S1: Welcome in San Diego , it's Jade Hindman. On today's show , President Trump has signed his controversial spending bill into law. What that means for San Diego County. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. What's been called the mega bill is now mega law. Last Friday , President Trump signed into law his new tax and spending bill. But many people are worried about how the sweeping cuts to social safety net programs in the bill may impact them. District three County supervisor and acting chair of San Diego County , Tara Lawson Riemer joins us to talk about those impacts and what the county's been doing to prepare. Supervisor Lawson Reimer , welcome back to midday.
S2: Happy to be here.
S1: Happy to have you , as always. So the House passed Trump's spending bill late last week.
S2: It's going to impact all of us , not just individuals that receive Medicaid , but really everyone throughout our region. Um , you know , I'm worried about longer wait times to see a doctor. I'm worried about overcrowded emergency rooms. I'm worried about kids who aren't going to be able to eat because , um , their food benefits , their , um , snap benefits are going to be disappearing. Um , so there's a real attack underway on working in middle class San Diegans , and we're doing everything we can in San Diego to figure out how to buffer for the storm.
S1: Well , let's put numbers to this , because I want to give listeners a sense of how many San Diegans depend on these programs that would see funding cuts , and that includes Medi-Cal , as you mentioned , Snap and housing assistance. Can you break that down for us ? Yeah.
S2: You know , we have about 900,000 people in San Diego County who depend on Medicaid. Um , nearly a third of our county. But the impacts of Medicaid are far bigger than just the individuals who receive the benefits , because at the end of the day , the hospitals have to take people no matter what , if they come into the emergency room. And so when we're not adequately funding our health care system , it impacts all of us. And in the end , it impacts it when it cuts to Medicaid and end up raising insurance costs for those who are on private insurance. So yeah , you can talk about individuals who receive those benefits , but really the impact is systemic. Uh , same for homelessness. Uh , for example , I think all of us agree that , uh , doing more to make sure that people who are on our streets have an opportunity to get into safe housing and get back on their feet is a shared priority that all of us have been focused on for the last few years in San Diego. Go. Um. So when you cut housing assistance by 20 , $30 million , which is what we're looking at coming down the pipeline , um , that impacts our streets , that impacts , uh , the fact that people are going to be seeing more homelessness. So certainly , um , there's individuals who benefit , but really , it's about all of our entire community , um , that pays the price , uh , when the social safety net services are slashed.
S1: People have been sounding the alarm on this for a while. At a June 24th Board of Supervisors meeting , some local groups , uh , talked about those specific impacts that they could be seeing. Here's David Estrella from Housing and Community Development Services. Uh , he talks about what the cuts could mean for housing assistance.
S3: So a 40% cut means that there's less money available to subsidize units that would be permanently available for low income individuals.
S1: Also at that same meeting , Rick Wayne , director of self-sufficiency services , warned that changing eligibility rules could cause people to lose access to programs like Medi-Cal and Cal Fresh.
S4: Folks will sometimes not submit their paperwork. They can fall off the program. Reapply. These create significant paperwork challenges for our customer recipients as well as for our our staff.
S1: So you , along with Supervisor Monica Montgomery Step , have already proposed a plan in preparation for the fallout that could be coming from these spending cuts. That's been in the works since before Trump's spending bill passed. So talk a bit about that. How is the county preparing ? Yeah.
S2: Well , I think first of all , um , big picture , we have to acknowledge that this is going to blow a hole in our county budget for really basic things like health care and food assistance. That's in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually. So we're not going to get through this just with like , a little belt tightening here and there. We're going to have to take some pretty , um , Aggressive measures to protect San Diegans from the cuts that are coming. Um , so our plan that we put forth had to has two parts. One is a staffing analysis , and this is due later this month. Really asked the just the county team to to assess how many workers , how many employees are we going to need to process the surge in paperwork and to meet these new federal mandates ? Because at the core , what a lot of what's happening is just like an attempt by the Trump administration to sort of kill us with red tape and drown us in red tape. And so we want to staff up so we can avoid delays and prevent families from losing their benefits that they have every right to and that they deserve just because of red tape. Um , so that's a piece of this is just the staffing analysis to say , how many folks do we need to make sure that all the T's across , all the eyes are dotted , the paperwork gets filed on time , um , and that nobody lose the benefits that they deserve because of ridiculous bureaucratic hurdles that the Trump administration has put in our way. The second piece of this is a fiscal strategy , and this is going to be coming in September. And really assessing how we can fund services , especially around behavioral health , um , health care and homelessness , uh , despite federal cuts. And we're going to be looking at every possible strategy , um , to kind of plug that budget gap.
