eEdition
Sign up for email newsletters
Sign up for email newsletters
eEdition
Trending:
When President Donald Trump signed his so-called One Big Beautiful Bill into law nearly a year ago, local government officials in California officials began bracing for its fallout, including the largest cuts to safety-net programs in American history.
Those included a $1 trillion reduction to Medicaid, the federal healthcare 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, among other changes.
Sonoma County government is responsible for enrolling local residents in those federal assistance programs, including the state’s version of Medicaid, plus California’s equivalent of the cash and food assistance programs that typically get most of their funding from Washington, D.C.
Due to the cuts, the county’s budget is likely to be dominated by the ripples from the One Big Beautiful Bill, or HR1, and the $2.9 billion proposed spending plan before the Board of Supervisors this week is the first comprehensive snapshot of just how big a blow those cuts could be.
The elected, five-member board is set to begin its deliberations Tuesday, with a final budget vote scheduled for Friday, June 12. It will have to weigh the need to shore up services to blunt the impact of HR1 even as it contends with delayed FEMA reimbursements for road projects and perennial funding requests from some two dozen departments to cover much needed staff and programs.
This much is known: The federal changes will send more people, more often to the county — a mandated provider — for help navigating tighter enrollment requirements. For many of the thousands anitcipated to lose their eligibility or be driven away by the more stringent process, the county will still be legally obligated to provide basic “life and limb” healthcare.
County supervisors are being asked to approve $9.7 million for mostly new social services staff in the upcoming fiscal year that begins July 1. The board could face an additional request later this year for up to $12 million to cover the costs of those kicked off of Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid.
That initial $9.7 million proposed appropriation includes $7.6 million to hire 49 eligibility staff and case managers, while the remaining $2.1 million will be used to offset federal cost-share changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, commonly known as food stamps. The county in April estimated 3,897 people could lose their benefits, which are administered in California as CalFresh, though officials said the true number won’t be known until the changes take effect.
County administrators expect costs to backfill those federal cuts will exceed what’s budgeted for the upcoming fiscal year and grow over at least two subsequent years. The actual cost won’t be known until HR1 changes kick in, a process that began this month and will stretch over the next few years.
“It’s not all at once. Some of the changes are happening in June, some happen in October, some happen in January,” said Jennifer Solito, assistant county executive.
She refers to it as “chaos by design.” For example, both CalFresh and Medi-Cal will have different work requirements.
“(It’s) very difficult to administer, very difficult for applicants to understand and try to track if they’re on multiple programs and then difficult for us to estimate.”
She predicted it would take the county about a year to realize the full scale of the impacts.
That’s a big reason why administrators are proposing the board hold another budget discussion in November, where they will likely have to consider additional funding requests. The last time the county held additional budget talks in the fall was in 2020, in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic amid a sharp global economic slump.
Part of the November discussion could include how much the county will need to pay the local network of health clinics, which expect to see greater demand from a segment of clientele who don’t qualify for state and federal healthcare, meaning the county is obligated under state law to step in.
Meanwhile, county officials say they’re having to contend with a $30 million IOU from FEMA for infrastructure repairs going back years.
The county has tapped its roads fund to cover storm damage repairs, but with those dollars dwindling, administrators are looking to tap $6.1 million now from the general fund in order to make the road fund whole by June 30.
In addition to delayed reimbursements, public infrastructure officials also are bracing for changes that will affect FEMA reimbursements going forward and could saddle counties with a greater share of the cost “to manage disasters that previously involved substantial federal oversight and resources,” according to the county’s budget overview.
That $6.1 million request comes in addition to a $13.2 million ask for the county’s road and infrastructure network. Those dollars include $4.7 million in discretionary funds for the county’s pavement preservation program, which covers more routine road maintenance and repairs.
The county’s general fund, which largely supports criminal justice and administrative departments and most discretionary spending, has a roughly $744 million proposed budget, said Peter Bruland, the county’s deputy county administrator and budget chief. About $480.8 million makes up true discretionary dollars, he added.
Overall, proposed county spending would rise 4%, with discretionary spending up about 1.3% from the current adopted budget. The county is the North Bay’s largest single employer, with a workforce of just under 4,500.
The proposed budget is based on recommendations from David Guhin, the new county executive, to the Board of Supervisors and could change depending on whether the board makes any adjustments.
The recommendations cover department funding requests broken into two categories: the restoration of jobs and program needs facing potential cuts, called add backs; and the creation of new positions or program changes.
In total, department add-back requests totaled $12 million. Budget officials have recommended funding $11.2 million of those requests.
Departments’ program-change requests totaled $121 million. Of the those requests, officials have recommended funding $84.7 million, with just $1.6 million covering needs not tied to HR1 impacts and roads.
In addition to the HR1-related funding, the recommended requests include restoring 11 positions in Permit Sonoma, including five in the department’s code enforcement division, restoring 7.8 positions in the crisis stabilization unit, the county’s emergency department for psychiatric patients, which is housed under the health services department; and putting nearly $1.8 million into the county’s general fund reserves.
Counties have pressed the state for help bridging gaps caused by HR1, seeking $373 million in all to cover those needs; Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget includes just $104 million. As a result, Sonoma County’s budget officials are not staking much on the hope that the Legislature comes through with more dollars.
Guhin said the county is better positioned to withstand the strain — at least in the short-term — than other counties due to past conservative budgeting and region’s historically strong economy.
“Sonoma County is really in a better place and that is because we’ve had some restraint,” he said.
You can reach Staff Writer Emma Murphy at 707-521-5228 or emma.murphy@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MurphReports.
You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com
Copyright 2026 The Press Democrat. All rights reserved. The use of any content on this website for the purpose of training artificial intelligence systems, algorithms, machine learning models, text and data mining, or similar use is strictly prohibited without explicit written consent.
