"Publicly-funded warnings about disastrous local hospital closures are appearing in the mailboxes of Santa Clara County residents. Critics can't help but notice the timing. The foreboding mailers, under the county government's official letterhead, are appearing weeks before voters decide on a five-eighth-cent sales tax measure Nov. 4. County leaders say the sales tax, known as Measure A, will protect their massive public hospital system from life-threatening cuts under H.R. 1., the Trump administration bill that guts the county's largest source of hospital funding."
"Opponents of Measure A say the county mailers - which don't explicitly mention or endorse the sales tax - are dancing around laws barring government agencies from engaging in political campaigns. "We're quite upset with this. At least three mailers have been sent out using taxpayer dollars," Rishi Kumar, chair of the No on Measure A Tax Committee, who will also appear on the special election ballot as a county assessor candidate, told San José Spotlight."
"California's Political Reform Act restricts the use of public money for the mass mailing of campaign materials. "Generally, a payment for a communication that does not expressly advocate for or against a candidate or measure or urge a result in an election, when taken as a whole and in context, does not constitute a contribution or independent expenditure," Shery Yang, spokesperson for California's Fair Political Practices Commission, told San José Spotlight."
Santa Clara County is sending publicly-funded mailers warning residents that local hospitals could close without a sales tax. The mailers are on county letterhead and appear weeks before a Nov. 4 vote on Measure A, a five-eighth-cent sales tax proposed to fund the county hospital system and offset cuts tied to H.R. 1. Opponents contend the county is improperly using taxpayer money for politically timed communications and plan a lawsuit. The state Fair Political Practices Commission indicated that communications not expressly advocating a vote typically do not constitute illegal campaign expenditures.
Read at San Jose Spotlight
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