Two labor unions and a child care advocacy group on Friday filed a proposed countywide sales-tax hike they’ve dubbed the Protect San Diego County’s Health & Safety Act with the county Registrar of Voters in hopes of making the November 2026 ballot. 

The proposed half-cent sales tax measure – which would raise a projected $360 million annually – aims to fund health care, child care, solutions to the Tijuana River sewage crisis and public safety. 

The Service Employees International Union Local 221, child care advocacy group Children First San Diego and Cal Fire Local 2881 expect to start collecting signatures next month.  

“We’re taking urgent action on the biggest health and safety threats San Diego County is facing – Tijuana River toxic sewage, strained 911 response, working families losing healthcare, childcare, and even the basic food they need to survive,” SEIU 221 President Crystal Irving wrote in a statement. “Our coalition is determined to give voters the power to choose a safer, healthier future and starting soon we’ll be out in every community gathering signatures and working with neighbors to protect San Diego County families.”  

Proposed ballot language submitted to the Registrar of Voters Friday describes a slew of causes that proponents aim to support with a half-cent sales-tax increase. Up to 60 percent of funding – the equivalent of $261 million annually – could back child care and health services for children, health care for uninsured or underinsured people, food aid including staffing for CalFresh eligibility workers in the county, in-home health services and affordable health care. 

Nearly 23 percent – or roughly $81 million annually – would go toward combating the Tijuana sewage crisis, with at least 20 percent of this share of funds directed toward infrastructure projects to “stop sewage flows from Tijuana into the United States or through the Tijuana River Valley.” The measure says the funding could also address related health issues and protect local waters from pollution. 

Nearly 18 percent – or almost $63 million annually – could back public safety services, wildfire prevention and crisis response.  

Proponents also capped administrative costs at 1.5 percent, or about $5 million annually. 

The proposed measure also calls for an 11-member citizens oversight committee to conduct annual audits and bars spending on politicians’ salaries, lobbyist contracts or government office renovations. 

The citizen-backed effort is separate from the subcommittee work that county Board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer and Vice Chair Monica Montgomery Steppe are queuing up to hash out ways the county might bring in. The county faces an estimated $300 million annual budget hit tied to federal cuts. The county is set to hire and pay consultants up to $500,000 as part of that effort to conduct polling and research on potential measures to raise taxes and other possible ways to increase revenues that may require changes to other policies. 

In a Friday statement, Lawson-Remer lauded the proposed citizen measure. 

“This San Diego County Health & Safety citizens initiative offers a key tool that voters could choose to support in order to defend our community and our values: to keep our water clean, to keep our hospitals open, and to make sure firefighters and first responders have the resources they need when the next wildfire hits,” Lawson-Remer wrote. “When Washington walks away, our community refuses to look the other way.” 

The decision to proceed with a citizens’ measure doesn’t rule out a potential future measure pushed by county supervisors. Yet Lawson-Remer’s quick endorsement shows she’s eager to see a citizens’ group push a measure forward that only requires a simple majority for a ballot victory. 

The coalition behind it will face an uphill battle to persuade skeptical voters already facing an avalanche of rising costs – and to get on the ballot in the first place. 

Courtney Baltiyskyy of Children First San Diego said the coalition expects to hit the streets in January to try to collect at least 140,000 signatures. They’ll need to deliver at least 102,923 valid signatures to get on next November’s ballot. 

The county coalition also expects to have some competition next November.  

The coalition that includes Laborers Local Union 89, Carpenters Union Local 619, and Rebuild SoCal are rallying behind a one-cent sales tax hike for city of San Diego for infrastructure repairs, wildfire prevention, pipe repairs for clean water and more.  

Both coalitions have recently circulated polls testing voters’ appetite for separate city and county measures and shared some intel.  

Their intel-sharing follows the November 2024 demise of Measures E and G, separate city and countywide sales-tax proposals. San Diego politicos are skeptical voters would support two sales-tax hikes.  

The results of an initial poll of city voters conducted around Labor Day on the city measure suggested both city and county measures suggested a challenging climate for proposed tax increases. 

Results obtained by Voice of San Diego show 57 percent of the 776 voters polled said they thought the county was on the wrong track and 60 percent said the same of the city.   

Baltiyskyy said Friday the countywide coalition believes it has a path to victory – and that support for it will grow as voters and local organizations learn more. 

President Donald Trump has signed bills nullifying Biden-era environmental protections in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in Northwest Alaska in an effort to promote oil and mining activity.

The actions were a win for Alaska’s congressional delegation, which sponsored the measures to open opportunities for drilling in the refuge and development of the 200-mile road through wilderness to reach the Ambler mineral district.

The actions are part of Trump’s effort to aggressively develop U.S. oil, gas and minerals with Alaska often in the limelight.

Potential drilling in the refuge and the road to minerals are two of the standout issues in the long-running saga over resource development in Alaska, with Republican administrations seeking to open the areas to industry and Democratic administrations fighting against it.

The signings were a loss for some Alaska Native tribal members and environmental groups that had protested the bills, calling them an unprecedented attack against land and wildlife protections that were developed following extensive public input.

An Alaska Native group from the North Slope region where the refuge is located, however, said it supported the passage of the bill that could lead to oil and gas development there.