S1:
S2: Um , absolutely. That's our hope. So I think we've been my colleague and I have been sounding an alarm for six months now and everywhere we turned. Uh , oftentimes people say , well , let's wait and see. Let's wait and see. And to me , that's , uh , extremely irresponsible , right ? Our job as elected leaders of this county is to get ahead of the game , to see what's coming and to make a plan. Uh , so we're not caught unprepared and just really being focused on preparedness. So that's why we passed this , um , last month , even before the bill had had become law. Uh , that's why we're looking to put the the pieces in place. It's going to take a while. Um , like I said , it's going to be hundreds of millions of dollars of a whole that we're going to be facing in San Diego County , and we're going to really have to come together to protect , um , our residents and to protect our community from this attack , uh , by Washington. Um , you know , I I'll note something I've , you know , kind of been looking into is that we in California send , on average , about $3,200 more to the federal government than we get back. Right. That's for every person. Every single person , on average , spends about $3,200 more a year than we receive back. So something is not right with this equation. Um , that's for sure. And so we're really looking at , well , how do we do a better job of , um , you know , raising our own revenue here , keeping our own revenue local. Having local control over our resources so we can protect our community.
S1:
S2: You know , I think a lot of our partners have been digging really deep and we're looking at hopefully potentially some matching funds. Um , you know , I've definitely been receiving a lot of calls from philanthropic organizations saying they want to do what they can. You know , of course , when you're looking at a $400 million annual shortfall , that's a big gap. And it's hard for local philanthropy to to make up that difference. That's that's not really realistic , but certainly , uh , lots of different organizations can each do a little bit. And we're , we're right now kind of doing the work to figure out how to get all those boats rowing in the same direction.
S1: Well , district one now has its county supervisor , and that is Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre.
S2: First of all , we put forward a proposal. The we , being myself and Supervisor Montgomery , step , um , to tap our reserves , um , as a sort of a safety cushion at this one moment and we know it won't be enough to get us through. Um , kind of for the long haul. But if we're able to tap a couple hundred million , it could at least , um , cushion the blow for a year or two while we put together a longer term solution. And , you know , Mary Mary Geary , Supervisor Geary has been really vocal in saying , hey , you know , it's a rainy day fund and it's raining. Um , and we need to use these resources to invest in San Diego. So I'm hopeful that our proposal to unlock our reserves and be able to use that as a buffer over the next year or two for one time expenses , um , we'll be able to go through. Now , I think. I think it's going to be a lot more hopeful that we're not going to have to , you know , resort to drastic cuts. Um , and it's really because , uh , Mayor Gary has been really committed to ensuring that we don't have to make those drastic cuts. Mm.
S1: Mm.
S2: Um , some of these were already feeling right , and they're not. They're not a surprise. Um , they sort of started just day one of the Trump administration. But for example , as you know , a surfer and as a mom , I'm very focused on clean water and protecting our environment for our kids , um , especially our beaches , and been fighting really hard to tackle the Tijuana sewage crisis and clean up the sewage that's polluting our oceans. And one of the things that I proposed is to get on the Tijuana River Valley , designated a Superfund site so we could get some federal dollars out here to clean it up. Well , the Trump administration has completely cut Superfund um funding um , and drastically slashed um , money for the Environmental Protection Agency , the EPA , which runs a Superfund designation. So that's basically off the table now. Uh , because we would need the EPA to do a initial study and then kind of get moving on a Superfund designation so that that sort of thing , um , is pretty immediate. You know , I'm also worried about some of our marine areas and just kind of continuing to make sure that our , our water is safe , um , and protecting our health , uh , because these are all , um , you know , functions that the federal government has historically performed. You know , I think , uh , a couple months ago , um , I was sounding the alarm about a $40 million that we were owed for our public health lab so we could track and fight infectious diseases here in San Diego County that we had been awarded by the federal government and was cut by the Trump administration. And we fought pretty hard and that went to court. And now it looks like we may get our money or we may not , you know , think it's still TBD , but it's this kind of sort of ongoing attack on clean water and a healthy environment , ability to protect our kids from sewage , protect our health. That's also become kind of a bull's eye of the administration.
S1:
S2: You know , there's not these are the community social challenges that we really need to come together to tackle. Um , and so the idea that , you know , anyone's going to kind of be able to dig deep and do it themselves , I think is , is , um , you know , that's just not that's just not possible at this scale. But , um , certainly people we can all do a better job of , you know , making sure that our friends and neighbors checking in on them , trying to take care of them , showing up for each other , you know , those kind of basic things. And over the next couple of months , I hope that we , uh , as elected leaders of the county are going to be able to put together , uh , some strategies , um , that might require us digging a little deeper. Um , you know , here locally , maybe in our own pockets to say , hey , we gotta we gotta do a little bit more because we can't depend on the federal government right now.
S1:
S2: Um , and not just , uh , throw up our hands and say , hey , we're each gonna only get what's best for ourselves.
S1: I've been speaking with district three , county supervisor and acting chair of San Diego County. Tara Lawson. Reimer. Supervisor Lawson Reimer , thank you so much.
S2: Thank you.
S1: That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
