Every year I first donate to TransparentCalifornia. Why? Because my money is limited, my savings are essential to my survival until death, and elected leaders waste it! I’m grossly over taxed as a single retiree because government workers are the highest paid and forever pensioned with ownership rights to their jobs!
There was no easily accessible data for spending accountability by government, schools, health care and entitlements, until TransparentCalifornia. I’ve been an CA political activist since 1978. Support Transparent California: staff are responsive to calls and follow up to get answers.
The County of Santa Barbara has yet to submit: why not? Mona’s staff is 10 months late. Excuses, excuses, and more excuses. 5,347 SB County employee records for 2023. Where’s 2024?
“Transparent California is the state’s largest public pay and pension database. We fight tirelessly for records on the public’s behalf and make them available for anyone to access. Our records are unique because they go beyond the self-reported data available elsewhere and include important identifiers like names.
“Since 2014, we’ve coupled this data with in-depth research and analysis that we share with the public and media. These findings have exposed fraud and spurred reforms at the state and local level. We continue to provide taxpayers and concerned citizens with the information they need to hold public agencies accountable.
“Your donation helps support our work of making California governments more transparent and accountable to the people they exist to serve.”
Thank you Bonnie for your ongoing efforts in blowing the whistle on public employee excess. What is the optimal number of public employees based on SB population? My understanding is there is 1 employee for every 59 population? The state average being 113? Numbers can be deceiving and confusing. One city in Orange County, Vernon, has more employees than the population!
The obvious concern is the ticking pension time bomb that will eventually go off. All compounded by the state deficit of $19 billion!
With business and population heading for the exits from the high costs of California, then what? Bankruptcy, receivership, financial collapse, meltdown of the municipal bond market?
There would appear to be a correlation to the number of City workers per population based on affluence and liberal-left leaning policies, ie 1 City Worker for every:
LT: Wait until every property owner is assessed a supplemental tax — parcel or via bonds— to pay for unfunded pensions. I’d welcome debate on a 20% pay cut for all California government, school, and other employees paid over $200K to build up the pension fund. BTW: At Wednesdays SBRCC meeting, north county delegates actually support increasing taxation! Do those Republicans they represent seek to be taxed more?
The remedy Monte? How about class action lawsuits by taxpayer groups targeting city officials for violating our civil rights as taxpayers, holding them personally liable?
Elected officials, (City Council, Mayor, BOS) have a FIDUCIARY DUTY to steward our tax dollars responsibly, and when they breach their duty should be held civilly/criminally liable.
SB Current should make William Alexander the guest of honor at the next GOP bash. Give that guy a medal! And his own horse in the next Fiesta parade — yes, a horse for that man! He embodies the spirit of this battered old town! He’ll get more cheers than the decrepit Boomer No Kings parade any day.
The food situation is the same way. I'm sure your grandparents did what mine did during the Great Depression, cook enough food so they could put extra out for community members suffering poverty and needing to feed their families. The Progressives not only don't get proper food to the poor, they have damaged community bonds and created people who think a socialist government should — and will take care of them.
A GS-15 federal government employee here in CA tops out at $195,200. That’s a person running an entire department on a base here with thousands of employees and much more than the entire city’s budget in total obligation authority. The top Senior executive Service (SES) civilian running the entire base at Vandenberg or Naval Base Ventura County is capped at $225,200. Tens of thousands of base employees and billions in total obligation authority. Not to mention high stakes operations running under them like space launches or ballistic missile defense testing. The Vice President’s salary is $298k. Thats the hard cap for total compensation anyone can receive in the federal govt.
Speaking of, the highly skilled federal employee that runs the entire live fire events on a range for intercepts in space or at RIMPAC with multiple countries involved makes like $130k. You don’t need to use your toes to count how many people have that skill set.
Having spent most of my life on the federal side with highly skilled humans managing things that only a handful of humans on earth are qualified to do, these city numbers are mind boggling.
Hello former Commander Robert "Bob" Smith, the real question is how many people working for the City and County have serious connections of conflict like best friends,
family members and same political party. Can we all say "Good Ole Boys and Gals"
Take a close look at the City and County HR Dept for your clues>>
Why the disparity between Federal and City worker salaries? Union representation and the ability of collective bargaining and being able to extort local governments with strikes!
