As Kern County prepares to approve its 2026-2027 budget, local advocacy groups are calling on residents to speak up. Organizers with the ACLU and the Kern County Criminal Justice Coalition say they want to see more investment in public health and community services.
With the final county budget vote just days away, advocates packed the Board of Supervisors meeting, urging leaders to rethink how every taxpayer dollar is spent. They’re calling for critical funding for the Public Health Department to launch investigations into conditions inside immigration detention facilities, zeroing in on the California City Detention Center.
Rosa Lopez is a Policy Advocate and Organizer withe the ACLU So-Cal and she says, “I am really urging them to allocate sufficient funding to the public health department so they can have the resources they need to inspect the detention centers in Kern county starting with California City, but also just ask them to pause before they allocate the same way that they’ve done in past years, where the majority of the increase goes to the law enforcement, while other departments are looking at a decrease.”…