Shasta Public Health to “scale back” on services after $2 million in new budget cuts
The Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency has cut another $2 million from its Public Health budget since June. The cuts come partly in response to federal funding changes, and will reduce both staffing and services.
Amid ongoing budget shortfalls at Shasta County’s Health and Human Services Agency, the county confirmed this week that an additional $2 million is being cut from the Public Health budget.
Public Health Deputy Director Shellisa Moore said that the department will be “scaling back on the level of services” as vacant positions are cut and some programs handed off to community partners.
HHSA is already facing an agency-wide financial crisis, visible largely as a severe shortage in the social services fund. Public Health is a branch within HHSA which works to protect community health by providing clinical services and addressing community-wide issues such as disease response and suicide prevention.
The $2 million cut is being made partially in response to H.R.1, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill, which HHSA Director Christy Coleman noted during the agency’s budget hearing would likely affect HHSA’s budget, though the exact impacts were “unknown” at the time.
Now that the state’s budget has been set, it’s clear that one of H.R.1’s major impacts on California counties is its reduction of the number of individuals eligible for Medi-Cal, a program that provides health coverage for low-income California residents. The change will result in the county needing to pick up the tab for healthcare coverage for some newly uninsured individuals, something that will occur through the County Medical Services Program, which is funded through Public Health.
“In part, this budget reduction intended to help prepare to cover some of these costs,” HHSA Public Health Branch Director Katie Cassidy wrote in an email to Shasta Scout this week. In response to follow up questions, Deputy Director Moore added that the budget reduction is also the result of losses in grant funding for programs, including those intended to prevent suicides and adverse child experiences.
Last month, county supervisors approved a budget which set Public Health’s funds at $25 million, a $2 million reduction from last year. Together with the additional $2 million in cuts this month, Public’s Health’s current budget represents a 15% reduction from last year’s budget.
The latest cuts will result in some projects previously managed by Public Health Staff being transitioned to “community partners,” Cassidy said, though the department did not provide specifics about which programs would be transitioned or to whom.
“HHSA’s Public Health branch has started the process of gathering community partner interest for a potential program transition,” HHSA Public Health Branch Deputy Director Shellisa Moore wrote by email yesterday, “but it’s too early in the process to share details at this time.”
“Overall, she said, Public Health is scaling back on the level of services, while making sure services are still being provided to clients.”
While it’s unclear which Public Health programs would be impacted, the department delivers a variety of programs that support the health and well-being of residents. Beyond providing clinical services and responding to public health emergencies such as disease outbreaks, Public Health also provides maternal and child health programs and support for aging individuals through both Alzheimer’s and dementia prevention and care.
These kinds of services are particularly critical in Shasta, where many public health statistics are significantly worse than the state average. The county faces the second highest mortality rate in California, as well as a suicide rate which is more than twice California’s overall rate.
Public Health is also scaling back on staffing. Ten vacant positions will be deleted from Public Health as a result of the new budget cuts. Numbers shared by Cassidy indicate that the department has now lost a third of its ranks within the last three years, moving from 177 positions in July 2023 to 115 as of this month.
Vacant positions deleted from Public Health to accommodate the recent $2 million cut include leadership roles such as the department’s public health program manager and two community development coordinators.
Cassidy said her department is also saving money by shifting staff from state-funded projects to grant-funded projects, moving vehicles from the Public Health fleet to other county departments, and not renewing memberships with the Health Association of California, American Public Health Association, and National Association of County and City Health Officials.
Updates to the Public Health budget to reflect recent cuts will be formalized with the mid-year budget review, Cassidy said, which typically occurs around February.
Moe Shimizu is a student at Yale University. She’s reporting for Shasta Scout as a 2026 summer intern, with support from the Nonprofit Newsroom Internship Program — created by The Scripps Howard Fund and the Institute for Nonprofit News.
Do you have a correction to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org.
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It amazes me that so many people don’t know the diffference between Medi-Care and Medi-Cal. Quite a few people are just absolutely wrong!!
I was told the new city manager who just died was going to fire 50 city employees. Anyone got any info on that?
The point is this. This article just briefly looks at how Shasta County got in this bind. Yes, the cuts are here, and yes, they’re just starting. It’s hard for citizens to make correct choices if investigative reporting is neglected, as in this case, and the only choices citizens have are voting, as political representatives made these cuts. So, it can be argued that we made these choices, to some degree. Here’s what we voted for.
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Because of HR 1, Californians will see a cut of about 9 billion in health and human services funding. Shasta County has about 0.45% of California’s population (roughly 180,000 out of about 39 million). Applying that share to $9.0 billion gives an estimate of about $41 million per year. Using the full $9.5 billion CSAC estimate takes about $43 million per year for our Health and Human Services budget. Again, that’s $43 MILLION a year, and we’re just reporting on a million here and a million there.
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Also, the adjudicated rapist, convicted 34-count felon, cut a $1.4 billion Medicaid payment deferral to California, and that means another $6.0 million is Medicaid funds for Shasta County.
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As you can see, because of Trump and the Republican Congress, we are in a world of hurt that has just started. And, in reality, as I told the SCBOS to their faces many months ago, that’s just what they (the supervisors that voted for Trump)VOTED FOR!
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We have exactly 99 days until the general election on Tuesday, November 3, 2026. We can vote the Republican Congress out and start to reverse all this trumpian retrobution that is killing the workers, kids, and unemployed of not only Shasat County, but in ALL counties in America. WHO YOU VOTE FOR MAY SAVE A LIFE….. OR KILL IT.