That is when the SBCC Union Rep from Germany actually teaches. Check her out on Rate Your Professor. SBCC is totally puppet mismanaged by a singular far left progressive voice.
Thank you, Bonnie once again, for shining a spotlight into a dark closet. I would not expect the “ public servants” at the next city council, or county board of supervisors do anything but defend all this waste. They, no doubt, will tell us how they deserve every dime., and need a raise. This compensation, etc., is beyond absurd, and is an insult to all the taxpayers of this city. Having owned pigs, my observation was that there was no limit to the amount they would consume, or the ferocity with which they would fight for every scrap thrown in their pen.
Bonnie- After I digested the depressing list of city employee salaries my heart was warmed when I read the report of the Army Veteran performing the palm frond cleanup!
The compensation packages are crazy. If we have all these amazingly well paid administrators why the heck do we need consultants or outsourced contracts. Water billing seems to be outsourced, Dog licenses, What else?
I’d like to see a list of all city functions that are contracted to vendors. Or, is outsourced how many cit employees in those departments?
Also, what are the “benefits” besides the pension plan?
An uninformed and poorly educated populous has led to this abomination,That is Santa Barbara, as well as California as a whole. The school system turns out these little social warrior with no job skills and bent on changing the world. The UC system imports them from around the country and world and magnifies the problem by keeping them here with an ever growing public sector job Forse. I think its grown to somewhere around 17% of total population. It’s a calculation that was made long about ago by the teachers association and executed to perfection.
I would like to see the city demonstrate to its housing provider tax payers how GREAT it is to freeze their income while letting all their expenses rise! ( rent control) show us how that works!!
Thanks Bonnie, I'd like to see you look into Santa Maria 's payroll budget also. It seems that working for municipal cities really pays off. As a retired letter carrier, I used to wonder about city workers doing street repairs. To fix a pothole,I'd see at least 5 people. The dump truck driver,one doing the actual work, and two to three standing around. You can go to the City's website and see actual salaries for various positions. But what you won't see is their retirement benefits which are usually full salary,and medical benefits. CalPers is essentially broke,and they all pay into it. Granted I was a union worker and my pay and benefits are good. But take a look at the pay they receive, sometimes it's more than a Congressman or the President. Is that really fair or justified? The excuse of having to attract qualified workers is a lie, considering the decisions they make. School boards are another can of worms altogether. I could go on,but I do applaud city workers who do the best they can,and have to abide by their superior's decisions. Thanks for letting me vent.
I just read the link you provided, astounding. Another matter that's probably not on the subject is Catholic Charities. Santa Maria serves more of the poor than Santa Barbara,but gets crumbs in monies/ support. Why? All these high salaries by officials could serve their communities if they donate out of their surplus. I hate to sound negative,but...
Bill- Catholic Charities and many of our thousand NPOs and NGOs on ‘The Giving List’ (aka Taking List) are huge local problems for aiding, abetting, and entitling those unlawfully in our community taking up housing and resources; and citizens on the take. After WW1, we evolved into a ‘Nation of Citizens’ valuing freedom and independence. In 1965, LBJs Great Society turned us into a “socialist nation” with entitlements for all, and a welcoming country to foreigners previously excluded. Now try to take away what has been given! It’s proving impossible as protestors include average day ‘compassionate’ American citizens who fail to comprehend we’re out of money, and refuse to respect existing immigration laws. Fraud is rampant, give away freebies far too generous, and voter expectations high for continuation of status quo “rights” aka freebies. What’s are the solutions? Start the debate.
I really appreciate your writing,but I must clarify. I worked in Lompoc,but knew someone who worked in Santa Maria. I didn't like how they treated some city firefighters who were asking for a raise. Reading your article just got to me,and I had to reply.
Let’s hope Linda McMahon is successful and totally dismantling the department of education. It will be a good first step to putting the first nail in the California teachers associations coffin.🙏🏼🤞🏼
Bonnie, great information thanks for putting the details together. I wonder why the top salary at $486,000 a year is not based on performance that type of salary demands a specific set of goals that need to be reached and as Macado outlined, she has four priorities homelessness, State Street and two others, which I don’t recall she should be tasked with meeting those setting goals and meeting those goals to earn her bonus even Elon Musk yeah he’s gonna get $1 trillion but has anybody looked at what he needs to do to get to that 1 trillion almost impossible. It’s time that we go to performance based salaries base salary 119,000 great but let’s anything above that needs to be on the basis of performance. Cheers.
