Santa Ana’s Measure X oversight committee has not met in seven months, though the citizen panel was legally mandated to review the spending of more than $82 million in taxpayer funds.
Measure X, approved by voters in 2018, added a 1.5% local sales tax to raise revenue for the city, and the seven-member committee was created by the ordinance as an additional layer of oversight to advise the City Council “in reviewing the annual revenue and expenditures.”
Composed of Santa Ana residents appointed by council members from their respective wards, the committee has had three seats vacant, preventing it from meeting. The committee is expected to meet quarterly, but has not had a quorum since its September meeting. Two of the seats were vacant for even longer.
There needs to be a minimum of four members present to conduct business — meaning there was no quorum for its March budget recommendation session and December audit review. As a result, the committee did not publicly review the city’s annual 2024-25 audit of the Measure X sales tax funds, which had generated $82.6 million in revenue that fiscal year, of which the city spent $73.2 million.
“Normally, this report would include budget recommendations from the Measure X Citizen Oversight Committee,” a city budget staff report released in April noted. “The committee has been unable to meet and develop recommendations.”
Measure X revenue is used by the city for a range of funding purposes, including paying toward public safety, including police overtime, homelessness services, park repairs and other improvements.
“It’s slim pickings,” Councilmember David Penaloza said of trying to find a resident from Ward 6 to appoint to his district’s seat on the oversight committee, which was empty for roughly a year from March 2024 through March 2025, before he appointed a replacement later in 2025.
He said he couldn’t find anyone interested after his previous commissioner resigned because she moved out of the city and no longer met the residency requirements.
Councilmember Thai Viet Phan’s Ward 1 seat has been vacant for nearly two years, based on multiple meeting agendas from 2024 through 2026. She could not be reached for comment.
“Anytime we can provide an additional level of oversight, I’m all in,” said Penaloza, “But it would make more sense to have a commission if it was tied to a specific use of funds.”
Unlike other dedicated taxes, the sales tax funds generated by Measure X flow into the general fund, he said, which has left past commissioners frustrated that their suggestions carry no binding weight despite voters being promised oversight.
Previous cancellations, which span multiple years, also include meetings tied to required oversight functions, with at least seven meetings canceled from 2019 to 2026:
- Jun 12, 2019
- Jun 08, 2022
- Dec 14, 2022
- Jun 14, 2023
- Jun 11, 2025
- Dec 10, 2025
- Mar 11, 2026
The cancellation notice posted for the March meeting said the committee is not scheduled to meet again until September.
That leaves roughly 10 months without budgetary oversight, with no clear indication why the quarterly committee is also skipping its June meeting.
Two recent unscheduled vacancies, reported by the city in special public notices, occurred just before the December and March meetings.
Tim Johnson, chair of the Measure X oversight committee, previously warned about the city creating a “fiscal time bomb” by approving expenditures that will outlast the revenue. In the past, oversight committee members had also characterized Measure X as a “fiscal Band-Aid” that masked structural deficits without fixing them.
The measure, which pushed sales tax collected in Santa Ana to 9.25%, is scheduled to reduce in 2029 and sunset in 2039. But councilmembers are considering a measure for the November ballot to ask voters to eliminate its expiration date. They are set to decide whether to go ahead with the ballot request in June.