Sacramento, CA – The County Welfare Directors Association (CWDA) of California issued the following statement from Executive Director Carlos Marquez III today on Governor Gavin Newsom’s 2026 – 2027 May Budget Revision:

“We appreciate Governor Newsom’s gesture to the life-saving role of county eligibility workers in keeping people fed and healthy in today’s May Revise. However, today’s proposal leaves two-thirds of the additional workers on the table needed to combat the magnitude of our federally-provoked hunger and healthcare crisis. We call on the Governor and Legislature to be even bolder with ongoing and higher workforce investments that respond to the true scale of the threats we face due to H.R. 1.”

“Across the country we are already seeing catastrophic results from H.R.1. Even in states like Massachusetts, who are aligned with California but failed to invest, eligibility workers are now too overwhelmed to keep eligible children and families connected to life-saving food aid. These states are the canary in the coal mine, portending a devastating loss of healthcare for 1.3 million and a loss of food assistance for more than 500,000 Californians, respectively, unless the state invests in county eligibility workers now. 

“As the Governor begins to support counties in securing some footing around H.R. 1 implementation, we urge the Administration to withdraw previously proposed IHSS cuts and cost shifts to counties that only serve to destabilize county budgets and deny desperately needed services to California’s older adults and people with disabilities. Equally, CWDA opposes rolling back access for seniors to Adult Protective Services and housing support, especially at a time when the state is beginning to turn the corner on homelessness, and we look forward to working with the Administration and Legislature to reject balancing the budget on Medi-Cal enrollees through draconian access limits.”