FRESNO COUNTY – With the California state budget squared away and the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act signed into law, Fresno County has a clearer picture of where its finances will be by the fall.
During a brief, 15-minute update provided to the Fresno County Board of Supervisors on July 8, County Administrative Officer Paul Nerland said the immediate impact of state and federal policies are clear enough that the county can move forward with preparing its fiscal year 2025-26 budget. However, the full impact of some policies — particularly changes to Medicaid — remains uncertain.
“We’re still evaluating the other impacts and we’ll report back, but fiscally, thankfully as far as the next fiscal year, it’s more limited, which allows us to move forward with the budget,” Nerland said.
Ever since reviewing the 2025-26 budget outlook in March, which predicted a multi-million dollar shortfall, the Fresno County Board of Supervisors has had its eye on how a projected state deficit and impending cuts to federal programs would impact county operations. Nerland and Budget Director Paige Benavides shared which policies they anticipate will have a more direct, immediate impact – if any – and which ones they anticipate may have an impact that’s yet to be determined.
Overall, Nerland said the county will still have a “decent-sized” deficit, even after cutting most department budgets by 5%. The county will likely close that revenue gap using one-time funds to be discussed at a later date, he added.
A closer look at the deficit, as well as the remainder of the county budget, is scheduled for September. The Board of Supervisors directed Nerland to prepare somewhere between seven to 10 department budget presentations for their budget hearings, which are set to begin on Sept. 15.
This way, supervisors can ask questions of department heads outside of formal meetings if needed, while also providing members of the public with a chance to learn more about the county budget. District 2 Supervisor and Board Vice Chair Garry Bredefeld said the board would have to decide later which departments it wants to hear from and suggested the board chooses departments that use a lot of resources.
“At the end of the day, we’re all here for the public, and everything we do here is funded by the public, and they ought to be able to weigh in on those critical departments, and so I think it serves us well to do that,” Bredefeld said.
Federal, state impacts
Looking at the Big, Beautiful Bill, Nerland said there are many policy changes included in the bill that the county is still absorbing, but the biggest ones that affect counties include cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid, as well as cuts to clean energy tax credits.
With new reporting and recertification requirements for those enrolled in Medicaid — of which there are about 530,000 people in Fresno County, Nerland said — the work county staff do to manage that will likely be more complex. These requirements will not go into effect immediately, however, and so the county is still looking at exactly what the impact will be.
For SNAP, which is known as CalFresh in California, Nerland said the county’s share for the administration of the program is estimated to cost an additional $6.5 million beginning October 2026 — which falls under the county’s 2026-27 fiscal year — due to the federal share of the costs being reduced from 50% to 25%.
District 3 Supervisor Luis Chavez said he wants to see data points on those program cuts during the county’s budget hearings. He said it would be helpful to communicate to residents exactly how many people are going to be kicked off SNAP and Medicaid because “that’s gonna help us triage how we respond to that.”
“I don’t think there’s anything beautiful about the bill, I think it’s ugly and a lot of the draconian cuts that are gonna happen are gonna hurt our people locally,” Chavez said. “I think for me, I want to have that data point ready to go, because I’m not gonna own that — our Republican friends that voted for that, that passed it, they’re gonna own that.”
Looking at the state budget, Benavides said it does not include new funding to address homelessness and does not fund the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) grant program for fiscal year 2025-26. However, she said the HHAP program is funded for fiscal year 2026-27.
“This is not likely to have a direct impact or an immediate direct impact on the county’s funding due to the availability of existing funding; however, there may be an impact on funding for the county’s regional partners, which could have an indirect impact on the county,” Benavides said.
State funding allocated under the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) will allow the county probation department to balance its budget for the VOCA program in fiscal year 2025-26 without reducing current service levels, Benavides said.
Benavides also noted that the budget does not reflect any assumptions about federal budget cuts. Instead, the budget authorizes the state finance department to reduce any appropriations from funding sources for any program, project or function to align with reduced federal funding.
