Trying to decide which is worse: The tyranny of the local green harpies, or the slavish zealots they install in public office.
Ms Capps, we expect this Green Harpie nonsense from you. But sorry to see new supervisor Roy Lee is already letting the local Mean Green Machine gobble him up too.
My advice to newly elected Supervisor Lee, take your early mentoring from your north county colleagues and avoid the south county Democrat swamp politics. Especially following the lead of the clearly ambitious Ms Capps. Her star is already hitched to another wagon, well beyond the good of Santa Barbara County.
Supervisor Lee, you were elected to be an independent alternative to Democrat-partisan mouthpiece Das Williams; not to be his replacement.
I know 100% in my heart that Roy Lee is in this because he cares deeply about his community, hopefully that gets him a little grace as he settles in on making the right decisions. The other one is obviously on a nepotistic career in politics...
District One - Roy Lee has a splendid opportunity to now become the swing vote, which at one time was geographical south county vs north county, with the middle District Three vote often between those two dimensions.
Now the third person swing vote can be more ideological - machine Democrat short-term personal gain politics vs. independent and long-term county prudence and pragmatism.
Capps in District Two needs now to be a loner, still playing very old school Democrat party politics uber allies. The rest need to realign as county non-partisans, and get this county back on track. Solve the long term fiscal unsustainability first. So the first test as a new board unfortunately awards this new board majority-vote alliance a grade F.
Thank you, Mike. So this is why Miss Laura says she and the County Supervisors deserve a 48% raise. By holding meetings about name changes. Okay, sure.
The political virtue signaling goes all the way to the top...Representative Salud Carbajal posted, “Tonight, I voted against the House Republican budget, which betrays the American people and slashes funding for essential programs… ”
Not the "U.S. federal budget" that they are 6 months late on passing that was due before Trump and the new congress even took office...
In fact, everything he's posted amounts to Trump and Republicans bad, we're fighting for you.
My Democrat friends, Trump is happy to stay on a CR for the rest of the year while he works an FY 26 budget with full control of congress. While congress argues over line items in a 6 month late FY 25 budget, the Executive is running through the federal government with executive orders and DOGE... the best thing Carbajal could do for you is compromise on getting these appropriations passed so that congress can get some control over the federal govt.
The #1 duty of Congress is passing all 12 appropriations of the federal budget by Oct 1st. This hasn't happened once the entire time Salud Carbajal or Lois Capps were in office in the 24th district, even when Democrats controlled the house. I would appreciate if he said, "I've worked to compromise with my colleagues in congress, we've secured X, Y, Z things we deemed most important, and A, B, C are areas we conceded. He are the actual impacts of those things to the American people..."
He claims to work across the aisle, but everything he posts is partisan grandstanding and virtue signaling for the audience, with zero real information. To the point of Mike Stoker's post, being a politician, not a public servant. When are people going to realize that many of our elected officials are inept at executing their duties and are just campaigners. Imagine every day Americans not doing their primary work duty the entire time they have had their job...and constantly telling everyone the awesome job they are doing!
Mike, I was wondering if county voters can change pension policy. As I understand it, a county employee can retain his/her pension if fired. Is that correct? And now that our Board of Supervisors has granted themselves a hefty salary, they seem impervious to any sort of accountability to their constituents unless they are convicted of a crime within their elected office. I guess playing stupid might not be stupid after all if you have no morals.
Thank you for writing. I wonder how the two anti oil supervisors will respond to their crowd of UCSB student activists when the county is sued over a named change?
" ...doing what makes him or her look good with more voters at the time" does seem the definition of politics around here, not governance.
I have a client who is an Exxon executive from Texas, and he tells me nothing California does with regulations or restrictions matters to them. That they have enough permits already in place and approved to be able to drill baby drill to the end of the century. They jettisoned the local pipeline to avoid the GOO people, but don't think for a minute they don't have the lawyers on retainer to sue the County successfully, at the cost of much taxpayer funds. Pathetic knee-jerk reaction by the deluded sheeple who drove away from the meeting in their gasoline powered cars feeling like they had won.
Who backhandedly declared themselves to be "good supervisors" since their primary argument was the pay raise was necessary in order to get "good supervisors".
