Los Angeles County voters will decide in June whether to approve a half-cent sales tax increase that would push the countywide rate to 10.25%, and up to 11.75% in the highly taxed Antelope Valley. Supervisors say the money is needed to plug gaps caused by federal Medicaid reforms. But before voters agree to make every shopping trip more expensive, they should ask why LA County’s healthcare budget is so stretched in the first place.
A large part of the answer is the explosive growth of California’s In-Home Supportive Services program. IHSS pays caregivers—mostly family members—to assist low-income seniors and disabled individuals at home. It is a well-intentioned program, but an increasingly expensive one. Statewide, the program is expected to cost $33.4 billion in 2026-27, tripling over the last decade.
Much of that growth is driven by SEIU Local 2015, which represents more than 240,000 IHSS providers in LA County alone. Unionizing people helping to clean and dress their relatives seems counterintuitive: after all who would go out on strike against her mom or daughter? But SEIU 2015 has been effective at pushing up wages steadily upward: the most recent contract raised the base rate from $18.50 to $19.64 per hour starting January 2026.
SEIU’s interest in the sales tax hike is easy to understand. The union charges dues of up to 3% of gross wages per caregiver and collected $114.5 million statewide in 2024 alone, up from $93.5 million just two years earlier. Because dues automatically rise with wages, every county dollar added to caregiver pay is also a dollar that fattens the union’s treasury. Of those millions, only 16 cents on the dollar went to representational activities; the rest funded political spending, lobbying, and overhead. Naturally, an SEIU 2015 representative testified in support of the tax measure at the Board of Supervisors.
Then there is the fraud problem, which the county has declined to confront with any seriousness. Official state data shows only $8 million in IHSS fraud was formally identified in fiscal year 2023–24. That number strains credulity.
The scope of what may be going undetected is illustrated by a striking statistical pattern. A recent Center Square investigation found that Armenian-speakers account for 14.7% of LA County’s IHSS recipients—even though Armenians represent only about 2.1% of the county’s population, according to Census data. No other group comes close to that utilization ratio. Nearly one in three Armenian speakers in Los Angeles County appears to be enrolled in the program either as a provider or beneficiary.
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The county’s healthcare system faces real pressure. But Los Angeles County has tolerated a decade of IHSS cost escalation, failed to prosecute a fraud problem that experts say is vastly underestimated, and now wants taxpayers to cover the bill. Voters should reject this measure in June and tell the Board of Supervisors to clean up their own house first.
Marc Joffe is a visiting fellow at California Policy Center.
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