A proposal asking San Diego County to send notice to more than one million residents who could be impacted by potential funding cuts to federal programs failed to advance Tuesday, after a tie vote by the Board of Supervisors.
Board Vice Chair Terra Lawson-Remer presented a policy to instruct the county chief administrative officer to develop a strategy to send a "notice of funding at risk" to all federally funded program beneficiaries, which would have included contact information for the White House and the Department of Government Efficiency.
Lawson-Remer and Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe voted in favor, while Supervisors Joel Anderson and Jim Desmond were opposed.
The five-member board currently has a vacancy after District 1 Supervisor Nora Vargas left her seat in January. A primary election is set for April.
In a statement after the vote, Lawson-Remer said that "refusing to inform local residents about these unpopular cuts to critical programs will only worsen the impacts of these cuts."
DOGE, headed by the billionaire SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk at the behest of President Donald Trump to find and eliminate waste in government, has spent the last few weeks poring over the budgets of various federal departments, leaving many employees out of work or facing uncertainty over their status.
But the impact on those who rely on Medi-Cal, Social Security and other federally funded programs could also be significant, Lawson-Remer said Monday.
"This is how service disruptions are handled for everyday and emergency situations alike," she said. "The impacted person is notified by the service provider of the change ahead of time. Clearly this is how our government must also inform its constituents. While the scale of these proposed cuts to services may be unprecedented, our government's response and responsibility to provide notice should be obvious."
The DOGE website has an "Agency Efficiency Leaderboard," featuring the agencies where the most money has purportedly been cut, but does not say where savings have come from. The Department of Education is first on the list, with reports emerging Tuesday that the DOE will be cut in half.
A total of 1.2 million people in San Diego County receive support from at least one federally funded assistance program, including 50,000 who receive job training and financial assistance benefits, 400,000 who receive food assistance benefits, and nearly 900,000 who get health care coverage through Medi-Cal.
During Tuesday's meeting, Montgomery Steppe said she was speaking as someone who had received assistance earlier in her life, and also suggested a list of resources for residents potentially impacted by budget cuts.
Desmond pointed out that the House of Representatives was voting Tuesday on a continuing resolution that if passed, would mean any cuts might not go into effect until September.
"We're too much in flux," said Desmond, who added that the nation is $36 trillion in debt, and "there are gonna have to be cuts somewhere."
He said it could cost $1 million for staff to send out such notifications in the form of mailers or flyers. Desmond said he didn't think the county has a role in terms of informing people about federal benefit changes.
"Federal government has a lane and we have a lane," Desmond said.
The board's discussion occasionally became heated. Lawson-Remer said Desmond didn't want to let people know about benefit changes, and Desmond responded that he didn't want her commentary on his statements, while some members of the audience booed.
