Publicly-funded warnings about disastrous local hospital closures are appearing in the mailboxes of Santa Clara County residents. Critics can’t help but notice the timing.

The foreboding mailers, under the county government’s official letterhead, are appearing weeks before voters decide on a five-eighth-cent sales tax measure Nov. 4. County leaders say the sales tax, known as Measure A, will protect their massive public hospital system from life-threatening cuts under H.R. 1., the Trump administration bill that guts the county’s largest source of hospital funding.

Opponents of Measure A say the county mailers — which don’t explicitly mention or endorse the sales tax — are dancing around laws barring government agencies from engaging in political campaigns.

“We’re quite upset with this.

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