Ok. I sincerely believe that all people in Santa Barbara know this and are not happy. I suggest that we get a petition that insists that we change the salary of every government employee and tie it to pay grades. This is how government was first paid at every level. They will not get rich working fir the government but it will be an honor and privilege to serve and to get our city to a financially sound system that serves the people not the people who work for the government.
You can volunteer for lower wages to go work for the government.
When I read comments like yours, I am left scratching my head.
Please, go to Panda Express at LaCumbre. There are signs to hire and they will pay people over 80k a year.
So you want people to have more skills, more talent than counting money and making orange chicken, and get paid less? Makes no sense.
Government positions are competing with the private sector. This is capitalism. As Charlie Munger stated, "Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome."
Now, apply that to police and fire. Positions that are much different than an angry customer tossing their food at you. You want them to get paid less? That is why you will not get people. Now think FEDERALLY, and you see why military recruiters are having a hard time.
BUT THOSE HIGH-PRICED PEOPLE SHOULD ULTIMATELY BE ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR DECISIONS and the impact their control of our County has!!! WHY DOES DENNIS BOZANICH HAVE QUALIFIED IMMUNITY WHEN HE WAS FOUND BY OUR OWN COUNTY L.E. TO HAVE TAKEN BRIBES???
I agree. They should be held accountable. They should be held accountable in two ways: civilly and criminally. Now, some of these are employees and there is very little you can do civilly about it, but if they broke laws, HELL YEAH, prosecute them.
Regarding Bozanich, I know nothing about this. Qualified immunity is based on the law. If someone has that, then the issue is not what you want; the issue is that the law needs to change.
David, If this were the federal workforce, I’d largely agree with your framing. The senior leadership I’ve worked with in the federal system are extraordinarily capable. Many accept lower compensation than they could command in the private sector because they value mission, authority, and public service. That said, there's the bottom 25% in cubicle farms who don't know what they do for 30 years... we could do with less quantity and more quality at the federal level.
This breaks down at the state and local level here though.
Senior federal executives overseeing massive organizations, like the top guy at Vandenberg, managing billions in federal obligation authority, complex national-security operations, and workforces in the tens of thousands, are capped at around $218K in pay. No overtime eligibility.
When you compare that to local payroll using pay only:
• In the City of Santa Barbara, compensation exceeds SES levels through roughly the top 65 employees, with peak pay around $360K.
• In the County, compensation exceeds SES through roughly the top 165 employees, with top earners approaching $490K.
Even after removing executive leadership to make a private comparison with c suite removed, and averaging the next 300 earners:
• City average ≈ $200K
• County average ≈ $234K
Those figures sit at the upper end of the job market with senior leadership removed, particularly when pensions and long-term retirement benefits are layered in.
State and local policy decisions, such as land-use restrictions, regulatory layering, energy costs, permitting delays, and taxation, are primary drivers of California’s cost-of-living crisis. Every UCSB economic summit I’ve attended reaches the same conclusion: artificial scarcity and regulations are inflating the baseline cost to live and operate here.
The state and local government then adjust compensation upward to offset those same costs.
But private-sector workers and small-business owners don’t have the same insulation. They absorb the regulatory burden directly through higher compliance costs, higher insurance premiums, higher utility bills, and higher wages just to keep staff afloat.
So you end up with a cycle: Policy drives cost escalation, public compensation rises to match, the private sector absorbs the gap, and affordability worsens.
I generally agree with you that we want competent government employees, but there's no way to defend this bloat and waste across the state at this point, with increasing taxes making life tough for anyone who isn't in the government. Not sure when this hits rock bottom, but all tax consumers and no tax producers left won't be solvent.
What I believe is happening is that people are comparing the 'pay' in one and then using Transparent California in the other. Transparent California is not that transparent :) When I looked half a dozen years ago, they showed their methodology. IIRC, when I looked, their methodology was FULLY burdened. And in technical terms, super duper fully burdened. This means all employer-paid side to that employee. For example, if the employee's health insurance is $ 2k a month and the employee pays $300 toward it, TC lists it at $ 2k. I do not think they consider employee payment towards it. They just see that there is 2k monthly for health insurance. I think this applies to the CalPERS payments as well. So this truly inflates the person's income as shown on TC.
Now, look at that military pay. That is unburdened. It is not showing both sides of taxes; it is not showing benefits, allowances, retirement, etc. That is showing the unburdened side, just like you would see in the county's job listings!
So I ask: when you look at the wages listed on the county site, do they match the TC listings? Do they seem to match the local market? The first one I looked at was head of accounting for child services. As that hits relatively close to home, my wife is in accounting, and that number is about 20-30% less than what the private sector is paying for the responsibilities and skill set required.
I will point out that pensions were reformed, and state employees no longer receive those incredible retirements. I do not know the exact grandfathering date for the old system, but IIRC, they had to have X years of service before 2013 to get it. So those employees who had that high pension may have all retired or are dang close to it.
I think this is where people will see that we agree, even though we disagree on many methods. I firmly believe you want land-use regulations. Why? Because I do not think you want to see the 'Spot' in Carp being leveled and a 12-story hotel built there. I do not want to see here what I saw growing up in South Florida. Go along the beach, and for 2 miles out of twenty, you can actually see the ocean. The rest are 20-40-story high-rises along the ocean. I do not think you want what we see in Louisiana or Houston, where you can have a strip club next door to a chemical plant, next door to a church, next door to a school, next door to a pot store, next door to a Chipotle.
