Lane County Health and Human Services outlines proposed 2025–26 budget cuts including end of mobile public health and workforce funding loss

Lane County Health and Human Services on May 13 presented a proposed fiscal year 2025–26 budget and outlined program reductions driven by declining federal and some state resources.

Public-health division manager Jocelyn Warren said the department’s proposed budget is about $218,000,000 and that the public-health program portion being presented totals approximately $24,850,000 with staffing at about 101 full‑time equivalents. “In this proposed budget, public health continues to make reductions, eliminating another 10.5 FTE from last year's proposed budget levels,” Warren said, adding that the county plans to eliminate the mobile public‑health program by the end of the calendar year.

The nut graf: County officials told the budget committee the reductions reflect a drop in federal pandemic-era funding and other grants. That shortfall, they said, will force changes to services and staffing across public health, community health centers and human services — including ending some outreach programs, scaling back optional service lines and absorbing some program costs internally.

Health and human services officials said the decline in federal resources is the primary driver. “The ARPA money, the COVID money has pretty much flowed entirely through the system now,” a department presenter said, summarizing the department’s funding picture. The department expects personnel costs to rise about 4.3 percent even as overall expenditures decline roughly 5.5 percent from the current year because federal program funding is falling away.

Public-health priorities described to the committee include communicable‑disease surveillance, maternal and early‑childhood home‑visiting programs and work on a new community health assessment and improvement plan. Warren said the department is “continuing the work of surveillance of a range of communicable diseases and conditions,” and called out recent shigella and salmonella activity and national measles outbreaks as reasons for continued vigilance. The county will continue a pilot to reduce unnecessary emergency‑room use “two days a week until the state grant funding is exhausted,” Warren said.

Community health centers manager Suzanne Rilla told the committee the county’s community health centers are largely self‑sustaining and proposed a budget just shy of $53,000,000. She said the centers have added clinics and staff in recent years, converted to the Epic electronic health record, and are working to stabilize operations after rapid growth. “We are self sustaining with the revenues that we receive from the federal government, from the state, and from our insurance payers,” Rilla said.

Human services division manager Kate Budd described three general‑fund requests the division submitted: a $2,800,000 allocation to support Human Services Commission contracting and match needs; homelessness‑related funding tied to the county’s transformation strategy; and maintenance‑of‑effort funds to draw down veterans‑services dollars. Budd said the county uses the Human Services Commission dollars to leverage other federal and state funds and to cover gaps in subcontracted programs.

Bud d also reported a near‑term loss of workforce funding. The county’s application for Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) funds was not selected; Budd said the contract award went to Grant Associates, a national workforce services vendor. Committee members raised concerns about the county losing locally based staff. Budd said the positions funded by the previous award will end and that affected county positions will conclude on June 30, 2025. When asked, she said she would forward the procurement feedback to the committee.

On other items the department asked the committee to consider, staff described a late notice of award from the Oregon Department of Transportation for a rural transportation survey; department staff said the only county match appears to be a modest modernization fund allocation and that the grant is a planning award that spans two years. When asked where the match would come from, a staff member said modernization funds that had been unallocated could be used.

Ending: Department leaders told the committee they will present behavioral‑health and additional human‑services details at a Thursday meeting and continue to monitor federal and state grant decisions before finalizing any program changes.