One of the bills nullifies the 2024 oil and gas leasing program that put more than half of the Arctic refuge coastal plain off-limits to development. The former plan was in contrast to the Trump administration’s interest in opening the 1.5-million-acre area to potential leasing.

The federal government has long estimated that the area holds 7.7 billion barrels of “technically recoverable oil” on federal lands alone, slightly more than the oil consumed in the U.S. in 2024. The refuge is not far from oil infrastructure on state land, where interest from a key Alaska oil explorer has grown.

Two oil and gas lease sales in the refuge so far have generated miniscule interest. But the budget reconciliation bill that passed this summer requires four additional oil and gas lease sales under more development friendly, Trump-era rules.

Voice of Arctic Iñupiat, a group of leaders from tribes and other North Slope entities, said in a statement that it supports the withdrawal of the 2024 rules for the refuge.

The group said cultural traditions and onshore oil and gas development can coexist, with taxes from development supporting wildlife research that support subsistence traditions.

“This deeply flawed policy was drafted without proper legal consultation with our North Slope Iñupiat tribes and Alaska Native Corporations,’ said Nagruk Harcharek, president of the group. “Yet, today’s development shows that Washington is finally listening to our voices when it comes to policies affecting our homelands.”

The second bill that Trump signed halts the resource management plan for the Central Yukon region. The plan covered 13.3 million acres, including acreage surrounding much of the Dalton Highway where the long road to the Ambler mineral district would start before heading west. The plan designated more than 3 million acres as critical environmental areas in an effort to protect caribou, salmon and tundra.

The bills relied on the Congressional Review Act, which gives Congress a chance to halt certain agency regulations while blocking similar plans from being developed in the future.

U.S. Rep. Nick Begich and Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan attended the signing in the White House.

“We’ve known the road to American prosperity begins in Alaska; the rest of America now knows that as well,” Begich said in a post on social media platform X.

Begich introduced the measures. Murkowski and Sullivan sponsored companion legislation in the Senate.

They were part of five bills Trump signed Thursday to undo resource protections plans for areas in Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming, using the Congressional Review Act.

Trump last week also signed a bill revoking Biden-era restrictions on oil and gas activity in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, another Arctic stretch of federal lands west of the refuge. That measure was also sponsored by the Alaska delegation.

The Wilderness Society said in a statement Thursday that the bills destabilize public lands management.

“Americans deserve public lands that protect clean air and water, support wildlife and preserve the freedom of future generations to explore,” said the group’s senior legal director, Alison Flint. “Instead, the president and Congress have muzzled voices in local communities and tossed aside science-based management plans that would deliver a balanced approach to managing our public lands.”

Alaska tribal members criticize end of Central Yukon plan

The Bering Sea-Interior Tribal Commission, consisting of 40 Alaska tribes, said in a statement Thursday that it condemns the termination of the Central Yukon management plan using the Congressional Review Act.

The action dissolves more than a dozen years of federal and tribal collaboration, the group said.

The termination of the Central Yukon plan will hurt tribes that hunt caribou and other subsistence foods, the group said.

“On the heels of the seventh summer without our Yukon River salmon harvest, we are stunned at the idea our leaders would impose more uncertainty around the management of the lands that surround us,” said Mickey Stickman, former first chief of the Nulato tribal government. “The threat of losing our federal subsistence rights, and confusion over how habitat for caribou, moose, and salmon will be managed, is overwhelming.”

After the signing, federal management of the Central Yukon region will revert back to three separate old plans, removing clarity for tribes and developers and requiring the Bureau of Land Management to start again on a costly new plan, the group said.

“This decision erases years of consultation with Alaska Native governments and silences the communities that depend on these lands for food security, cultural survival, and economic stability,” said Ricko DeWilde, a tribal member from the village of Huslia, in a statement from the Defend the Brooks Range coalition. “We’re being forced to sell out our lands and way of life without the benefit of receiving anything in return.”

CLARKDALE, AZ (AZFamily) — A couple moving to Arizona from North Dakota learned they had no fire protection coverage when a shed fire broke out on their Mingus Mountain property, which is northeast of Prescott, this week.

Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office deputies responded using fire extinguishers from their patrol cars and shoveling dirt to put out hot spots around the burning shed.

Monday’s fire was how Kevin and Sue Hoerner learned their property sits outside the jurisdiction of any city or formal fire district.

“We’re aware of that now,” Kevin Hoerner said, laughing.

The Hoerners’ property is one of thousands of so-called “no man’s land” properties across Arizona that fall outside fire district boundaries, according to state forestry officials.

“We are looking into this right now. There’s about 13,000 properties just in Yavapai County,” said Tiffany Davila with the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management.

The couple said they had no idea their property lacked fire protection when they purchased it.

“Either someone didn’t tell me or I didn’t even think to ask such a question,” Kevin Hoerner said. “I’ll tell you, in North Dakota, there is no such thing.”

Property owners in these areas may be eligible to annex into a nearby fire district or purchase a fire protection agreement with another provider.

The Hoerners said exploring those options is next on their list. They don’t blame anyone but themselves for the situation.

“It’s just something that now we know,” Sue Hoerner said.

The shed fire resulted in a $30,000-50,000 loss, destroying propane tanks, lithium batteries for solar power and a generator. The couple said they are thankful the fire didn’t spread to the forest or neighboring properties.

They set up a GoFundMe page to help Kevin rebuild his workshop.

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