So yes, of course, all the ECON summits will state that regulations create scarcity. Without regulations, you still get scarcity, just later. Once the land is owned by someone, it is out of the pool. With regulations, its use is limited, but it is still scarce.
I realize this may seem odd to you. I bounce back and forth between SB and a place we have in Florida. Florida is flat and every thing, when driving seems expansive. Here, things seem like you are driving in canyons. Going down Mission between the 101 and State, you feel how close things are and have that canyon feeling. In most places in Florida, you never get that feeling. However, that is changing. Sunrise Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale, where it aligns with Federal Highway, used to feel expansive. On the south side, you had Holiday Park, and the tallest building was a 3-story building; most were one-story, a few two-story, and a few three-story buildings. The north side was mainly one-story buildings, but there were a few 5-story buildings. This all along a road that is 7 lanes (iirc) wide. Since 2000, the south side has been filled with buildings over 20 stories tall. They are literally building->sidewalk. There is no setback. The north side has also been built out. What you have now is Mission, but a much deeper canyon. That is what happens when you loosen land usage regulations. The city has lost its charm, and the infrastructure to support all the new housing is lacking. Ask yourself the simple question: Can South County, Carp->Goleta support an additional 200k of people? An additional 500k people?
My answer to that is no. I do not see the roads or the water capable of supporting it. So we already have land scarcity. Thus, we will have la imited supply, with rising demand. Therefore, housing prices will go up.
Because the area's citizens demand services from the government, the government will have to pay more to attract workers. The workers need a place to live. And before we hear from the others who state, "They should just commute." That is fine. All that does is raise wages, because given a choice between a 100k job that requires a 2.5-hour commute per day and a 95k job that requires a 30-minute commute per day, very few people are going to take the 100k job.
There was a reason why, when the building on Chappala, the 4 story place went into BK, I had an idea. It was beyond my wallet, but it would have been nice to buy it outright, then do a lease/sale to public employees at rates that made sense. The building would be filled with teachers and cops :) But it was a place for them to live.
And to put a fork in this topic. If you want to see where this is heading, just look to China. A worker in a Chinese factory is paid a low wage, but their compensation also includes dorm-style housing and three meals a day.
- I didn't include active duty military at all. Federal civil servants. That is apples-to-apples to state/county/city civil servants. Also apples-to-apples, I did not use full-burdened rates at all. I used pay only. Fully burdened compensation, our county and city employees are hitting $600k-800k. It's all broken down and publicly available. Federal high grades also cannot receive OT.
If you think the assistant to the assistant city manager making double the salary of the person running DARPA or Naval Sea Systems Command (90k plus employees and $45B plus annual TOA), makes any sense, not sure what to say...
- I don't think there should be any RHNA or all these bloated regulations from Sacramento. I think the only people who should determine how Carpinteria develops are Carpinterians. We are overregulated to the point that nothing gets done and costs much more. At last year's economic summit, there was an example of a neighborhood development in Visalia that began planning 25 years ago and finally broke ground in 2024. Houses were supposed to be 200k, $2.5M by the time they got through all the 20-year CEQA issues and such. CA has 4x as many regulations as any other state in the West. #1 in the U.S.
Gavin Newsom was on Ezra Klein a few weeks ago, having a rant about "authoritarian" Trump when asked about the presidency, then in the next sentence says something like, "A great thing I did as Governor was to take the power away from local cities with RHNA because they were making bad decisions on housing development, and we have made better decisions for them from Sacramento." WTF? He literally just whined about authoritarian power and then gave an example of how he uses it in the state with his supermajority...
Sacramento, with its supermajority rubber stamp, has been passing 1200 new laws per year on average. That's insane. I mean, even if you agreed with Prop 50, it was a constitutional amendment put through faster than you can get a permit here to move your toilet. Constitutional amendments should have more rigor...
There's really no defending this state or local government...the same people griping daily about Democracy have none here. The government is in full control of everything, with institutional self-reinforcement of public-sector compensation, supported unions and NGOs, and a loop back to campaign support keeping the same supermajority cabal in office.
Let me start with the easy one. Newsom had his head up his ass with the mandates. When it happened, I was like, wait, wut. This makes no sense. Ridgecrest is different than Bakersfield, which is different than SLO, which is different than Malibu. You can't apply a one-size-fits-all. I can understand a very high-level principled version, but what came through, NO. For example, there should be state-mandated, no oil wells next to a school :) earthquake requirements for public buildings, hospitals, and schools.
But this goes back to my comment to someone else: if I agree with a politician 100%, then I am in a cult!
I think your numbers are way off for fully burdened employees. Those numbers are drastically higher than even Transparent CA states.
In regards to the number of laws, aren't a majority just tweaks to existing laws? Then, ranking them, isn't the second highest, just budget line changes?
"There's really no defending this state or local government...the same people griping daily about Democracy have none here. The government is in full control of everything, with institutional self-reinforcement of public-sector compensation, supported unions and NGOs, and a loop back to campaign support keeping the same supermajority cabal in office."
Didn't you just also describe the Federal Government? Why do we have two Dakotas? :) That was politics. I will say that I am for unions. I think there should be some tweaks to what can be negotiated. I do not want the gov or president, on a whim, to be able to fire a person or a department or an agency.