Christian,
Is E Jean Carroll’s rape one of the 34?
Secondly, can we apply the 2nd law of thermodynamics to trump and maga?
I see an error in this post:
one of H.R.1’s major impacts on California counties is its reduction of the number of individuals eligible for Medi-Cal, a program that provides health coverage for low-income California residents.
Medi Cal is for retirees, not low income.
DM
Medi Cal is indeed for low income individuals.
Medi Care is for older individuals.
Medi-Cal (aka Medicaid) is for low income. Medicare if for those 64 3/4 years and older and those receiving SSD (Social Security Disability) for more than 2 years.
No.
Medicare is for retirees, Medical is for low income
Medicare is for Seniors. Medi-cal is for low income. Newsom has the Medi-cal way over budget.
Now the Democrats want to make Medicare for all. This will raise rates and a lot of Seniors will lose their insurance. It should be only the disabled and the people who worked for it.
“It’s about time to stop listening to some of your neighbors yelling about conspiracy theories, and look at actual documented facts.”
I 100% agree but sadly some people prefer their world of conspiracy nonsense, cognative dissonance, Dunning/Kruger & fux news… and that is a big reason why amurica is unraveling.
“Elect a clown, expect a circus” and here we are.
The Federal funding of Medicaid is not the issue. It is California`s expansion of services under the state version of Medicaid. Each time the state chooses to provide expanded services, they are supposed to only fund it with state dollars & should not be reimbursed by Federal Medicaid funds for those services that go above and beyond federal Medicaid services. Unfortunately, past federal administrations side stepped that by sending California grants, waivers, temporary covid money, economic recovery or disaster funding with relaxed administrative/programmatic requirements so it could be used on California`s expansion of services. Now those “thanks for your political support” financial packages have dried up, the tab is due. California cannot pay the bill and wants to blame the current admin for an issue they created themselves. How much grant funds and initiative projects Public Health had been receiving in the past was used to offset the overhead and administrative costs for sister programs in the HHSA or in the County as a whole? Much like other programs who do or did have solid funding it is frequently “attached” in some manner to another department that is struggling financially. 9 times out of 10 it is county funded programs or programs with a large amount of required county matching funds that these ‘financial gifts” are used to offset. When the good times are here, it works great. When it’s time to pay the tab, programs are that arent mandated are sacrificed without regard to how much they enabled other programs to operate without making hard financial decisions for decades.
In California, Federal Medicaid expansion is implemented through Medi-Cal, which fully adopted the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Adult Expansion. California historically went beyond minimum federal guidelines by removing asset tests and using state funds to cover undocumented populations. The “tests” are back, and new undocumented populations are not covered at this time.
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Additionally, as announced by U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr (an anti-vaxer who brags about how he used to snort coke off of toilet seats), Trump cut over 1.5 billion to California.
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Also, a reasonable estimate of Medi-Cal enrollment in Shasta County is roughly 55,000–65,000 people, with around 50,000 on Medicare, 11,000 on Medi-Cal, and over 10,000 on Medi-Medi.
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In short, because of Trump and his administration, Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA) is expected to lose roughly as much as $40–43 million per year to provide services to citizens.
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Polling shows nearly 80% of Americans support extending the ACA’s enhanced premium tax credits, including 92% of Democrats, 82% of independents, and even 59% of Republicans. (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2025). Also, around 56% of all Americans support “Medicare for All.”
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Of note, Americans spend over $5 trillion a year on health care. Universal Healthcare could potentially save Americans half a trillion a year.
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Again, health care is very much a political issue, and how we vote impacts the health of our nation, even Shasta County.
Just an FYI: California has had expanded medicaid (Medi-Cal) benefits in place for decades prior to the ACA even being created. On an annual basis the state has multiple bills presented to expand available benefits. The legislature approves them or not on an annual basis. The California version of medicaid is the most progressive medicaid program in the nation. It has been since before I was born. This is neither condemnation or support for those expanded benefits. The point is California has the option to expand services if they wish to by pay the cost for expanded service with California tax dollars instead of Federal reimbursements.
I must admit, at almost two decades of homeless advocacy, I am absolutely stunned as a past outside on-site Securitas security guard at the vicious circle of poverty pimps in my opinion that make up the Shasta County public health branch needle exchange and welfare office.
Addicts with festering sores, Stapf infections and angry red injection sites come from all over the neighborhood as well as homeless from surrounding bush camps to exchange dirty Meth, Fentanyl and Heroin syringes a stone’s throw from Sheriff Michael Johnsons Breslauer way offices! You share the same parking lot!
Will it be an end to that program as well?
“Redding Shasta County officials guilty of aiding and abetting Fentanyl, Meth, Heroin addiction and the dealers that provide it”
https://reddinghomeless.blogspot.com/2022/09/redding-shasta-county-officials-guilty.html
Now would be a good time to have back all the $$$ foolishly spent by the maga supervisors.
I’m talking to you cry, phgwmfj, Baugh, corky, water users et al.
Kevin, why are you spending money to bring back initiatives that have already been voted down?
OMG.
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So we have spent all this time and money demanding accountability from the elections department, even though there has been no evidence of mass election fraud or malfeasance.
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Meanwhile, there has been actual data and documentation about how our health department has been in the red, has been mismanaging money, and probably needs an independent auditor to come in and look at everything.
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My God, people.
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It’s about time to stop listening to some of your neighbors yelling about conspiracy theories, and look at actual documented facts.
Actually, Public Health itself has been in the black and is healthy financially were it not for the Admin branch sucking all the money away.