Shasta’s health and human services agency emphasizes commitment to essential services
In a press release today, Shasta County’s Health and Human Services Agency focused on its intention to continue to serve the community amid discussion by county supervisors that further cost-savings measures could include cutting essential services.
Shasta County’s Health and Human Services Agency Director Christy Coleman sought to reassure the community in a press release today, saying the agency is working to ensure that financial pressures won’t result in a loss of state-mandated benefits.
“Although difficult choices must be made,” Coleman said, “we want to reassure residents that the health agency is striving to preserve and maintain the services they rely on most.”
The statement follows Shasta Scout’s reporting yesterday highlighting recent county board statements about the potential to cut mandated social services as a cost-savings measure. A spokesperson for the California Department of Social Services told Shasta Scout this week that if the county did cut mandated social services — which include programs like In-Home Health Services, CalWorks and housing supports — that could lead to legal action from the state, including financial penalties.
Today Coleman dispelled the idea that essential services could be reduced locally saying, “HHSA is not considering cutting state-mandated programs.”
That’s different from what she told supervisors last month when she said that the decision was up to the board, recommending supervisors talk to county council before suggesting a low-impact approach if they did move forward with the idea.
“I would recommend looking at the least impactful mandated programs if we decide to go down that route,” Coleman said at the time.
Shasta County’s Board of Supervisors approves the HHSA budget which Coleman administers. It’s a pot of more than $300 million, most of which is made up of state and federal funding sources. So far, discussion about the potential to decrease services to ease financial pressures has only been a topic of board conversation, with no movement towards an actual vote to do so.
HHSA has faced increasing financial scrutiny over the last year as staff have repeatedly returned to the county board for extensions on a loan from the general fund to shore up the agency’s social services fund. In presentations to the board, Coleman has explained financial issues by saying that revenue has not kept pace with expenditures, largely blaming those issues on deficiencies in state and federal funding sources.
In today’s press release Coleman focused on the cost-savings measures her department has implemented over the past year, saying since May 2025, “HHSA leadership has undertaken a comprehensive review of every budget and every budget line.
Each expenditure has been evaluated,” she added, “by reviewing historical spending, assessing operational necessity, and identifying opportunities for cost reductions without compromising essential public services.”
She said fiscal accountability measures in the last year have included staff training and a strengthened partnership with both the county executive office and the auditor’s office through monthly financial meetings. The agency has also brought in two former HHSA branch directors — Leanne Link and Tracy Tedder — to assist with budgeting and reviewing social services claim processes.
Additionally an extra-help retiree with “decades of experience in Social Services County Expense Claim” has been helping, Coleman wrote, “to ensure HHSA is maximizing all eligible state and federal reimbursement opportunities.”
Other measures she said the agency has taken over the last nine months include hiring freezes, renegotiated vendor contracts, downsizing of the HHSA vehicle fleet and initiation of a voluntary time off program for staff. She noted that cost-cutting measures have resulted in reducing social services expenditures by an average of $1.28 million a month.
And more cost-cutting measures are already planned, Coleman added, without providing information on what might be cut to achieve those measures.
The agency director also addressed the recent departure of a Chief Fiscal Officer Vicki Thompson, saying she’s no longer with the county due to “restructuring to improve efficiencies by eliminating duplicative roles.” That’s information Coleman did not share when asked about the reason for Thompson’s departure by Shasta Scout earlier this week.
Coleman said the role of the CFO will be merged under the responsibilities of Administration Branch Director Erinn Watts, who she said holds a masters degree in public management with a focus on public financial management. Thompson, like the previous CFO, worked under Watts.
Coleman plans to return to the county board in August, the press release said, to address changes related to H.R. 1., also known as the Big Beautiful Bill.
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This feels like smoke and mirrors. When resources are shifted from one essential service to fund another, it’s presented as acceptable. Yet when those same resources are directed toward programs that directly serve the community, suddenly they’re portrayed as unaffordable.
The Administration Branch continues to expand its own footprint while exercising increasing influence over the rest of HHSA. Meanwhile, every division is expected to absorb the costs of administrative services—whether those services are necessary to their operations or not. As direct-service programs shrink and staff are reduced, an important question remains: what exactly will all of that administrative infrastructure be supporting if there are fewer programs and fewer employees left to serve the public?
The county’s budgeting process deserves far more transparency than it has received, and this recent press release does little to answer the questions employees and the community continue to ask. HHSA should be focused on strengthening frontline services, not growing layers of administration while the programs that fulfill its mission struggle to survive.