So right on! The current district system allows those candidates to focus on the district issues but not the overall issues facing the city. We’ve got to get at least 2 maybe 3 new members. Sneddon, Harmon and Santa Maria all need to go
2 out of 3 is not bad. Need to put some candidates that are well qualified. To me that means someone who has experience in the real world. Recall of santamaria probably difficult, unless there’s a smoking gun out there
Public Employees Benefits-Breaking the Taxpayers Bank
From Washington to Santa Barbara, taxpayers are finding that they can no longer afford civil service workers with union benefits. They are breaking the bank at all levels and have in general exceeded the income and benefits of the private sector that pays for civil service benefits.
Civil service unions are the bane of the taxpayers because, unlike private unions, there is no way to control them. The workers are held slaves to them.
In the private sector, there is a company profit motive and a board of directors who are motivated to control costs and therefore employee’ wages and benefits, while in the civil service there are no such controls.
The elected Democratic politicians, whether federal, state or local city are beholding to their union fundraisers and vote getters and are hard put not to do their bidding. The private sector taxes used to pay union demands are not the politician’s money so they are not as reluctant to give out the benefits as the private sector is. The Democrats are happy to spend other people’s money for their own benefits.
Unions extort dues from the workers so they can hold their jobs and then the unions use the dues to promote their own agenda whether the employees like it or not. The unions almost always support tax and spend Democratic candidates or liberals of any stripe.
Unions cause more workers to lose their jobs because of these actions.
The elected officials do not have the backbone to say NO! after taking union dues to get elected.
The Democrats and their news media buddies promote the union causes to stay in power.
We taxpayers elect our representatives to be our watchdogs over the civil service but our trust is undermined by the fact that the elected officials become civil servants themselves and are not eager to limit their benefits no more than the government employees that they oversee.
There is therefore a collusion of self-interests in which the taxpayers are locked out of the process. The result is always more benefits followed by more taxes to pay for them.
We must eliminate ALL civil service unions. The Democrats started this mess; the taxpayers are going to end it. Private sector unions are fewer every day.
Elect candidates who are dedicated to changing this benefit crisis and bring about fiscal restraint and balance to our government systems by their being the watchdogs for the taxpayers and not the self -serving civil servants we presently have.
However, as long as the voters continue to elect Democrats with their media and union buddies, this budget deficits condition will not be eliminated. Municipal bankruptcies will continue to grow as taxpayers cannot afford to pay for civil service benefits. The civil service is supposed to be a service to the taxpayers not to the employees. Justin M. Ruhge, Lompoc CA 93436
Every year I first donate to TransparentCalifornia. Why? Because my money is limited, my savings are essential to my survival until death, and elected leaders waste it! I’m grossly over taxed as a single retiree because government workers are the highest paid and forever pensioned with ownership rights to their jobs!
There was no easily accessible data for spending accountability by government, schools, health care and entitlements, until TransparentCalifornia. I’ve been an CA political activist since 1978. Support Transparent California: staff are responsive to calls and follow up to get answers.
The County of Santa Barbara has yet to submit: why not? Mona’s staff is 10 months late. Excuses, excuses, and more excuses. 5,347 SB County employee records for 2023. Where’s 2024?
https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2023/santa-barbara-county/
SIGN UP for updates.
https://transparentcalifornia.com/connect/
“Transparent California is the state’s largest public pay and pension database. We fight tirelessly for records on the public’s behalf and make them available for anyone to access. Our records are unique because they go beyond the self-reported data available elsewhere and include important identifiers like names.
“Since 2014, we’ve coupled this data with in-depth research and analysis that we share with the public and media. These findings have exposed fraud and spurred reforms at the state and local level. We continue to provide taxpayers and concerned citizens with the information they need to hold public agencies accountable.
“Your donation helps support our work of making California governments more transparent and accountable to the people they exist to serve.”
