Laura Capps and the Consolidation of County Control
At a recent gathering of the Santa Barbara Republican Club at Mulligan’s, longtime radio host and government watchdog Andy Caldwell delivered a pointed critique of local power dynamics. His target: Supervisor Laura Capps and a Board of Supervisors that, he argues, is steadily amassing authority well beyond its elected districts.
“Laura Capps is going to become a 900-pound gorilla in South County politics, if she isn’t already,” Caldwell told the audience. The board oversees a government spending $1.6 billion annually with roughly 4,400 employees, touching everything from jails and roads to countywide elected offices such as sheriff, district attorney, treasurer, tax collector, and auditor-controller. While supervisors are elected by district, their influence increasingly reaches across the entire county.
Caldwell highlighted what he sees as a pattern of centralization. He expressed suspicion that the board, particularly Capps, sought to undermine Auditor-Controller Betsy Schaffer, potentially folding the department into the CEO’s office or elsewhere. “What we have proof of,” he continued, is deeper dysfunction in the sheriff’s department, where overtime has exploded to $19 million. Deputies use a board-approved “pyramiding” system—taking sick or vacation days before working extra shifts—to inflate pay, with 35% of some paychecks now coming from overtime.
“Part of that’s the board’s problem, and actually it’s all the board’s problem,” Caldwell says, “because the board didn’t fund the sheriff enough over the years, but secondly, they are the ones that approved the memorandum of understanding that allowed the deputies” to do the pyramiding in the first place.
The March Toward Total Control
This feeds into a broader decarceration push. Influenced by what Caldwell described as a “very incredibly woke public defender named Tracy Macuga,” the board has worked to divert up to 50% of cases from jail. When the sheriff proved insufficiently aligned, they turned to Sacramento. Former Supervisor Brett Hart sponsored legislation to remove jail authority from the sheriff. The bill, initially allowing supervisors to appoint their own jail administrator outright, was later softened but still raises questions of reporting lines and control.
“This is part of this march through the institutions where they’re just trying to have total control,” Caldwell warned. “We believe this board, and especially Laura, is so power hungry.”
Caldwell reserved special criticism for Capps’s sway over First District Supervisor Roy Lee. “She’s a monster,” he said bluntly. “I’ve never seen this in my 35 years—she literally leads him.” As an example, after marijuana proved controversial in the district, Capps organized a workshop on the issue in his very district. Lee, whom Caldwell called “the nicest guy in the world” but “over his head” and “a puppet,” offered little resistance. “She controls the first district” as well as the second.
Hallmarks of Totalitarianism
Drawing on George Orwell, Caldwell framed these manoeuvres as symbols of tyranny. “All tyrannies rule through fraud and force. That once the fraud is exposed, they must rely exclusively on force.” He offered two California examples. In the Los Angeles mayoral race, incumbent Karen Bass led on election night, yet Democratic Socialist Nithya Raman saw her votes surge 190% in subsequent counts—a meteoric rise that outpaced both the incumbent and Republican challenger Spencer Pratt. Caldwell pointed to ballot harvesting as the likely driver, noting the difficulty of investigation.
That difficulty in investigating government wrongdoing has only grown. After citizen journalist Nick Shirley exposed roughly $170 million in fraudulent ghost hospice and daycare operations, California passed AB 2624, the “Stop Nick Shirley Act.” Authored by Assembly member Mia Bonta, wife of Attorney General Rob Bonta, the law threatens citizen investigators with fines and prosecution for “intimidating” subjects. “This bill puts journalists at simple risk for investigating fraud and makes it harder to expose it,” Caldwell said. “It’s an intimidation factor; it’s a force to stop fraud investigations. We are living in a tyranny right now. This is the mark of tyranny, and they do it in the name of democratic values.”
Patronage Sustains the System
Supervisors control $50,000 to $100,000 annual slush funds with minimal scrutiny. Unions provide the bulk of campaign money—three-quarters in some recent supervisor races—while Project Labor Agreements steer major public projects exclusively to union contractors, despite only 10-15% of the local workforce being unionized.
“The insult to injury is the local halls are too small to fulfill the manpower requirements on the contract, so instead of hiring local workers that were non-union, we’re bringing in people from L.A. and Bakersfield to work on these projects,” Caldwell explains. Contracts for $150-million builds such as new jails and probation facilities come in 20-30% higher than competitive bids, crowding out local non-union labor and inflating costs for taxpayers already facing $500 million in deferred maintenance.
Bloated Pension Payouts Overburden Taxpayers
Pensions compound the fiscal strain. County workers enjoy guaranteed defined benefits far removed from private-sector risks. “Government employees get a guaranteed percentage of their final average highest salary for the rest of their lives with COLA,” Caldwell noted. A deputy with 30 years can receive 90% of final average salary for life, with taxpayers covering shortfalls. The county spends $180 million annually on pensions alone—part of salaries, benefits, and pensions consuming over half the $1.6 billion budget—while carrying hundreds of millions in unfunded liabilities.
Time to Get Involved
Caldwell urges direct engagement. Citizens can review the board agenda at countyofsb.org, pull items for public comment, and testify remotely for up to three minutes. With budget hearings approaching, he encourages scrutiny of six-figure salaries, union contracts, and deferred maintenance. “You can go physically, but if not, you can do remote testimony. Just start weighing in and checking them on this stuff.”
In the Fifth District race, Caldwell backs Maribel Aguilera against a hard-left opponent, warning Republicans against self-sabotage. “Influencing Republicans is like herding cats in a minefield of egos.” He stresses grassroots action: sharing strong reporting from outlets like the Santa Barbara Current. “How many of you read the Santa Barbara Current on a regular basis?” he asked. Many hands went up. “How many of you will share that? Commit to me here today, every week, if you find some outstanding articles that you like that you’ll share with ten or twenty people.”
Caldwell closed with a call for knowledge as power. “People don’t know what they don’t know, and it’s up to us to tell them.” In a county where independent voices face media silence and institutional resistance, exposing the mechanics of control—patronage, force, and centralized ambition—remains the first step toward accountability. With progressive tyrants like Laura Capps consolidating control and looming large, sustained, public scrutiny still offers the best counterweight.
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Thank you, James for a comprehensive recap on Andy’s very informative talk. Yes, we find our state and county in peril, with seemingly insurmountable challenges all brought on by the one party state. Virtually, at every turn there is fraud, abuse of power, intimidation, retribution and downright criminality!
The latest? Our Governor, and his wife are apparently under FBI investigation, for wait for it…fraud! What a shocker! Based on Newsom’s unhinged, lashing out it would seem that there is something to the reports.
Let’s see, his wife runs NFP’s, to which she draws a huge salary while simultaneously shaking down businesses for “donations” in order to receive state contracts? Isn’t that what the mafia does?
At the end of the day, the grift of the California Democratic apparatus is so complex and indoctrinated into our everyday life, and virtually every facet of government, I’m not sure how this tangled web will ever get resolved.
Sorry, shy of a complete meltdown and revolution, I’m not optimistic.
I love Andy Caldwell. He gets it. It all stems back to the union’s power. That’s why California pensions are insane! Nobody on the planet gets that kind of money in retirement except for the extremely rare case. And the fact that ALL government works, including the universities, road maintenance and plumbers the unclog their toilets MUST BE UNION! The people must take back the government from these bad actors. They are Rich beyond belief and getting richer off of our tax dollars.