Alameda County supervisors hear Alameda Health System fiscal update; board to act next week to avert layoffs

County and Alameda Health System (AHS) officials on Tuesday told the Alameda County Board of Supervisors that deferring all program closures and reductions in force through June 30, 2026, will cost an estimated $14,100,000 and asked the board to approve temporary financial adjustments next week to avoid immediate layoffs.

The county administrator opened an oral update at the board's request and said staff had spent weeks reviewing options with AHS leadership, the auditor-controller and AC Health. AHS's CEO, Jackson, described the method behind the $14.1 million figure, saying the calculation uses a fully loaded FTE cost multiplied across 211 positions and then prorated for the remainder of the fiscal year, with an added administrative overhead component to reintegrate staff and cover legal or compliance costs. "So then if you multiply that by 211 FTEs, that is where we get to 48,700,000. We then essentially took a quarter of that because we're talking about the balance of the fiscal year," Jackson said, explaining the step that produced the roughly $12.1 million baseline before administrative costs that together produced the $14.1 million estimate.

County staff laid out three near-term strategies the board could formalize next week: reduce the county behavioral-health…