It is a matter of accountability on paper for the County of Santa Barbara to know who and how to properly notice a company working in the County. This is such s DUH issue it never should have been brought up.
Hartmann states a conflict of interest. Wait a minute she is an attorney type, does she not know the difference of a paper change that corrects the public record? There is no issue of conflict of interest of a paper notice. Except if she does not want the voters in the valley to recognize how questionable her decision making process is. After all there is a certain attorney type who Mr. Stoker knows very well who points out in this piece the issue of paper ownership.
The EDC is famous for misrepresenting items. Not one but two insiders notified CAB that Kropp and the EDC intended to pressure the City of Santa Barbara to destroy the street grid and make auto use in Santa Barbara all but impossible. (EDC fellow at a lunch meeting and she SB Public Works Employee in a confidential phone conversation) Once again this is a famous Bait and Switch game.
CAB questions one Supervisor if they know the difference of paper relative?
CAB learned about this bait and switch game when it was a board member of the former County Taxpayer Association and had no less mentors as Larry Lavignino, Joe Centeno, Dick Dewess, Ed Andresik Joanie Gray, and Mike Stoker.
Shades of a city auxiliary board members a few years back who refused to sign off on fully complete Chick-fil-A plans, because of an ideological snit about the owner of the main Chick-fil-A franchise, on a totally unrelated matter to that board's jurisdiction.
I believe they were all required to take an ethics course to better understand the exercise of powers granted to them as city board members. May we dare suggest a few county supervisors could also use a refresher course about what is ministerial consent, and what are matters of policy substance?
This appears to be a ministerial change; not a change in substance. You are right. But they saw this as an optics issue, for their own personal reasons. They are not real supervisors. They are re-election prostitutes.
Again, with the exception of two or three people in the comments section, nobody, I mean nobody including the aurhor is talking about the 48.8% payraise. I have a friend in Tennessee on the Board of Supervisors there who made $100 per meeting. That is a public servant. All political officers in California are PARASITES not politicians. And the problem is our public, who is dumber than a rock and ignorant as they come. The idiots protesting Sable, should've been tar and feathering the BOS, every single one of those sell outs and parasites for the pay hikes, but no, these morons do not have the cranial capacity to get get their priorities straight. This is why I always say people deserve the government they get. The BOS should be renamed POS, because that is exactly what they are, including the so called conservatives on there. I have a lot of issues with Bob Nelson,, but he was the ONLY one who voted against the pay raise, now that is what I call having a spine. Roy Lee abstaining is worse that voting yes, and I'm not going to bother with Steve Lavagnino, he just needs to be thrown out at this point.
Poormina, Lots of discussion of the pay raise here prior to the vote. Hope you can find the robust discussion and our own efforts to contact the supervisors, with varying degrees of success.
A two-fer. They get to a raise for themselves, and toss out more legal work to a willing supporter all from one flawed voting session? After all, it is not their money to spend; only their money to receive.
J, I hear what you are saying in regards to term limits when you have a great person in place and not wanting to loose them but the odds of having more good candidates than bad are slim and hopefully we can, in Santa Barbara, get to a point where transparency is the norm and we will get candidates that HAVE to stick to script. I believe in staying with term limits and a stricter code for the government workers to live by.
Santa Barbara decided to prove the saying "death by a thousand cuts" by incentivizing the environmentally friendly, wealthy company, Exxon, to demonstrate the wisdom of its business practices by walking away. Since then, how much time, money and effort has been spent by SB taxpayers, and Sable, in futility?
Trying to decide which is worse: The tyranny of the local green harpies, or the slavish zealots they install in public office.
Ms Capps, we expect this Green Harpie nonsense from you. But sorry to see new supervisor Roy Lee is already letting the local Mean Green Machine gobble him up too.
My advice to newly elected Supervisor Lee, take your early mentoring from your north county colleagues and avoid the south county Democrat swamp politics. Especially following the lead of the clearly ambitious Ms Capps. Her star is already hitched to another wagon, well beyond the good of Santa Barbara County.
Supervisor Lee, you were elected to be an independent alternative to Democrat-partisan mouthpiece Das Williams; not to be his replacement.
