive wealthy residents out of state.

The California Democratic Party and California Federation of Labor Unions supported the initiative and opposed its counter measures, arguing the state needed more revenue to shield workers and everyday Californians from the effects of dramatic federal healthcare cuts expected to kick 2 million residents off of health insurance.

Lorena Gonzalez, former Assemblymember and president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, said Prop. 40’s failure puts even more pressure on state and federal lawmakers to backfill federal Medicaid cuts.

Supporters of Prop. 40 blamed its loss on billionaires vastly outspending the Yes campaign, which raised $33.5 million.

“That is incredibly corrosive and corrupting to our democracy and our political system, and that's been dominating the discussion here in California,” Regan said.

Billionaires poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the campaign to stop Prop. 40. Google co-founder Sergey Brin led the charge, publicly moving out of state and donating $102 million to Building a Better California, a political committee he founded to oppose the tax. The group has served as a passthrough for other billionaire donors to oppose Prop. 40, including by funding the counterpropositions 41 and 42. Collectively, ultra-wealthy opponents donated $378.4 million to oppose the billionaire tax.

In a statement, Abby Lunardini, a spokesperson for Building a Better California, said the billionaire tax threatened to limit revenue for all services in California, including healthcare, by driving economic interests out of the state.

“It was a lose-lose for California, and voters clearly agreed,” Lunardini said.

Ultimately, opponents’ efforts succeeded.

Polling just ahead of the election indicated falling support for Prop. 40 despite growing sentiment for taxing billionaires more in general. According to a UC Berkeley Citrin-POLITICO poll, 45% of voters believed in taxing billionaires more to fund public services compared to 35% who believed the state should prioritize keeping billionaires in state because of the tax revenue and jobs they generate — but just 46% favored Prop. 40.

Infighting among Democrats could have also contributed to Prop. 40’s demise, said John Matsusaka, an economist and direct democracy expert at USC, ahead of the election. Research shows money doesn’t buy people’s votes or values on core issues like abortion, Matsusaka said, but it can exploit uncertainty.

“People these days are very tribal. When your tribe is arguing, people start to listen to the counterarguments,” Matsusaka said.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

After an hourslong, late-night standoff between Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and community members outside Adventist Health White Memorial over the weekend, local leaders are demanding answers from hospital leadership. 

The hospital has previously faced scrutiny over claims that its administrators have allowed federal immigration agents to interfere in patient care. 

On Saturday, state Sen. María Elena Durazo marched with community members from Mariachi Plaza to the hospital to hand-deliver a letter to White Memorial President Daniel Fontoura. The letter, signed by elected officials and community leaders, calls for an end to any collaboration that may exist between the hospital and federal immigration agents. 

The night before, ICE agents clashed with protesters near the hospital and blocked the hospital’s ambulance entrance. According to White Memorial, ambulances were diverted for about two hours during the incident. Two U.S. citizens were also detained by federal agents. 

Federal immigration agents were at White Memorial Friday night because someone in their custody had been taken to the emergency room, according to hospital officials and the Los Angeles Police Department. 

“What happened last night was unacceptable,” Durazo told Fontoura in the parking lot of White Memorial, steps away from where ICE agents had been standing shoulder to shoulder just hours earlier. “It’s unacceptable that ICE would go into our healthcare facilities. But we also believe that White Memorial can and should do more.”

Fontoura told the group that the hospital has “no special relationship, no special contract” with ICE. “When they show up, they show up,” Fontoura said, referring to the federal agents. 

Fontoura said hospital staff took care of the person who was brought in by ICE and claimed they denied the agents’ request to “break protocol” and be in the same room as the patient and their physician. “We said no,” Fontoura said. 

Boyle Heights Beat asked White Memorial whether these privacy protections are standard practice and whether federal agents follow them while at the hospital. The hospital did not respond before publication. 

Last year, Adventist Health released a six-point statement outlining its policies to protect detained patients and support staff, but doctors and advocates at the time said it was not enough. 

Now Durazo and others are calling for more accountability and stricter guidelines from the hospital on how they respond to ICE activity. 

The letter requests a written response from hospital leadership by Nov. 21. It is signed by Durazo, Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez, Mayor-elect Nithya Raman, Councilmember Ysabel Jurado and other community leaders from Proyecto Pastoral, CHIRLA and more.

White Memorial has not responded to Boyle Heights Beat’s request for comment on the letter.

If the concerns remain unresolved, those who signed the letter say they will ask the California attorney general to review White Memorial’s compliance with state law.

“For ICE to show up the way they did, it takes a much higher level of consciousness and determination by the hospital to stop them from doing this,” Durazo told Boyle Heights Beat after the rally on Saturday. “We don’t have absolute power over ICE, we know that, but we do have some power over ICE.” 

Nithya Raman turned the tide in the L.A. mayoral race by winning over large swathes of the city that voted for Karen Bass in 2022, according to an LAist analysis of election data.

Bass was a favorite in many areas that voted for Rick Caruso when she faced him in 2022. She held onto a majority of voters across South L.A., but lost much of her previous support. She outperformed Raman in areas where Spencer Pratt, the third-place primary finisher, saw strong turnout in June.

The switchup came after Bass — a veteran in progressive politics — took a relatively-conservative approach on issues like policing and high-density housing developments compared to Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.