Sometimes, taking no action qualifies as a really big action. That was the case this Tuesday when the Santa Barbara County supervisors voted unanimously to take an indefinite pause on plans — first officially unveiled October 7 — to transfer up to 7,000 undocumented patients now signed up for health care at one of the county’s five public health clinics to other health care providers.
That plan had been vigorously and strenuously opposed by a coalition of immigration rights advocates and labor unions concerned about the 55 public health workers who would have been laid off in response to the significant drop in revenues such a transfer would have triggered. Initially, the supervisors had been poised to vote the other way — to approve the transfer of the undocumented patients — in response to a directive issued by the Trump administration this July to deny federally funded health care to anyone unable to proof of citizenship.
That edict has since been effectively challenged by 21 states in a federal court ruling issued this September, but Public Health Director Dr. Mouhanad Hammami worried that this injunction could and would soon be overturned. Should that scenario come to pass, Hammami expressed serious concern that 7,000 patients would soon find themselves without medical care; he also worried that his department could find itself severely penalized for noncompliance with a federal order and that all federal funding could be lost.
The supervisors seemed initially inclined to follow Hammami’s suggestion but backtracked in the face of serious opposition from immigration rights organizations, labor unions, and Attorney General Bonta Rob Bonta, who all argued against the county supes complying with a Trump order until it absolutely had to. Bonta, after all, represented one of the 21 states that had successfully sued to win the injunction; it would not do to have Santa Barbara County jumping ship…