Another sales tax increase? It costs something in LA in the health care equation
It’s been years since Los Angeles County voters encountered a sales tax they didn’t like.
They agreed to pay half a cent in the cash book buses, trains and pothole filling in 2016. The following year, they gave a a quarter cent more to fund homeless services. By 2024, the electorate has increased to part–a cent.
But with the voters heart condition and from rocket gas pricessome think that voters’ willingness to tax themselves may be waning as votes come in the June 2 primary election.
“This will be a more difficult tax year than previous years,” said former manager Zev Yaroslavsky, who threw out the tax. property tax 2002 ballot measure to fund a regional trauma care network. “There is a limit to the tolerance people have for raising their taxes.”
Los Angeles County voters will soon decide whether they want to pay a little more half a cent sales tax to improve the county’s public health system, which is facing major cuts in federal funding. Authorities estimate the county will lose more than $2 billion in health care funding over the next three years.
The county currently has a sales tax rate of 9.75%, and cities impose additional local taxes on top of that. If approved, the tax will go into effect on Oct. 1 and last for five years. The exact tax rate may vary from city to city.
Voters haven’t said no to a sales tax increase since 2012, where the transit ratio is lower with 66.1% support. It needs 66.7% to pass.
The health care sales tax has a low bar to clear. Supervisors voted to put the measure on the ballot as a general tax, which gives them more freedom over how the money is spent and only requires a simple majority to pass.
But even that boundary can be difficult. Voting from March they suggested that this measure is being lost to voters in the city of LA, who tend to be more generous than the state’s voters as a whole. Angelenos will also get their vote filled with others proposals for tax increaseswhich may leave some ethnic voters to choose.
“People have a natural intelligence,” Yaroslavsky said. “They will pick and choose what they think is important.”
Despite the organized opposition, a string of cities, and planning board of the Los Angeles Daily News, dismissed the idea, saying it would make the district more affordable.
“It’s just bad timing,” said Paul Little, head of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce. “Costs are going through the roof for everything.”
With weeks to go until election day, health workers and lawyers to support the measure they went ahead with mailers, marches and a social media campaign showing the penny rolling finding its lost sense of scale. The main sponsors of this campaign are St. John’s Community Health and SEIU, who put the rate as life or death for thousands of uninsured citizens.
“Think about that person you know in your family who has asthma and is dependent on that ventilator, who has rheumatoid arthritis, who has diabetes,” said Supervisor Holly Mitchell at a recent town hall in support of the measure. “And think about whether you’re willing to spend half a cent — 50 cents out of every hundred dollars — to make sure that family, friend or neighbor gets what they need to be healthy.”
Supervisors voted 4-1 to put the sales tax on the ballot. Supervisor Kathryn Barger was the lone casting vote.
Supporters say the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Trump last July, is an existential threat to the public health system, leaving the state without health care reimbursements for many Californians who lose Medi-Cal. A looming multibillion-dollar hole in the budget raises the prospect of hospital cuts, layoffs and possible emergency closings, they say.
