Santa Clara County Cuts Measure A Funding

Santa Clara County’s budget fight is really a triage story. The county is staring at a huge deficit, federal money is shrinking, and the new local tax voters approved last fall is not going nearly as far as people hoped. The key change is easy to miss — officials are not cutting Measure A revenue away from county programs altogether. They are concentrating it. In the new budget proposal released May 1, every dollar from Measure A gets steered to the public health system instead of being spread more broadly across the safety net. ### What is Measure A again? Measure A is the Santa Clara County sales-tax increase voters approved in November 2025. It adds five-eighths of a cent to the county sales tax and was expected to raise roughly $330 million to $337 million a year. County leaders put it on the ballot after federal cuts to Medicaid and food assistance blew a hole in local finances and threatened the county’s hospitals and clinics. ### So what changed now? The county executive’s recommended budget for fiscal year 2026-27 says the county starts with a deficit of nearly $800 million — described elsewhere as $787 million — and that the gap could top $1 billion next year. To cope, the county is proposing workforce cuts, service reductions to Santa Clara Valley Healthcare to offset Medi-Cal losses and keep hospital and clinic operations going. ### Why does that feel like a cut? Because money is fungible — basically, if a tax was expected to relieve pressure across several parts of government, but now gets locked into one system, everyone else feels the squeeze. Local coverage describes the broader budget and people do not get it. That is the practical meaning of the “cut” people are reacting to. ### Why are hospitals getting first claim? Santa Clara County runs an unusually large public health system, including four public hospitals, so federal Medicaid cuts hit it especially hard. County leaders had been blunt even before the election — without new revenue, they could be forced to consider hospital closures. The county is using it first to stabilize healthcare. ### What gets pressured instead? Housing, homelessness services, and other social programs are the obvious pressure points. The county says it still wants to preserve essential services, including housing and behavioral health. But outside reporting on the recommended budget says cuts land across the fiscal core, but the outer ring of prevention and support programs gets thinner. ### Is this because Measure A underperformed? No — the problem is scale. Measure A was never supposed to erase the whole fiscal damage. It was pitched as a buffer against roughly $1 billion a year in lost county revenue by the end of the decade. Even at about $337 million annually, it only covers part of that. The catch is brutal but simple: the county won the tax measure and still does not have enough money. ### What happens next? This is still a recommended budget, not the last word. Supervisors now have to decide whether to accept the concentration of Measure A funds in healthcare or shift some of that money elsewhere. But the broad shape is already clear — the county is moving from “backfill the safety net” to “save the most breakable pieces first.” ### Bottom line The headline is not that Santa Clara County killed Measure A spending. It is narrower, and in some ways harsher: the county is using Measure A exactly because the crisis got worse, and that means less room for everything outside the hospitals.