I do not understand what is wrong with an NGO. Are you talking about NGOs that get gov funding? Sometimes it is more cost-effective for the NGO to do the work than to hire FTEs and handle it internally. In essence, it is the same as hiring a company to build a road. It is a project.
If you were a state candidate, I would ask you this question.
Do you plan to take any action regarding CA labor laws?
This is something that I learned comparing Florida to CA. FL treats the employer as more important than the employee, often at the benefit of the employer and screwing over the employee. CA treats employees much better, but is still biased toward employers, just not as much as FL.
I never knew this until I moved here. In my line of work, I have a minimum wage. This is with an asterisk, of course. If an employer wants to hire me and claims I am exempt from overtime because I am salaried, then the minimum wage applies. This year, I think it is over 100k. Of course, if the employer does not want me exempt from overtime, then the minimum wage does not apply. How did this come about? Because employers were paying nerds low wages and demanding they work 80-plus hours a week, stating, "You are on a salary." In Florida, the employer can still do that.
In CA, if I am on call, I am to be paid my wage. In FL, if I am on call, I do not have to be paid my wage. If you think this through, being on call is akin to not having time off because you have to be available to come in at a moment's notice.
This is why I think CA is a fair state for employees and employers. When I hear that Texas or Florida is business-friendly, to me, that reeks of one thing: "We can screw over the employees with no consequence."
Now, as a federal candidate, would you do anything to corporate burden shifting to the public sector? As an example, Walmart will not hire security guards to just walk around. They will catch someone stealing, then have the local police come and arrest. This has caused numerous local municipalities to go nearly bankrupt because they have to keep police at Walmart all the time. Whereas, if Walmart employed security to walk the store, thefts would decrease dramatically, thereby alleviating demands on the municipality.
Sometimes people do not realize how good they have it. You mentioned how long it takes to get a permit to move a toilet. That may be true, and it should be studied why it takes so long and how to solve it to move it more quickly. My driver's license is close to expiring. I got a letter from the state. Ten minutes later, I have a new temporary license, and my new license is being mailed to me. Now, let me compare that to Florida :) I would have to go to the DMV to renew. Assuming I were back in South Florida, that means I would show up before the DMV opens and stand in line. Hopefully, by the end of the day, I will get my new license. When your license is up for renewal, you are taking the whole day off. CA has a centralized system for issuing physical licenses, whereas FL has a decentralized system. CA has a great solution for renewals, whereas FL forces me to go to the DMV. What is the tradeoff? I can get a permit to move my toilet quicker in Florida :)
I will just add this to your food for thought. Florida sits largely on karst limestone, with the Floridan Aquifer beneath much of the state. Because limestone gradually dissolves, underground cavities can form, and when groundwater levels drop — due to drought or pumping — sinkhole risk can increase. Florida also has a long history of wetland drainage and development, particularly in South Florida, which has altered natural water flow over time. However, modern development is subject to environmental permitting and oversight by regional water management districts; wetlands cannot simply be filled without regulation. AKA, they have gone more CA :)
The 2021 Surfside condominium collapse was not caused by sinkholes or aquifer conditions, but by long-term structural deterioration, water intrusion, and maintenance failures. California, by contrast, requires extensive environmental impact review for many projects and enforces strict seismic building codes. That said, California faces its own infrastructure and environmental risks — including earthquakes, wildfires, landslides, levee vulnerabilities, and groundwater depletion. Now FL is going more CA in its building codes.
The two states operate under different geological conditions and regulatory approaches, resulting in different types of risk. I am seeing that FL is just as reactionary as CA is, and is becoming CA in laws. I saw it after Hurricane Andrew. I saw it after Surfside. I saw it after the FIU bridge collapse.
Now, tying this all together and hopefully putting a smile on your face. Both FL and CA want what is best for their residents. They just differ in how to get there. FL has now begun adapting to FIRES as its latest natural disaster. Where do you think they are going to learn from? :)
Correct, GM. It was for management with a 1-year path, and IIRC, it was north of 80k. The lower levels were, IIRC, and do not hold me to this, it's been a while, 60-70k?
What is truly demoralizing is the frequency with which local voters keep voting for politicians who perpetuate this gross abuse of self enriching tax policy in the name of “ public service”
It’s the voters stupid! As long as Santa Barbarians continue to vote for people with a “D” beside their name, with no consideration for the consequences, we will live in an over taxed uninformed Community. The fact that a mileage tax for Californians is even being considered says it all. Stop voting emotionally & educate yourself. It may take a little longer, it may tax your brain a bit but ultimately it will help inform you about why the costs of living is so high in California & Santa Barbara in particular.
When government is the largest local employer, why would local voters vote against their own self-interests? Can Big Government decide to downsize itself?
In other words when will Big Government's own self-interests make their own survival worth fighting for? Obviously when they run out of other people's money. Time to visualize how this will happen.
___Vote against all new tax increases
___Ban public sector union* participation all future elections
___Create independent election offices, not staffed by public sector union employees
___Require elected officials full disclosure of public sector union support before any vote
___Demand public sector union supported candidate recusal from participation in later contract negotiations with public sector union interests.
___Educate voters about the inherent conflicts of interests created when public sector union interests dominate the political process
*Public sector influence: members, union itself, union-supported political action committees, dark money,
Thank you Andy. I wonder about all these GRANTS given to Liberal/Progressive operatives POSING AS NONPROFITS---also the fact there are SO MANY ATTORNEYS WORKING FOR THE COUNTY when the County is consistently making decisions that gets them SUED SUCCESSFULLY IN COURT!!! WHAT are dozens of HIGH-PRICED ATTORNEYS ACTUALLY DOING if they are GETTING US SUED SUCCESSFULLY! WHEN do these INDIVIDUALS become accountable for their BAD DECISIONS?!?
