{"id":73177,"date":"2025-11-28T12:39:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T12:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/73177\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T12:39:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T12:39:06","slug":"santa-clara-county-promoted-measure-a-as-a-healthcare-fix-now-da-jeff-rosen-says-money-should-go-to-public-safety-the-mercury-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/73177\/","title":{"rendered":"Santa Clara County promoted Measure A as a healthcare fix. Now, DA Jeff Rosen says money should go to public safety \u2013 The Mercury News"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen announced his endorsement of Measure A<\/a> just weeks before Election Day, he said he did so with the understanding that while the money raised through the sales tax increase wouldn\u2019t necessarily fund public safety,\u00a0it would stave off further cuts.<\/p>\n

Now, he appears to be walking back those comments as he chastises county officials for a proposal to spend all of the revenues on health care services.<\/p>\n

In early August, when the Board of Supervisors held a special meeting to place Measure A on the November ballot, County Executive James Williams emphasized the devastation that President Donald Trump\u2019s tax and spending bill, signed one month prior on July 4, would have on the county\u2019s health care system.<\/p>\n

Medicaid reimbursements serve as the single largest revenue source for Santa Clara Valley Healthcare, and Trump\u2019s legislation slashes the federally funded health insurance program over the next decade, leaving the county with a roughly $1 billion funding gap.<\/p>\n

At the meeting, Williams called the cuts \u201cunprecedented\u201d and said they posed an \u201cacute threat\u201d to the county. Measure A, a five-eighths-of-a-cent sales tax increase, would help preserve access to health care services that one in four county residents rely on, he argued.<\/p>\n

Rosen this week blamed a change in the ballot measure language as the reason he believed public safety would be getting some of the funds. A lawsuit from a group of Libertarians<\/a> back in August prompted county officials to edit the text \u2014 including the addition of public safety among the \u201ccritical local services\u201d that revenues from the sales tax increase would support.<\/p>\n

But in Sept. 30 interview with this news organization, he acknowledged that his support wasn\u2019t due to any commitment from county officials to allocate funds to public safety, but rather the impact that trickle-down cuts would have on these services if Measure A failed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the sales tax measure doesn\u2019t pass, then it\u2019s clear to me that there\u2019s going to be cuts to law enforcement in the county, cuts to the DA\u2019s office and cuts to the Sheriff\u2019s office,\u201d Rosen said in September.<\/p>\n

When asked this week about his reversal on Measure A, the county\u2019s top law enforcement official signaled potential budget woes in his office.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think one can say that this sales tax measure is promoting public safety when county administrators are proposing a budget that guts public safety,\u201d Rosen said.<\/p>\n

Williams called Rosen\u2019s words \u201cfrivolous.\u201d At press conferences, public meetings and in interviews with the media over the last several months, the county executive has advocated for the sales tax measure as a way to preserve services at the county\u2019s four public hospitals and 15 clinics.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been unequivocal from day one that Measure A was placed on the ballot to deal with the unprecedented nearly $1 trillion in federal cuts to Medicaid,\u201d Williams said. \u201cWhat that means for our county organization is over a billion dollars a year in lost revenue for health care services.\u201d<\/p>\n

But several weeks after Election Day, when 57% of voters approved the ballot initiative, Rosen isn\u2019t the only one saying they\u2019re surprised that all of the money is going to health care.<\/p>\n

Marcus Barbour, the president of the Deputy Sheriffs\u2019 Association, also pointed to the ballot language.<\/p>\n

Barbour, who has worked in law enforcement for the last 13 years, said that while the coalition supports health care services in the county, the ballot measure text itself led them to believe they would get a piece of the fiscal pie, as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a lot of the voters took that as a concerning measure to have public safety included in this that it would protect public safety in the county,\u201d Barbour said.<\/p>\n

County officials have yet to release any budget proposals for next fiscal year, though they\u2019re expected to make some mid-year adjustments to the current budget in February that could include $200 million in cuts to the health care systems<\/a>. But Rosen said that department heads have seen early proposals that make cuts to public safety, which he called \u201cdraconian and dangerous.\u201d The DA in the past has gone head-to-head with county leaders over his office\u2019s budget.<\/a><\/p>\n

Rosen said that while he\u2019s not conducting an investigation into the sales tax measure \u2014 he told this news organization that what the \u201ccounty is doing here may not be illegal, but it is destructive and wrong\u201d \u2014 he\u2019s been looking into the different ways the funds could be used.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to make sure that the will of the voters is respected,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As for the budget, Williams said that his \u201cfocus is on mitigating cuts to any part of our county organization to the greatest extent possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s where my energy is focused, that\u2019s where everyone\u2019s energy should be focused,\u201d he added. \u201cWe were facing a general fund deficit even before the federal cuts and that does mean that there are impacts across the county organization.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen announced his endorsement of Measure A just weeks before Election…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[184,7,8,181,23,100,1492,88,90,89,198,183,14368,200,21563],"class_list":["post-73177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-bay-area","tag-california","tag-california-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-public-safety","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-santa-clara-county","tag-santa-clara-county-elections","tag-santa-clara-county-politics","tag-south-bay","tag-valley-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}