A healthy organization encourages professional disagreement and welcomes fiscal expertise. When employees believe that raising concerns could result in being “restructured” out of their positions, honest conversations become impossible. That’s not a recipe for good governance or sound financial stewardship—it’s a recipe for stagnation
What I don’t understand is why let go (or push out) the person whose education background is fiscal. While keeping the people who have gotten us into this position. Those in the know understand Colemans creative fiscal styling. Instead of furloughing those who do their job why not place the Director on unpaid leave?? Harsh? No. My guess is the work around for the Director in cutting mandated services will be furloughing staff until there is no staffing for those sevices. Seems to me and the rest of county that if she was gone HHSA would be in a better fiscal situation.
I believe Vicki Thompson was “let go” because she started asking too many questions they didn’t want to answer.
How many other counties in California are receiving hundreds of millions of $$ from state and federal source and failing to meet their mandated obligations? What other counties appoint people to run their HSSAs who have no experience in running huge agencies and no background in financial management? What other counties have leaders who think the appropriate response to incompetent operation is to slash mandated services? What other counties are forced to float loans to their HSSAs, with no realistic plan for repayment?
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The whole shiteree reeks of MAGA incompetence.
This article touches on the Red Tsunami that’s hitting us with full force around the first of next year, but does not point out the total, almost criminal incompetence of the majority MAGA-led Shasta County Board of Supervisors, which has flushed MILLIONS down the toilet for lies and Trumpian – MAGA political – social idiocy. Here’s just one of so many examples for a case in point.
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MAGA led the charge to reject Donnell Ewert, a highly educated and respected epidemiologist who ran Shasta County Public Health and Shasta County Health and Human Services, for a community mosquito board, in favor of Crye and Kelstrom’s buddy, a low-educated far-right militia 06 insurrectionist who claimed that Bill Gates was using mosquitoes to deliver COVID vaccines, whose media company runs local and national white nationalist content and proven to be lies nut job alt-right conspiracies, and, like Kelstrom, advocates for a State of Jefferson secession from the State of California. The stupidity of this nonsense is stunning, and now it’s coming back to haunt us.
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We can’t afford to pay for MAGA propaganda and lies anymore. The first mandate of local government should be protecting the health and welfare of all citizens. Shasta County contributes about 2.5%, about 7 million at most, of the Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency’s total budget (roughly $300 million), which funds badly needed and mandated services and protections for working families, seniors, and kids. And yet Crye wants to give a right-wing private university $ 10 million in seed money for a Ninja medical school?
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We will have 30 million on a bankrupt deal with the Tribe should the county win on appeal, millions on BIG LIE election nonces, paid out millions to an ex-Sheriff who likes to dress up like a Niazi, and spent over $150,000 alone fighting L. Hobbs’s court follies, and we’re not even talking about Measure B here! We have also spent hundreds of thousands of badly needed taxpayer dollars on ridiculous supervisor meetings for MAGA Cozzy-Bear / Chemtrail propaganda that have absolutely nothing to do with the board’s jurisdiction.
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If Shasta County were smart, it would beg and/or pay Donnell Ewert to come back as an HHSA consultant to help Shasta County dig itself out of the hole the MAGA supervisors and their leaders, Trump and the Republican Party, have put us in!
Other measures she said the agency has taken over the last nine months include hiring freezes, renegotiated vendor contracts, downsizing of the HHSA vehicle fleet and initiation of a voluntary time off program for staff. She noted that cost-cutting measures have resulted in reducing social services expenditures by an average of $1.28 million a month.
And more cost-cutting measures are already planned, Coleman added, without providing information on what might be cut to achieve those measures. ———–
Maybe the county should consider cutting CALPERS payments beings we’re broke. Can you imagine the shape we’d if the city and the county didn’t have to pay in excess of $25 million each? $50 million plus per year worth of services and infrastructure work.
So you think the solution to the complex fiscal issues HHSA is facing is that the staff, many of whom have already volunteered to take unpaid time off to help save money and prevent layoffs and who have been doing more with less every year, should have their retirement benefits reduced? The county should just stop paying its portion? Aside from the fact PERS won’t allow the county to just not pay, the county has already decreased its share of contributions to PERS over the last twenty years (which is effectively a pay cut for staff). For many years the BOS offered staff increased retirement contributions in lieu of wage increases. So wages are far behind other comparable counties. Then when times got tough, they started reducing their portion of the PERS contribution without a pay raise to compensate. Benefits now are far less than when I started with the county. Staff should not be bearing the burden for the misguided decisions of the BOS. If benefits are reduced any further, there won’t be anyone left to do the work.