I know 100% in my heart that Roy Lee is in this because he cares deeply about his community, hopefully that gets him a little grace as he settles in on making the right decisions. The other one is obviously on a nepotistic career in politics...
District One - Roy Lee has a splendid opportunity to now become the swing vote, which at one time was geographical south county vs north county, with the middle District Three vote often between those two dimensions.
Now the third person swing vote can be more ideological - machine Democrat short-term personal gain politics vs. independent and long-term county prudence and pragmatism.
Capps in District Two needs now to be a loner, still playing very old school Democrat party politics uber allies. The rest need to realign as county non-partisans, and get this county back on track. Solve the long term fiscal unsustainability first. So the first test as a new board unfortunately awards this new board majority-vote alliance a grade F.
All in all, it doesn't give me a whole lot of confidence in our current Board of Supervisors, I.e. Capps and Lee. Thank you, Mike, for the article.
Thank you, Mike. So this is why Miss Laura says she and the County Supervisors deserve a 48% raise. By holding meetings about name changes. Okay, sure.
The political virtue signaling goes all the way to the top...Representative Salud Carbajal posted, “Tonight, I voted against the House Republican budget, which betrays the American people and slashes funding for essential programs… ”
Not the "U.S. federal budget" that they are 6 months late on passing that was due before Trump and the new congress even took office...
In fact, everything he's posted amounts to Trump and Republicans bad, we're fighting for you.
My Democrat friends, Trump is happy to stay on a CR for the rest of the year while he works an FY 26 budget with full control of congress. While congress argues over line items in a 6 month late FY 25 budget, the Executive is running through the federal government with executive orders and DOGE... the best thing Carbajal could do for you is compromise on getting these appropriations passed so that congress can get some control over the federal govt.
The #1 duty of Congress is passing all 12 appropriations of the federal budget by Oct 1st. This hasn't happened once the entire time Salud Carbajal or Lois Capps were in office in the 24th district, even when Democrats controlled the house. I would appreciate if he said, "I've worked to compromise with my colleagues in congress, we've secured X, Y, Z things we deemed most important, and A, B, C are areas we conceded. He are the actual impacts of those things to the American people..."
He claims to work across the aisle, but everything he posts is partisan grandstanding and virtue signaling for the audience, with zero real information. To the point of Mike Stoker's post, being a politician, not a public servant. When are people going to realize that many of our elected officials are inept at executing their duties and are just campaigners. Imagine every day Americans not doing their primary work duty the entire time they have had their job...and constantly telling everyone the awesome job they are doing!
Old times. Orangemanbad - the one size fits all excuse for lazy politicians like Carbajal.
Drill baby Drill !
Carbajal disgusts me to my core. He's a lying, ignorant, embarrassing narcissist.
Mike, I was wondering if county voters can change pension policy. As I understand it, a county employee can retain his/her pension if fired. Is that correct? And now that our Board of Supervisors has granted themselves a hefty salary, they seem impervious to any sort of accountability to their constituents unless they are convicted of a crime within their elected office. I guess playing stupid might not be stupid after all if you have no morals.
Oy
Thank you for writing. I wonder how the two anti oil supervisors will respond to their crowd of UCSB student activists when the county is sued over a named change?
Thank you Mike for being there and setting the record straight>>>as Forest stated....Stupid is as Stupid does.
" ...doing what makes him or her look good with more voters at the time" does seem the definition of politics around here, not governance.
I have a client who is an Exxon executive from Texas, and he tells me nothing California does with regulations or restrictions matters to them. That they have enough permits already in place and approved to be able to drill baby drill to the end of the century. They jettisoned the local pipeline to avoid the GOO people, but don't think for a minute they don't have the lawyers on retainer to sue the County successfully, at the cost of much taxpayer funds. Pathetic knee-jerk reaction by the deluded sheeple who drove away from the meeting in their gasoline powered cars feeling like they had won.
"drove away from the meeting in their gasoline powered cars feeling like they had won" IS EVERYTHING! The irony is astounding!
And these are the same supervisors that just voted themselves a $48k pay raise.
Who backhandedly declared themselves to be "good supervisors" since their primary argument was the pay raise was necessary in order to get "good supervisors".