Good for you Monty for supporting Transparent Of California probably the ONLY
Institution that is TRANSPARENT IN ALL OF CALI!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you Bonnie for your ongoing efforts in blowing the whistle on public employee excess. What is the optimal number of public employees based on SB population? My understanding is there is 1 employee for every 59 population? The state average being 113? Numbers can be deceiving and confusing. One city in Orange County, Vernon, has more employees than the population!
The obvious concern is the ticking pension time bomb that will eventually go off. All compounded by the state deficit of $19 billion!
With business and population heading for the exits from the high costs of California, then what? Bankruptcy, receivership, financial collapse, meltdown of the municipal bond market?
https://www.ocregister.com/2025/07/25/which-cities-are-the-most-well-staffed/amp/
There would appear to be a correlation to the number of City workers per population based on affluence and liberal-left leaning policies, ie 1 City Worker for every:
Buellton: 196
Carpinteria: 177
Goleta: 212
Lompoc: 100
Oxnard: 122
Santa Barbara: 59*
Santa Maria: 150
SLO: 84
Ventura: 125
San Francisco: 22
Beverly Hills: 31
LT: Wait until every property owner is assessed a supplemental tax — parcel or via bonds— to pay for unfunded pensions. I’d welcome debate on a 20% pay cut for all California government, school, and other employees paid over $200K to build up the pension fund. BTW: At Wednesdays SBRCC meeting, north county delegates actually support increasing taxation! Do those Republicans they represent seek to be taxed more?
The remedy Monte? How about class action lawsuits by taxpayer groups targeting city officials for violating our civil rights as taxpayers, holding them personally liable?
Elected officials, (City Council, Mayor, BOS) have a FIDUCIARY DUTY to steward our tax dollars responsibly, and when they breach their duty should be held civilly/criminally liable.
Meanwhile in Lompoc…
https://lompocrecord.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/lompoc-councilman-steve-bridge-charged-with-8-felonies-including-forgery-grand-theft/article_576b8049-c6c6-5c79-81d7-998ea6e743af.amp.html
SB Current should make William Alexander the guest of honor at the next GOP bash. Give that guy a medal! And his own horse in the next Fiesta parade — yes, a horse for that man! He embodies the spirit of this battered old town! He’ll get more cheers than the decrepit Boomer No Kings parade any day.
The food situation is the same way. I'm sure your grandparents did what mine did during the Great Depression, cook enough food so they could put extra out for community members suffering poverty and needing to feed their families. The Progressives not only don't get proper food to the poor, they have damaged community bonds and created people who think a socialist government should — and will take care of them.
A GS-15 federal government employee here in CA tops out at $195,200. That’s a person running an entire department on a base here with thousands of employees and much more than the entire city’s budget in total obligation authority. The top Senior executive Service (SES) civilian running the entire base at Vandenberg or Naval Base Ventura County is capped at $225,200. Tens of thousands of base employees and billions in total obligation authority. Not to mention high stakes operations running under them like space launches or ballistic missile defense testing. The Vice President’s salary is $298k. Thats the hard cap for total compensation anyone can receive in the federal govt.
Speaking of, the highly skilled federal employee that runs the entire live fire events on a range for intercepts in space or at RIMPAC with multiple countries involved makes like $130k. You don’t need to use your toes to count how many people have that skill set.
Having spent most of my life on the federal side with highly skilled humans managing things that only a handful of humans on earth are qualified to do, these city numbers are mind boggling.
Hello former Commander Robert "Bob" Smith, the real question is how many people working for the City and County have serious connections of conflict like best friends,
family members and same political party. Can we all say "Good Ole Boys and Gals"
Take a close look at the City and County HR Dept for your clues>>
https://www.countyofsb.org/1360/Human-Resources
Do these folks discriminate on hiring?
https://santabarbaraca.gov/government/departments/human-resources/inclusion-diversity-equity-accessibility-idea
See ANYTHING In COMMON with these fine Professionals in each DEI HR Depts?
Why the disparity between Federal and City worker salaries? Union representation and the ability of collective bargaining and being able to extort local governments with strikes!
That is when the SBCC Union Rep from Germany actually teaches. Check her out on Rate Your Professor. SBCC is totally puppet mismanaged by a singular far left progressive voice.
