The Bay Area is home to several dozen community health clinics. Santa Clara County, for example, has more than 30 as does Alameda County.

These clinics provide affordable, accessible primary and preventive medical care to some of our region’s most vulnerable residents, regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay.

A proposed state ballot measure puts that at risk.

Proposition 44 would require California’s 2,000 safety net clinics to spend at least 90% of their revenue on patient care and the services that support it, and to report publicly how their money is spent.

No more than 10% can go to executive pay, administration and overhead.

On the surface, that sounds great.

Nobody wants nonprofits meant to help the health and well-being of others to have money being siphoned to the top. And nobody can argue against more transparency about how money is spent, especially when some of those dollars come from donors.

For the most part, local community clinics operate tight budgets, but they’re nowhere near that 10% cap.

The average clinic in the state spends about 80% of their revenues on providing health care services, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Here’s the rub with Prop. 44: The measure would set strict spending requirements for nonprofit health clinics that could put precious revenue at risk.

Opponents — of which there are more than 150 organizations, including uncommon allies such as the California Democratic Party and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association — project they would lose $1.7 billion across clinics statewide in the first year, by creating arbitrary standards that roughly 90% of health centers don’t meet.

Doctors, physicians or health care providers wouldn’t be the people defining a spending requirement. That would fall upon the shoulders of California’s Attorney General, who would determine what are health care-related expenses and whether affected clinics meet the spending minimum.

This is not what California’s top law enforcement officer should be spending time on.

Unless Prop. 44 is defeated, many clinics offering a safety net could close at a time when Californians need affordable health care the most. California’s community health clinics serve more than 7 million patients each year, including children, working families, seniors, veterans, the uninsured and one in three Medi-Cal patients.

If passed, the measure would push the majority of clinics across California into the red — many of which have spent the last six years clawing their way back from the brink of the pandemic.

The proposal also comes at a time when California’s health clinics are facing financial uncertainty as a result of the Trump administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”

Considered the largest cut to safety-net programs in American history, HR1 includes a $1 trillion reduction to Medicaid, the federal health care coverage program for low-income individuals and families and disabled people, lower reimbursements for hospitals, stiffer eligibility requirements for aid recipients and a deep cut to the federal food assistance program.

Now is not the time to bring politics into community health clinics. If the effects of Prop. 44 force clinics to close and patients to lose access to care, indigent health care needs do not disappear. Patients will delay seeking treatment, only to end up in the hospital emergency room for routine care that will cost them more.

The Mercury News and East Bay Times recommend rejecting Prop. 44.

Editor’s note: To read our other endorsements of the most important races and measures on Bay Area voters’ ballots, please visit www.mercurynews.com/opinion/endorsements/.