It is a matter of accountability on paper for the County of Santa Barbara to know who and how to properly notice a company working in the County. This is such s DUH issue it never should have been brought up.
Hartmann states a conflict of interest. Wait a minute she is an attorney type, does she not know the difference of a paper change that corrects the public record? There is no issue of conflict of interest of a paper notice. Except if she does not want the voters in the valley to recognize how questionable her decision making process is. After all there is a certain attorney type who Mr. Stoker knows very well who points out in this piece the issue of paper ownership.
The EDC is famous for misrepresenting items. Not one but two insiders notified CAB that Kropp and the EDC intended to pressure the City of Santa Barbara to destroy the street grid and make auto use in Santa Barbara all but impossible. (EDC fellow at a lunch meeting and she SB Public Works Employee in a confidential phone conversation) Once again this is a famous Bait and Switch game.
CAB questions one Supervisor if they know the difference of paper relative?
CAB learned about this bait and switch game when it was a board member of the former County Taxpayer Association and had no less mentors as Larry Lavignino, Joe Centeno, Dick Dewess, Ed Andresik Joanie Gray, and Mike Stoker.
Great logic paper....... Thanks
Shades of a city auxiliary board members a few years back who refused to sign off on fully complete Chick-fil-A plans, because of an ideological snit about the owner of the main Chick-fil-A franchise, on a totally unrelated matter to that board's jurisdiction.
I believe they were all required to take an ethics course to better understand the exercise of powers granted to them as city board members. May we dare suggest a few county supervisors could also use a refresher course about what is ministerial consent, and what are matters of policy substance?
This appears to be a ministerial change; not a change in substance. You are right. But they saw this as an optics issue, for their own personal reasons. They are not real supervisors. They are re-election prostitutes.
Again, with the exception of two or three people in the comments section, nobody, I mean nobody including the aurhor is talking about the 48.8% payraise. I have a friend in Tennessee on the Board of Supervisors there who made $100 per meeting. That is a public servant. All political officers in California are PARASITES not politicians. And the problem is our public, who is dumber than a rock and ignorant as they come. The idiots protesting Sable, should've been tar and feathering the BOS, every single one of those sell outs and parasites for the pay hikes, but no, these morons do not have the cranial capacity to get get their priorities straight. This is why I always say people deserve the government they get. The BOS should be renamed POS, because that is exactly what they are, including the so called conservatives on there. I have a lot of issues with Bob Nelson,, but he was the ONLY one who voted against the pay raise, now that is what I call having a spine. Roy Lee abstaining is worse that voting yes, and I'm not going to bother with Steve Lavagnino, he just needs to be thrown out at this point.
Poornima - love your post! My sentiments exactly, esp the part about the dopey public that keeps voting these chumps back into office.
"The BOS should be renamed POS . . " Ha Ha - right on!
Poormina, Lots of discussion of the pay raise here prior to the vote. Hope you can find the robust discussion and our own efforts to contact the supervisors, with varying degrees of success.
The dollars spent for legal proceedings should be taken from their pay raises. They just gave themselves.
When are people gonna wake up and see what these clowns are doing to further raise costs to live here.
A two-fer. They get to a raise for themselves, and toss out more legal work to a willing supporter all from one flawed voting session? After all, it is not their money to spend; only their money to receive.
They all should be recalled.
Not all. Which is why term limits is such a flawed option - the good get eliminated with the bad.
J, I hear what you are saying in regards to term limits when you have a great person in place and not wanting to loose them but the odds of having more good candidates than bad are slim and hopefully we can, in Santa Barbara, get to a point where transparency is the norm and we will get candidates that HAVE to stick to script. I believe in staying with term limits and a stricter code for the government workers to live by.
Santa Barbara decided to prove the saying "death by a thousand cuts" by incentivizing the environmentally friendly, wealthy company, Exxon, to demonstrate the wisdom of its business practices by walking away. Since then, how much time, money and effort has been spent by SB taxpayers, and Sable, in futility?
Looks like supervisors Lee and Laura Capps are incompetent to supervise.
- isn’t it fraud to use someone else’s name?
Aren’t Lee and Capps promoting criminality by wanting someone named Sable to use the name of someone named Exxon?
Mike did I miss something? How did supervisor Hartman vote?