Beware the mayoral candidate that is in lock step!
Thank you, Bonnie once again, for shining a spotlight into a dark closet. I would not expect the “ public servants” at the next city council, or county board of supervisors do anything but defend all this waste. They, no doubt, will tell us how they deserve every dime., and need a raise. This compensation, etc., is beyond absurd, and is an insult to all the taxpayers of this city. Having owned pigs, my observation was that there was no limit to the amount they would consume, or the ferocity with which they would fight for every scrap thrown in their pen.
Bonnie- After I digested the depressing list of city employee salaries my heart was warmed when I read the report of the Army Veteran performing the palm frond cleanup!
Thank you to William Alexander!
The compensation packages are crazy. If we have all these amazingly well paid administrators why the heck do we need consultants or outsourced contracts. Water billing seems to be outsourced, Dog licenses, What else?
I’d like to see a list of all city functions that are contracted to vendors. Or, is outsourced how many cit employees in those departments?
Also, what are the “benefits” besides the pension plan?
Oops, in the meantime the Dummy who is overseeing the investments…
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/3866806/ca-state-retirement-fund-lost-71-468m-put-in-clean-energy-wont-say-how/
Calpers is circling the bowl and won’t even talk about. In effect, a news blackout!
https://youtu.be/-7oCD8vk3GY?si=K9KE1ZBuzcPbD9R3
An uninformed and poorly educated populous has led to this abomination,That is Santa Barbara, as well as California as a whole. The school system turns out these little social warrior with no job skills and bent on changing the world. The UC system imports them from around the country and world and magnifies the problem by keeping them here with an ever growing public sector job Forse. I think its grown to somewhere around 17% of total population. It’s a calculation that was made long about ago by the teachers association and executed to perfection.
We’re screwed
I could not agree more, Elce.
Good luck, trying to instill some “grit“ into any teachers union official.
I would like to see the city demonstrate to its housing provider tax payers how GREAT it is to freeze their income while letting all their expenses rise! ( rent control) show us how that works!!
Thank you!!
This needs to be published in the Independant and other publications the general public reads!!
GREAT revelation re $$. spent....and kudos to the Vet !
Thanks Bonnie, I'd like to see you look into Santa Maria 's payroll budget also. It seems that working for municipal cities really pays off. As a retired letter carrier, I used to wonder about city workers doing street repairs. To fix a pothole,I'd see at least 5 people. The dump truck driver,one doing the actual work, and two to three standing around. You can go to the City's website and see actual salaries for various positions. But what you won't see is their retirement benefits which are usually full salary,and medical benefits. CalPers is essentially broke,and they all pay into it. Granted I was a union worker and my pay and benefits are good. But take a look at the pay they receive, sometimes it's more than a Congressman or the President. Is that really fair or justified? The excuse of having to attract qualified workers is a lie, considering the decisions they make. School boards are another can of worms altogether. I could go on,but I do applaud city workers who do the best they can,and have to abide by their superior's decisions. Thanks for letting me vent.
Bill: 2023 total compensation for Santa Maria | Transparent California
https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2023/santa-maria/. Santa Maria has failed to report 2024 also.
I just read the link you provided, astounding. Another matter that's probably not on the subject is Catholic Charities. Santa Maria serves more of the poor than Santa Barbara,but gets crumbs in monies/ support. Why? All these high salaries by officials could serve their communities if they donate out of their surplus. I hate to sound negative,but...
Bill- Catholic Charities and many of our thousand NPOs and NGOs on ‘The Giving List’ (aka Taking List) are huge local problems for aiding, abetting, and entitling those unlawfully in our community taking up housing and resources; and citizens on the take. After WW1, we evolved into a ‘Nation of Citizens’ valuing freedom and independence. In 1965, LBJs Great Society turned us into a “socialist nation” with entitlements for all, and a welcoming country to foreigners previously excluded. Now try to take away what has been given! It’s proving impossible as protestors include average day ‘compassionate’ American citizens who fail to comprehend we’re out of money, and refuse to respect existing immigration laws. Fraud is rampant, give away freebies far too generous, and voter expectations high for continuation of status quo “rights” aka freebies. What’s are the solutions? Start the debate.
