Pasadena contributes roughly $22 million a year to Measure ER, the county sales tax for health services, but receives only a small fraction back — discussion about that gap dominated a special joint meeting of the City Council and Los Angeles County District 5 Supervisor Kathryn Barger on Monday.
Barger told the council the money had been frozen as a result of a legal challenge by the Libertarian Party, but an amended complaint in the lawsuit filed Friday night no longer challenges the validity of the measure, clearing the way for funds to be released. She then walked through the financial distribution formula, which directs 45% of Measure ER money to Health Connect LA to support low-income, uninsured county residents, 5% to safety net health care facilities including the local Huntington Memorial Hospital and just 1% split between Pasadena and Long Beach.
A Board of Supervisors motion in September by Barger and Supervisor Janice Hahn raised Pasadena’s share to about 23% of that 1% split with Long Beach — roughly $2 million to $2.5 million a year, up from an original estimate of about $1 million.
Councilman Steve Madison said the city did not take a position on the initiative and that the outcome “goes down hard for us” because the city would have had $22 million to spend locally had it administered the sales tax increment itself.
“It goes down hard for us that had we administered that sales tax increment here locally, we’d have $22 million to provide to our Public Health Department or other sorely needed services,” Madison said. “So it’s just difficult to hear. Even at 2.3 million, that’s maybe 10% of of what we’re contributing.”
Barger agreed the formula was not based on need and said it was done only in Los Angeles County in response to federal cuts, rather than statewide.
“That’s why Supervisor Hahn and I brought in our motion, because we felt that it was unfair,” Barger said. “And Long Beach feels the exact same way the city of Pasadena does, because it’s clear to us that even the way this this was all divvied up — which is why I didn’t endorse it — was not based on need. It was based on just throwing together a proposition because of … the the cuts from the federal government. It was done only in LA County, and it should have been done statewide.”
Mayor Victor Gordo said the city could be made whole either through direct funding or by basing county health care and mental health services in Pasadena.
Barger asked Pasadena staff members to report the impact on the city’s health department of the federal funding cuts that resulted from the 2025 passage of the Trump-backed House Resolution 1, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. She said HR 1 triggered Measure ER.
“This is a frustration that we’re hearing across the region on the taxes that are now implemented, especially on sales tax,” Barger said.
The meeting also covered homelessness and mental health capacity at length.
Barger praised the city’s outreach team and described the recent encampment clearance between Home Depot and Target as the product of months of outreach driven by public safety on flood control property, not a one-time sweep.
“There’s a thought that we just go out and do a clearance or go out and just say one day, ‘you’re all out of here.’ Nothing could be further from the truth,” Barger said. “We did outreach for months, securing housing for those that wanted to be housed and tried to convince the individuals that didn’t want to leave that that they needed to leave because it was on a flood control (channel) and it was important for us to clear out that area.”
In response to a question from Councilman Rick Cole, she added that there are not enough mental health beds and that the only real path forward is an IMD waiver, a federal exemption from the 16-bed limit on mental health facilities.
Cole said the county’s five separate 16-bed units, each run by a different provider, are far more expensive than a single larger facility.
“The issue that keeps recurring as both an explanation and sometimes an excuse for the gravity of the situation is the issue of untreated mental illness out on our streets,” Cole said. “There’s a lot of lore around that, not all of it accurate, but the county entered into a very substantial commitment for additional beds. How is that going, and how can we be helpful not only in supporting the provision of those treatment beds, but also more seamless seamless handoff between the folks that we’re encountering on the street and county services?”
According to Barger, “There aren’t enough beds. … It’s something that is very important to the county is to have beds for those that don’t belong in our jails but need treatment. This is going to be an issue moving forward, securing beds.”
Barger added that the county is not enforcing anti-camping ordinances generally but acts on public safety issues such as flood control or Caltrans property near freeways.
Public comments displayed sharply divergent views. One speaker said the 2026 count found 43 military veterans experiencing homelessness in the city and called for veteran-specific outreach in any joint encampment mitigation. Another speaker cited hundreds of pages of security logs and incident reports from Hill Avenue Library documenting feces, drug use and other incidents.
Near the end of the council’s exchange with Barger, Cole observed that a common theme throughout the discussion was “the current status quo is unsustainable,” he said. “That should give us the sense of urgency to do what Supervisor Barger said before, which is to break from doing things the way we’ve always done them and to experiment with new approaches and to double down on the ones that work and to move away from the ones that are not showing results.”
The AI platform Civilio assisted this report.