Has Santa Barbara’s Dark Regulatory Side Returned?
by Mike Stoker
I am a big fan of the good vs. evil stories. Whether ‘The Lord of the Rings’ or ‘Star Wars,’ the story is always about good vs. evil, the force vs the dark side, whether righteousness prevails over sinister intentions. And there are always sequels. Just when you thought that good had prevailed and evil was destroyed, years later lying dormant, the evil comes back stronger than ever.
I’m afraid that may be what just happened in Santa Barbara County.
In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, the county’s regulatory agencies were considered the most overzealous, overreaching, and anti-business of any local, state, or federal regulatory agencies. As a county supervisor, I joined the efforts to reform the Air Pollution Control District and the Planning & Development and Environmental Health Departments. I argued that you didn’t have to be against business if you were for the environment or be against the environment if you were for business.
Under pressure, changes were made with department heads. If you weren’t willing to work with the regulated community to come up with solutions, you lost your job. By the mid- ‘90s these agencies had changed their attitudes towards business; department heads made a commitment that the regulated community and regulators would work collaboratively in helping fulfill state and federal mandates.
Two years after these reforms, Santa Barbara County for the first time in Santa Barbara’s history was in attainment with the federal Clean Air Act. Indeed, both the regulated community and the environment were winners and the ‘dark side’ of regulating, like the Evil Empire in Star Wars, had lost out.
The “Climate Action” Plan
For almost 30 years that reform led to a good working relationship with the regulators and the regulated community. There have been clashes along the way, but we never returned to the regulatory dark side of the late ‘80s. That looks to have changed this last Tuesday when the Board of Supervisors on a 3-2 vote, with Lavagnino and Nelson voting no, adopted the SB County Climate Action Plan (CAP).
The CAP has the goal of reducing the county’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHC) by 50% from where emissions were in 2018. This is not a state mandate. And the state has chosen to have the goal of only 40%. The plan requires 338 million dollars over the next six years to implement strategies. From that, the county will have to come up with 138 million dollars. Essentially the plan has the goal of moving Santa Barbara County to all electric. For complete details, click here.
In my capacity as President & CEO of the Santa Barbara County Taxpayer Advocacy Center, I urged the Board not to adopt any plan without funding identified. (There is absolutely no funding identified for this plan.) I argued that if the funding is not there to implement the plan, then the voluntary measures that could take place with that funding to help the regulated community meet the CAP’s emission goals will be replaced with ‘confiscatory’ measures. Without the funding, the county essentially will have created a de facto policy that No new projects generating any emissions get approved.
None.
If they have no money and are serious about realizing a 50% emission reduction in emissions, there simply is no roadmap to accomplishing that without a “No New Projects” approach.
Back to the Bad Old Days
The Plan has been adopted and the question now is whether its implementation will take us back to the days of the late ‘80s, when it was very contentious among county supervisors, and contentious between the regulated community and county regulators. To go back to those days would be a huge mistake. We will get our first hint in six months when the staff comes back, as part of adopting the CAP, to present the Board with options to get further emission cuts from the oil & gas industry.
I argued at the hearing that the only thing remaining in the oil & gas industry is to go after ‘vested’ operations. To do that would be the “confiscatory” approach I discussed above. That approach would also subject the county to significant financial exposure under the U.S. Constitution’s 5th Amendment “Taking Clause.”
I assure you that if this “confiscatory” approach is taken today against the oil & gas industry the exact same approaches will be taken against the agricultural industry tomorrow.
We will know soon whether the CAP is nothing more than a feel-good document by the three supervisors to tell their climate change supporters that they’ve done something significant when they’ve done nothing at all. Or whether it is a return to contentious times for the business and regulated community.
The Santa Barbara County Taxpayer Advocacy Center will be monitoring this every step along the way. I urge you to join us in this effort. You can stay current with our work at www.sbctac.org.
Mike Stoker currently serves as President & CEO of the Santa Barbara County Taxpayer Advocacy Center. Stoker is a land use, environmental, and business law attorney. He has previously served on the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, was Chairman of the CA Agricultural Labor Relations Board, Majority Counsel to Congress, CA Deputy Secretary of State and served as the Southwest Administrator of the US EPA overseeing a population of 75 million people.
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Thank you, Mike. What a fitting column for Labor Day! Forget those gas powered parties today! No grilled carne asada, hot dogs or marshmallows for you! Try it and you'll be in jail begging for some microwaved insects to celebrate with.
Das Williams, Joan Hartmann, Laura Capps. It doesn't get stupider - or more ambitious - than those three. I have to hand it to The Das, though. He's still around, still talking about the good work he needs to do for Santa Barbara, still referring to himself in the mythological third person. As he was quoted in The Independent's piece: “contrary to popular belief, this is not just Das sitting in a room somewhere coming up with all these things” it is “more than a plan”; it is a “community-driven vision for a more equitable and resilient future, and therefore is fundamentally ambitious and transformative.” Phew! Was that a cow fart or just The Das blowing Greenhouse Gas?
But here's what I'm waiting for: their explanation as to how all the building they want in this county can be accomplished with all the emission reduction they're planning.
Joan Hartman has said “We're in a serious crisis for human life.” She's right. If they keep spending our money on this Green nonsense we won't have anything leftover for essentials - like food, healthcare and housing.
This fine article by Mr Stoker points out the dead machine of government regulators growing inexorably to feed itself and its dead government minions, with no regard to creating efficiencies in or allowing the private sector to create wealth, prosperity or growth. As the numbers show, Santa Barbara has about 200% more government employees and expenses for the same amount of people in our population compared to most other California cities, governments, and county governments. As I wrote a year ago, SB county government has an unfunded pension deficit of over $1 billion, and to put that in perspective, $1 billion means the county must extract 1,000 - million dollar homes from the private sector, and put that money into the pockets of government workers, regulators and pensioners who are not even working anymore. That’s our legacy from Salud Carbajal and any other spendthrift supervisors we elected to overwatch, and monitor our local county government . Our current supervisors basically function as pension managers for the government. Again the dead government machine grinds on with its main purpose to extract private wealth and transfer it to the unemployed county workers and to fund unneeded and unproductive programs that hinder development and hinder private prosperity as their main focus. Yes, government has a purpose to do those things we cannot do ourselves individually, but at this point, it’s the dead hand of government gone wild. Soon there will be no oil industry, no building industry, except for the rich) no manufacturing, no development.. Instead we will have government workers running everything and a few coffee shops for our children to work in. That is not the American dream. It is a socialist nightmare.