From today’s Noozehawk, apparently many NGO’s feeling the pinch as many have headed back south of the border.
https://www.noozhawk.com/nonprofit-leaders-talk-trends-challenges-at-santa-barbara-summit/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Noozhawk’s%20A.M.%20Report%2011.21.2025&utm_source=9ec8acd2c4&utm_source=Noozhawk&utm_campaign=4c6b79d971-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_11_17_12_32&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-4c6b79d971-247371824
Good subject matter for a Grand Jury investigation!
BINGO! 2x
I really appreciate your writing,but I must clarify. I worked in Lompoc,but knew someone who worked in Santa Maria. I didn't like how they treated some city firefighters who were asking for a raise. Reading your article just got to me,and I had to reply.
Bill, remember I'm writing about the City of Santa Barbara.
Let’s hope Linda McMahon is successful and totally dismantling the department of education. It will be a good first step to putting the first nail in the California teachers associations coffin.🙏🏼🤞🏼
Bonnie, great information thanks for putting the details together. I wonder why the top salary at $486,000 a year is not based on performance that type of salary demands a specific set of goals that need to be reached and as Macado outlined, she has four priorities homelessness, State Street and two others, which I don’t recall she should be tasked with meeting those setting goals and meeting those goals to earn her bonus even Elon Musk yeah he’s gonna get $1 trillion but has anybody looked at what he needs to do to get to that 1 trillion almost impossible. It’s time that we go to performance based salaries base salary 119,000 great but let’s anything above that needs to be on the basis of performance. Cheers.
So right on! The current district system allows those candidates to focus on the district issues but not the overall issues facing the city. We’ve got to get at least 2 maybe 3 new members. Sneddon, Harmon and Santa Maria all need to go
2 out of 3 is not bad. Need to put some candidates that are well qualified. To me that means someone who has experience in the real world. Recall of santamaria probably difficult, unless there’s a smoking gun out there
But how does a decision after the fact affect a recall
Public Employees Benefits-Breaking the Taxpayers Bank
From Washington to Santa Barbara, taxpayers are finding that they can no longer afford civil service workers with union benefits. They are breaking the bank at all levels and have in general exceeded the income and benefits of the private sector that pays for civil service benefits.
Civil service unions are the bane of the taxpayers because, unlike private unions, there is no way to control them. The workers are held slaves to them.
In the private sector, there is a company profit motive and a board of directors who are motivated to control costs and therefore employee’ wages and benefits, while in the civil service there are no such controls.
The elected Democratic politicians, whether federal, state or local city are beholding to their union fundraisers and vote getters and are hard put not to do their bidding. The private sector taxes used to pay union demands are not the politician’s money so they are not as reluctant to give out the benefits as the private sector is. The Democrats are happy to spend other people’s money for their own benefits.
Unions extort dues from the workers so they can hold their jobs and then the unions use the dues to promote their own agenda whether the employees like it or not. The unions almost always support tax and spend Democratic candidates or liberals of any stripe.
Unions cause more workers to lose their jobs because of these actions.
The elected officials do not have the backbone to say NO! after taking union dues to get elected.
The Democrats and their news media buddies promote the union causes to stay in power.
We taxpayers elect our representatives to be our watchdogs over the civil service but our trust is undermined by the fact that the elected officials become civil servants themselves and are not eager to limit their benefits no more than the government employees that they oversee.
There is therefore a collusion of self-interests in which the taxpayers are locked out of the process. The result is always more benefits followed by more taxes to pay for them.
We must eliminate ALL civil service unions. The Democrats started this mess; the taxpayers are going to end it. Private sector unions are fewer every day.
Elect candidates who are dedicated to changing this benefit crisis and bring about fiscal restraint and balance to our government systems by their being the watchdogs for the taxpayers and not the self -serving civil servants we presently have.
However, as long as the voters continue to elect Democrats with their media and union buddies, this budget deficits condition will not be eliminated. Municipal bankruptcies will continue to grow as taxpayers cannot afford to pay for civil service benefits. The civil service is supposed to be a service to the taxpayers not to the employees. Justin M. Ruhge, Lompoc CA 93436
“I’m shocked-shocked!-to find that public employee compensation abuse is going on here!”