FOR INSTANCE: Dennis Bozanich is a dirty politician who was given the reins to the County by Mona Miasato back in 2016 and he SINGLE-HANDEDLY RUINED Santa Barbara County Cannabis Policy by TAKING BRIBES from the Cannabis growers. I heard that our very own District Attorney's Office and Sheriff's Office are the ones who discovered Dennis Bozanich had accepted a large amount of cash deposited in a secret location on Santa Rosa Road near Lompoc. THAT is the real reason why the PROGRESSIVE P.O.S. Dennis Bozanich RESIGNED HIS POSITION IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT and left---all after being very arrogant and very cavalier about our County's Cannabis Policy. WHY do these INDIVIDUALS, who all happen to be Liberal/Progressive Political Operatives get QUALIFIED IMMUNITY when their actions are CRIMINAL???
Why do governments want to keep giving our tax payer money to Illegals?
So that they will vote for them in elections.
Thank goodness Voter ID will be implemented either by a vote by the Senate and signed into law via an Executive order.
I hope the new Fraud department will find all the waste and abuse of funds in California and SB County.
Moving on to government salaries. I believe besides their base salary,government employees,unlike employees of other businesses,get a lot of benefits such as a fully funded Health Care for themselves and their families.
Are most government employees backed by a Union?
Any government salary,including teachers,is reported on Transparent California. Just search a name and you can see their entire salary plus benefits on there.
Same old story with these Democrap dominated city,county,state governments - their parasitic relationship with their zombie voters (legal or illegal) in California is only to serve themselves not the citizens they were elected to serve and protect. The infection of these parasites in our local governments will eventually sicken the entire population as we all suffer their self-righteous decisions.
It’s always interesting to hear others try to rationalize, excuse and justify the size of government and cost to the taxpayers. California ranks a surprising 13th of all states coming in at 492 employees/10,000 population. Clearly, the 4700 SB County employees, making up 20% of the entire non-farm workforce, does seem bloated.
More importantly, what do we get in return from our County employees? Deferred or non existent maintenance, delayed service calls, sky rocketing overtime, and benefit costs, all while County employee wages has quickly outpaced private sector jobs.
How much longer can this continue while city/county/state deficits continue at record pace? Further, is the County tax base expanding or contracting? Currently 1 in 7 properties in SBCO are tax exempt. Land grants/trusts have gobbled up over 200,000 acres of taxable farm land. I suppose a detailed study of our tax base would be helpful, but how is that possible when our own County Tax Assessor, Joe Holland, appears to be missing, absent from his position, and persona non grata!
In the meantime, we see County and City governments continue to do what they do best, raising our taxes, specifically sales taxes.
All this is troubling when one considers Calpers is only 70% funded and could be teetering on insolvency. Guess how they’ll make up the difference?
To make things worse, if you’re like me and considering cashing in and leaving for Florida or Texas, County and State officials are thinking about taxing further on real estate gains and even unrealized gains!
Good! I hope they keep demanding more & more money and generating new taxes! Maybe, eventually, the average stupid voter will wake up and stop voting these Commie-crats back into office!
Great article, Andy. Every political candidate should be required to provide their credit card(s) balance history. That should give a voter a clue as to how they will manage the spending of taxpayer money.
Andy, again . . . WHY? I figure your goal is the proverbial "Starve the beast." That is just stupid. We all rely on the government. No one can live without it.
It took me 3 minutes to read your rant, 25 minutes to research and type this up. I can not find FY2000 County budget, so I went to the earliest I could get the PDF from. I only used the approved budgets.
This stuff is just like the HOA I have to deal with for some of my properties. People just want to complain, but NEVER look at the financial data. They proclaim people in charge are idiots and stealing their money, but when pressed to say where the 'fraud, waste, and abuse' are, they can't find it.
If we’re going to have an honest conversation about Santa Barbara County spending, we should use the actual adopted budgets — not headline totals that mix operating costs with capital projects, debt service, and pass-through funds.
Using the County’s adopted budgets (the ones I uploaded and reviewed), countywide operating spending in FY 2012-13 was about $873 million. In FY 2023-24, the comparable countywide operating budget is about $1.365 billion. That is a 56% increase over roughly eleven years. Inflation over that same period was roughly 35–40%. When you adjust for inflation, real operating growth is closer to 13–15%, not 300%+.
The commonly cited $1.69 billion number includes capital projects, enterprise funds, restricted funds, and debt. It is not just “money spent running the county.” Comparing that to a 2000 operating figure is not apples to apples.
Staffing tells an important part of the story. Between FY 2012-13 and 2023-24, total county staffing increased by about 842 full-time equivalent positions. Of that increase, roughly 467 positions — more than half — were in Public Safety. Public Safety staffing grew from about 1,203 FTEs to about 1,670 FTEs, nearly a 39% increase.
Public safety is not administrative bloat. It includes sheriff’s deputies, jail staff, probation, fire protection, the district attorney, and the public defender. These are 24/7 operations. They carry overtime costs, higher pension formulas, workers’ compensation exposure, and substantial equipment and facility needs. When public safety staffing increases, both operating and capital costs increase. More deputies and firefighters mean more vehicles, radios, protective gear, stations, jail beds, and ongoing maintenance.
