County Supervisor Joel Anderson Monday joined Shane Harris, president of the People’s Association of Justice Advocates, to urge the Board of Supervisors to reject a proposal to delay voting on an official county budget until October.
The proposal, set to be discussed at Tuesday’s board meeting, was put forward by County Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe to allow the winner of the Tuesday’s Special Election primary to have input in the county budget — typically due at the end of June. She wants the board to approve a “recommended budget” in June that can be amended after the fifth member of the board is elected.
“The primary reason for this two-step proposal is that it will provide the supervisors the chance to take in the impact of federal actions,” Montgomery Steppe told City News Service. “We administer and are required to administer services such as Medi-Cal and SNAP. There is a prudent, organized and responsible way to govern, and to approve a final budget without having all the information would not be prudent.”
More than 900,000 San Diego County residents use Medi-Cal, California’s version of federally-funded Medicaid. More than $200 million comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. These programs, and more, will likely be impacted by cuts from the Trump Administration.
The leaders of Monday’s news conference said the process could not wait for the results of the election.
“I’m greatly concerned with a proposal tomorrow that would seek to put the county’s budget timeline on autopilot until a district seat that is currently vacant is filled,” said Harris, a civil rights leader and public relations company owner. “I think that ultimately what we’re asking for is a fair and an on-time balance budget that seeks to deal with some of those long-standing services: spaces of behavioral health and homelessness; spaces of child welfare; and senior programs; and on and on and on.”
The news conference came one day before the supervisors are scheduled to consider the ordinance sponsored by Montgomery Steppe that calls for “temporarily suspending operation of sections 116 and 117 of the San Diego County Code of Administrative Ordinances relating to the process for approval and adoption of the fiscal year 2025-26 county budget.”
Harris said he was concerned that by pushing the timeline back, the county’s looming budget deficit would continue to grow, leading to more cuts for less affluent areas of the county when the rent finally comes due.
Anderson noted that more than 600,000 residents live in unincorporated areas of the county and rely on the county as their only form of government, making it unfair and unfeasible to kick the budget down the calendar.
“The Board of Supervisors are responsible to those constituents to provide for their law enforcement, fire safety, emergency services, road maintenance, building permits, animal shelters, parks, libraries, mental health, homelessness and more, services that even some of the cities contract with the county to provide,” Anderson said. “Our constituents in the unincorporated communities shouldn’t be punished or shouldn’t be denied the services they rely on because the Board of Supervisors refuses to compromise and work together.”
Montgomery Steppe denied claims that a deficit would continue to grow and that people in the unincorporated areas of the county would be denied services. In fact, she said, the whole first step of her two-step proposal was to approve that recommended budget to continue services countywide.
“No one from the unincorporated areas will experience any negative effects from this,” she said. “This is about good governance.”
With the county board split between two Democrats and two Republicans, the likelihood of compromise is slim. The fifth member to be elected will swing the board one way or the other.
The technically non-partisan Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Jan. 14 to hold a special election to fill the seat. If no candidate receives a majority on Tuesday, a runoff would take place July 1.
Seven people, including four elected officials, are vying to replace former San Diego County Supervisor Nora Vargas in her District 1 seat in Tuesday’s primary.
The candidates are Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre; Chula Vista Deputy Mayor Carolina Chavez; energy consultant Elizabeth Efird; business owner and former Imperial County Supervisor Louis Fuentes; Chula Vista Mayor John McCann; San Diego City Councilwoman Vivian Moreno; and marketing firm associate Lincoln Pickard.
Vargas announced in late December that she would not serve her second term despite winning re-election in November.
“Due to personal safety and security reasons, I will not take the oath of office for a second term,” she said in a statement at the time. It was unclear what the “personal safety and security reasons” were, but board meetings have become increasingly rowdy in recent years, and Vargas was away from the board several times for unspecified reasons and had dealt with health issues resulting from nodules on her vocal cords.
With a population of 650,000 residents, District 1 contains three cities: Chula Vista, Imperial Beach and National City. It also holds 15 neighborhoods within the city of San Diego, including East Village, Mountain View and San Ysidro, and six unincorporated communities, including Bonita, East Otay Mesa and portion of Spring Valley.
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