Months after tapping reserves for bonuses, supervisors OK spending $56M on county contractors, sewage crisis

Six months ago, a split San Diego County Board of Supervisors loosened rules governing how the county calculates how much it keeps in reserves — a move intended to free up hundreds of millions of dollars after years of conservative spending by a once GOP-dominated government.

Unionized county employees were the first to benefit, scoring contractually-guaranteed bonuses that tapped $14 million from the newly unlocked funds. Now, six months later, county contractors are the next in line.

Democratic supervisors signed off Tuesday on distributing an additional $56 million in money previously kept in unassigned county reserves, using a procedural approach that let them approve the spending with just three votes instead of the usual four.

Of that money, $24 million will go to existing county housing and social services programs. Another $8.8 million will fund a trio of projects to study and mitigate the effects of the Tijuana River Valley sewage crisis, a top priority of Supervisor Paloma Aguirre.

And another $23 million will fund a county conservation program, infrastructure projects and one-time costs related to an overhaul of the county’s software for tracking property taxes.

Most of the latest tranche of reserves spending came at the behest of a subcommittee controll...