Insurance costs are another major driver. Over the past decade, California counties have faced rising liability exposure, wildfire risk, workers’ compensation costs, and sharply higher employer pension contributions through CalPERS. Healthcare inflation alone has significantly outpaced general inflation. When people cite a fully loaded employee cost figure, that number includes salary, employer health contributions, pension contributions, retiree health obligations, payroll taxes, and workers’ comp. Much of the increase reflects benefit and pension costs set by actuarial and market conditions, not simply wage hikes.
It is also worth remembering that population growth is not the only driver of service demand. Between 2000 and today, service expectations and regulatory requirements have expanded significantly. Behavioral health services are broader. Homeless response programs are larger. Wildfire readiness is far more intensive. Cybersecurity, digital records management, body cameras, emergency communications systems, and environmental compliance requirements barely existed at today’s scale in 2000.
It is entirely reasonable to ask whether 2000 service levels were adequate by today’s standards. Jails were overcrowded. Behavioral health infrastructure was limited. Wildfire risk mitigation was far less developed. Technology systems were primitive compared to modern compliance expectations. If services were expanded or modernized over two decades, costs will reflect that.
Traffic impact fees and development fees also deserve context. Those funds are legally restricted; they cannot simply be diverted to salaries. Fee increases often reflect higher construction costs, updated engineering standards, environmental mitigation requirements, and inflation in materials and labor. Construction costs in California have more than doubled since 2000. That alone explains much of the fee growth.
None of this means government spending should escape scrutiny. Compensation and pension costs are substantial. Long-term liabilities matter. Structural cost pressures are real. But the narrative that the County’s operating government “exploded” 300%+ while doing nothing more than serving a population that grew 10% does not hold up when you examine the actual operating budgets and staffing allocations.
When you look at the real numbers, most of the growth over the last decade has been in public safety, health and human services, insurance, pensions, and compliance-driven infrastructure — not administrative excess. That is a more accurate place to start the discussion.
While we do rely on some government, we can certainly benefit from less government. I appreciate that as a Democrat, you are an apologist for government bloat and waste but your attempt to recast the bloat into compartments each necessary and reasonable is unconvincing. Why dismiss capital expenditure or debt service? It is all part of the taxpayer burden and the result of decisions made by our leadership. Why not pay the fire chiefs the same as your often referenced panda express salary? In my interactions the chief is worthless bloat who could not answer a simple question about fire code. I could go on and on but the simple fact is that government is bloated, inefficient and over staffed with over paid buffoons. Your apology for the waste does not convince anyone.
The back of the IRS 1040 booklet shows in graphic terms the largest government expenditure today is ........service on the national debt.
Not the military, not health care, not public education, not social services, not any other sector of government services, but today in fact it paying for our national debt service.
Using debt to provide government services means today we are living off of crack. When will government employees, voters, and elected officials finally recognize this is unsustainable?
I am sensing that you are 50% sincere and 50% just howling at the moon. So I will ask you some questions.
What can we benefit less from the government? NO, I am not saying we should have more; I want to know what you would cut. This will end in the infamous, one man's junk is another man's treasure category.
You are the one claiming bloat.
You are the one claiming waste.
Show me where it is.
So let me understand this: you want to pay the fire chief the same as someone who puts orange chicken on a plate. You feel that you are going to get the best of the best for that?
ROFL.
You can argue the competency of the current chief all you want. That is a good, solid discussion. Arguing that you can get what you want in skills for the same as a Panda scooper is comical.
Your commentary is so cliche ridden with repeated reference to howling at the moon, Panda Express and reminders that context matters ad nauseam. Certainly what I would want to cut you will believe is absolutely necessary so going back and forth is a useless exercise but I will toss out a few. Zero dollars for anything having to do with global warming including any subsidies for energy efficiency or electric cars (electric cars are gay AF). Privatize fire and police. Zero dollars for homelessness. Eliminate the architectural review board, what a bunch of assholes. Drastically reduce empty bus service. Stop building bike lanes and narrowing roads. Stop wasting money on renovations like the cabrillo rec center or the new police station. City and county workers need to take a pay cut. 300k for a fireman who does not know shit from shinola is too much. I am confident that the Panda kid could do as well for less. I know they are not all SB county but I pay for all of this waste fraud and abuse. Please don't bother to reply with more verbose cliche ridden bullshit about how you disagree with everything. I already know.
Congrats, you have dented about 1/10th of 1% of the budget.
I do not have to agree or disagree with you. I have already stated that one man's junk is another man's treasure. This is democracy at play. I do not get everything I want and you do not get everything you want.
But, see, this is where I have issues with your positions. To me, they are hypocritical and not driven by principles. Let's start with the easiest.
You do not want subsidies for EV's. Ok. Why is it not a principle of no subsidies? See, isn't this the conservative argument of picking winners and losers? Gas is heavily subsidized. Vehicles are heavily subsidized under Section 179.
Now, I will argue with you about climate. What Trump did two days ago is dangerous. We have already seen the results here in LA when polluters were allowed to operate without oversight. People died at earlier ages, thus an economic shift where polluters had profits and shifted liabilities over to the government. Heck, you can just look in Louisiana and see the results.
