Today, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors advanced a substitute motion authored by Board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer to clarify the County’s position as San Diego absorbs a $300 million annual loss in healthcare and food assistance funding caused by federal tax cuts for the wealthy.

That funding loss is the direct result of HR 1 — the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — which cut Medicaid and nutrition programs in order to pay for tax cuts benefiting billionaires and large corporations. With no relief coming from Washington, D.C., counties like San Diego are now being forced to pick up the tab.

The motion, passed on a 3-1-1 vote by the Board, directs County staff to oppose further tax giveaways for the wealthy that shift costs onto working families, and to seek state authority to give voters the power to decide whether the wealthiest beneficiaries of the economy should contribute to protecting essential services like healthcare, food assistance, and 9-1-1 emergency response.

“This is about cause and effect,” said San Diego County Board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer. “Washington chose to cut healthcare and food assistance to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. Now, local governments are being told to absorb the damage, at a cost to our ability to respond to wildfires, address the Tijuana Sewage crisis, and protect public safety. Our responsibility is to protect the services San Diegans rely on.”

The substitute motion followed a proposal by Republican candidate for Congress, Supervisor Jim Desmond, that opposed pretend tax structures that have never been proposed, endorsed, or voted on by the Board, while failing to acknowledge the federal tax cuts that created the $300 million funding gap facing San Diego County.

Under Lawson-Remer’s approved motion, the Board did not adopt or approve any specific tax proposal, and any future revenue measure would require voter approval. Today’s action simply preserves the County’s ability to consider fair, responsible options to prevent cuts to the sewage crisis response, healthcare, and the public safety response relied on by hundreds of thousands of San Diegans.

“If we don’t tell the truth about billionaire tax cuts and who’s paying for them, working and middle-class families will be the ones left suffering cuts to healthcare and public safety and increased threats from toxic pollution,” Lawson-Remer said. “That’s not acceptable.”