I could have written your reply for you. Like High School debate club only not as good. Certainly my list was a few of many many bloat reducing efforts. And I said nothing about gas subsidies and If you knew anything about conservative thought, I am opposed to all subsidies. As far as climate, every prediction of the climate alarmists have been wrong and back casting of models has been a miserable failure. Consider this lame narrative of the "climate scientists who are not scientists at all. Consider the phase relationship of CO2 levels and temperature, which in the past have been generally higher than today, much higher, and life albeit not human life, thrived. In the distant past it is said that higher temperatures caused the release of more CO2 gas. But it is said that more CO2 causes higher temperature. How did we ever have ice ages? How did this ever resolve? Today it is said that the release of CO2 gas is causing the temperature to rise. Which is it? It is a car and it is a truck, it is an El Camino. The El Camino theory does not stand scrutiny. Even the most biased models by the most zealous "climate scientists" predict about 1.5 degree warming in 150 years. Is that enough to commit economic suicide and drive around in gay electric cars? I think not. In 150 years the known amount of oil on earth will be long depleted so why all of the bullshit. Government emergencies real or perceived allow more government spending which gives the government more of my money to waste in ways which are good for "climate scientists"
Jeff, you’re raising several different arguments at once, AGAIN — about subsidies, climate models, CO₂ history, economic tradeoffs, and government incentives — so let’s separate them.
1. Subsidies
If you oppose all subsidies, that’s a philosophically consistent position. But in practice, fossil fuels have received direct and indirect subsidies for decades (tax preferences, depletion allowances, below-market leasing, infrastructure externalities). If the argument is for a free market, then that principle applies across the board — oil, gas, renewables, EVs, ethanol, all of it.
2. “Every climate prediction has been wrong”
That’s not supported by evidence. Many major projections from the 1980s–1990s have tracked closely with observed warming when actual emissions are plugged into the models. Models are not crystal balls; they generate scenarios based on inputs. When emissions followed high-end pathways, temperatures followed high-end projections.
No scientific model is perfect — but “miserable failure” is not an accurate description of the overall record.
3. CO₂ and Temperature Phase Relationship
You’re referring to ice core data showing that during glacial cycles, temperature increases slightly preceded CO₂ increases. That’s true — but incomplete.
What happened historically:
Orbital changes (Milankovitch cycles) slightly warmed the planet.
Warming oceans released CO₂.
CO₂ then amplified the warming through the greenhouse effect.
So CO₂ acted as a feedback amplifier, not the initial trigger.
Today:
Humans are injecting CO₂ first.
That CO₂ is acting as the forcing, not the feedback.
That’s why this situation is physically different from past natural cycles.
4. “CO₂ was higher in the past and life thrived”
Also true — but context matters:
Those higher CO₂ levels often corresponded to much warmer climates.
Sea levels were dramatically higher.
Human civilization did not exist in those conditions.
The question isn’t whether life survives — it’s whether modern agriculture, coastal infrastructure, and economic systems remain stable.
Dinosaurs thriving in a 1000+ ppm CO₂ world doesn’t necessarily translate to stable global supply chains for 8 billion humans.
5. “How did we have ice ages?”
Ice ages were primarily driven by orbital mechanics, not CO₂ alone. CO₂ then amplified or dampened those changes. The climate system has multiple drivers — orbital variation, solar input, volcanism, ocean cycles, greenhouse gases.
There is no contradiction in:
CO₂ sometimes being a feedback in the past
CO₂ being a forcing today
Physics works the same way in both cases.
6. “Only 1.5°C in 150 years”
We’ve already warmed about 1.2°C since pre-industrial times — mostly in ~120 years. That warming has already increased:
Heat waves
Heavy rainfall intensity
Wildfire risk
Coastal flooding events
1.5°C is not “nothing” — it’s enough to materially shift weather patterns and risk distributions.
The debate isn’t whether Earth explodes. It’s about probability shifts and economic risk management.
7. “Economic suicide”
That assumes:
Transition costs exceed damage costs
Fossil fuels remain cheap indefinitely
Innovation doesn’t lower clean tech costs
But renewable energy costs have fallen dramatically over the past 15 years. EV adoption is partly market-driven, not just regulatory.
You can argue about policy design — that’s legitimate.
But framing it as binary “economic suicide vs. sanity” oversimplifies a complex tradeoff.
8. “Government emergencies = spending”
Governments do expand during crises — that’s historically true.
But skepticism about government spending doesn’t automatically invalidate physical climate science.
You can:
Distrust government efficiency
Oppose subsidies
Support market-driven energy transition
Question regulatory overreach
…without rejecting the underlying thermodynamics of greenhouse gases.
The Core Issue
The climate debate often gets framed as:
“Alarmists vs. deniers”
“Science vs. freedom”
“Planet vs. economy”
But the real debate is about:
Risk tolerance
Time horizons
Cost distribution
Market vs. regulatory mechanisms
It’s legitimate to question policy responses.
It’s much harder to argue that greenhouse gas physics itself is incoherent.
CO₂ absorbs infrared radiation. That’s laboratory physics, not ideology.
The serious debate isn’t whether CO₂ warms the planet — it does.
The serious debate is how much warming is acceptable, how fast we adapt, and what policy tools are least economically disruptive.
Just ask yourself, why does Herr Leader want Greenland? What has changed over the last 50 years that would make it desirable?
Starve the beast is exactly the right answer. Inject the beast with daily Wegovy shots.
Automatic salary increases, no brakes on benefits costs, automatic COLA and lavish under-funded pensions with future costs imposed on future generations are NOT ESSENTIAL GOVERNMENT SERVICES -they are now used as taxpayer extortion rackets.
Here is what I hear you saying: Give us more money for our own government employee self-interests, or we will cut off all the government services you actually need.
Government employee costs must be tamed. Necessary government services must be fiscally sustainable. This current ratio is fatally out of balance.
The job of elected officials is to independently determine the scope and funding resources for vital government services; not pander to the public sector unions who backed their very own elections which lead to drowning our local governments in unsustainable debt that is pushed off to future taxpayers.
False dichotomy argument : (1) reigning in government employee costs does not mean (2) eliminating government services.
I am not sure how you think this through. But aren't most of these positions covered by a UNION? Therefore, these are negotiated wages. It takes the 'buyer' and the 'seller' to agree. It is not a free-for-all.
I think you are misguided about how pensions work for public employees. I think you are missing the point that there were many pension reforms, and they are no longer this massive payday. As an example, I just checked the county's retirement system. A person who worked for 30 years, with an average monthly salary of 8,500 in their last year, would receive $2,500 a month. Purely anecdotal, my father-in-law, who retired from GE about 30 years ago, gets $5k a month plus full health insurance for him. Just like the private sector, the public sector changed their pension plans. There are some that are grandfathered in that started way back, but they are a dying :) breed.
I repeat myself here David, but I don't want you to miss this prior comment. Where do we go from here, now that we know there is a major problem? Let's keep talking.
_________(Repeated prior post to David Bergeron)
When government is the largest local employer, why would local voters vote against their own self-interests? Can Big Government decide to downsize itself?
In other words when will Big Government's own self-interests make their own survival worth fighting for? Obviously when they run out of other people's money. Time to visualize how this will happen.
___Vote against all new tax increases
___Ban public sector union*** participation all future elections
___Create independent election offices, not staffed by public sector union employees
___Require elected officials full disclosure of public sector union support before any vote
___Demand public sector union supported candidate recusal from participation in later contract negotiations with public sector union interests.
___Educate voters about the inherent conflicts of interests created when public sector union interests dominate the political process
(***Public sector influence: members, union itself, union-supported political action committees, dark money, Hatch Act, First Amendment ....)
You have an assumption for the basis of everything you wrote. If that one assumption is wrong, then the rest falls apart.
"When government is the largest local employer, why would local voters vote against their own self-interests?"
Voters vote against their own self-interests a LOT. How many farmers voted for Trump and now have to take bailouts because of his actions, ones that he ran on!
I can understand the disdain for unions, but the converse is what we had before: employees at will, at the whim of the highest person in government. You didn't get workers; you got people who were forced to agree with everything. That is a dangerous slope that I do not want to be on. Now, if you want to change some of the terms in the contract and make them not allowable, that is a healthy discussion. But throwing the baby out with the bathwater is bad imo.
IMO, the only way to lower the spending is for citizens to stop demanding services. Services cost money.
David, Your intentional generalities detract from the specifics under discussion. To wit: when government employment is the largest sector in our local economy , what would get a majority of local voters to vote against their own self-interests?
Everyone votes for their own self-interest, we agree on that. The issue is how do we stop the current train public debt wreck we are now on, having let government employee interests take over the local political agenda instead of putting fiscal probity first and foremost.
The current Democrat tax and spend ethos must be replaced. And not with a GOP/Independnett tax and spend either, but a new look at productive revenue enhancements and government services efficiencies, while clawing back the now known waste fraud and abuse of recent years.
Prop 98 reform is absolutely critical. Stop shoveling unaccountable billions into the current state school system that delivers such concisely poor results, which now includes students leaving the classrooms to protest for even more Democrat dysfunction. We are getting almost zero ROI for the Prop 98 mandated funding. That must stop too.
Yes there was a degree of recent pension reform creating a form of two-rewired government employee compensation. But the prior pension and health care obligations remain in place, and we are not talking about just the mind-numbing million dollar government pensions.
We are talking about the cumulative effect of the ones already in place that were underfunded and over-promised, the continued gaming of the system including enhanced "disability" pension opt-outs and boosting last three year special job classifications, plus covering over the actuarial flaws already built into the system - having badly estimated longevity and investment income returns ...... etc.
Every year now well into the near future political entities budgets are getting squeezed for higher pension and benefit payouts, leaving less money for "real government" functions and then casting these growing employee cost off on the tax payers via extortion threats. for even higher taxes. This is not a healthy operational model. It must stop.
Instead of an honest and public admission of what a long series of "term limited" elected officials, 99% supported now by local union interests, have inflicted on tomorrow tax payers. That is where we must start and that remains missing in action.
Let's keep this discussion going. The past few yeas of Democrat induced "election reform" measures plays into this current intratable msss as well. That is also on the table for a reassessment as Democrats jockey to control the top two names on the now wholly dysfunctional jungle primaries (currently shown by the "top two" Steyer and Swalwell political theater)
Who can really start solving these long term state and local fiscal issues - more of the same from the party who created it, or a new look by the party long and viciously maligned by the very same party that created the problems in the first place.
We continue now to have both have a spending problem, along now with a looming revenue problem - we are in double jeopardy now thanks to well over a decade of Democrat super-majority governance.
Voters are finally saying enough is enough. While through you, we are still hearing let's keep doing more of the exact same thing. And thus the parameters of the upcoming primary elections are being defined. It shall be an interesting next few months.
We finally have credible GOP opposition who get it, and Democrats are reduced to running two political oddities their best and brightest in defense of their very reckless and incestuous status quo. The Democrat Mean Machine has yet to crunk up in full forces though it tried t odd a number on one of its'won Katie Porter who continues to sound strongly in the polls, what i the message that tells us?
As I stated, NO, we do not agree. The WHOLE basis for your point requires one thing to be true. People vote in their own best interest. I have stated that they do not. You have single-issue voters, i.e., guns and abortion. They will vote on the position on that topic, regardless of their own self-interest. You have people who vote party line regardless of self-interest. It goes on and on.
So, no, I will not agree that people vote out of self-interest.
You had to throw in the 'waste, fraud, abuse' cliche. For that, I am going to ask that you define this. I want numbers, not phrases. Waste is subjective. Is it a waste to toss the pencil at half usage instead of sharpening all the way to the eraser? Fraud is a @#$%^ CRIME. The government would be a VICTIM of it. You can not stop it . . . EVER. You can only find it, prosecute it, and work on recovering it. What the hell is abuse? What does that even mean?
You want to argue efficiency? Let's do that. What is the most efficient program in the federal government? SSA. Their operating costs are about 10-12% of what Wall Street's most efficient program is. And that is with all the handcuffing that Congress puts on them.
The public and private sectors are run by HUMANS. Humans have flaws. We can argue that the private sector tends to run on 3 to 5 year cycles for refreshing (tax laws drive this), compared to the public sector,r which runs on a run it until it dies philosophy :) That would be a better argument.
My former neighbor was Paul Orfalea. He said something once that resonates. I will paraphrase him. He was talking about the bottom 10% and how companies would rotate out the bottom 10% every year. He stated that mathematically, there will always be a bottom 10%. Why are you focusing on the bottom 10% when you should be working harder on the top 90%.
Education is an interesting thing. My child attended both public and private schools. Do you know the differences other than my wallet :) Public schools have to take everyone; private schools can cherry-pick. Public schools will get the kids whose parents are struggling financially and are each working multiple jobs. Private school families may have one breadwinner and a parent at home when the kid is done with school. Private school students will have much smaller class sizes and access to tutors, among other benefits. Private schools will have much more to spend per student than public schools. Is your solution to lower that and expect better results? That makes NO SENSE to me.
So what if the students left for one day to protest? Seriously, that is your beef? What is it, something like 180 days a kid is in school? So 1/180th you are complaing about. ROFL.
"the prior pension and health care obligations remain in place, and we are not talking about just the mind-numbing million dollar government pensions." Correct. The prior system still has some pensioners. They will DIE. Then it goes away. You are demanding that the government break a contract. I showed you the link, using TC, to what current retirees are seeing. I was seeing $1500 a month to $3k a month. There is THEE reform at work.
"Every year now well into the near future political entities budgets are getting squeezed for higher pension and benefit payouts" No, that is not true.
Here is where we differ drastically.
You see parties.
I don't give a @#$ about parties.
You seem to want to root for team R over team D.
I am driven by principles, not party allegiance.
I realize that if I agree 100% with a politician, then I am in a cult. I realize that if I agree more than 50% it is probably a candidate for me. And as I have pointed out to Mr. Smith, we both want the same thing; we just differ on how to get there. I will always disagree with any politician who wants to create a tiered system of humans. I feel the person who wipes my parents' ass in the nursing home is just as valuable as the person who does my taxes. Generally, one party does not see things that way. Their actions show that they want to tier people into classes.
Transparent California makes a liar out of your claims, David. I suggest you learn about the Transparent California website tracking both government employee compensation packages and re-structured lifetime government employee pensions that are now coming due.
Along with getting familiar long-standing California political pundits like Dan Walters and Steven Greenhut.
You are blatantly manipulating outdated data for effect, and not projecting the impacts of future taxpayer pension burdens after the major reconfiguration of the government pension plans in this state a few decades ago.
Current pensions are unsustainable , and using "averages" which include pension formulas for much lower earlier compensation schedules, and lower survival spousal payments for those "30 year employees" do not portray the real issues we are forced to fund today and well into the near future. Pay attention Gen Z, this is your future we are talking about.
How far down into the weeds do we need to go over your intentional deflections, while ignoring the hard future decisions that must be remedied now starting with the upcoming state elections?
Reforming government employee costs is kryptonite for any Democrat politician. That is a given. This means only one thing - we must throw all the current bums out, get a new majority dedicated to fiscal reform and downsizing government, while materially curtailing current unsustainable government employee compensations packages.
Make government employee benefits look more like Social Security and Obamacare as the baseline, then offering 401K pension options, and a choice of employee funded group health insurance options
IIRC, the health insurance is something like 80/80 or 70/70 (I forgot, it was some funky matching number.) That formula is the percent that the employer pays for the employee, and the 2nd number is for dependents.
See, this is where we differ drastically. I want to remove the BURDEN on the employer. I want the BURDEN shifted straight over to the employee. But I want a public plan that is paid out of payroll taxes, employee-only.
And again, here you are with team R versus team D. You believe that team R is all about reform, yet . . . THEY SAY ONE THING and DO ANOTHER!
HR1, the one big beautiful bill, is not about reform at all. That #$%% bill pushed so much debt onto the deficit. I suspect you will tell me how wonderful it is.
Why does the deficit grow drastically under Rs, but never under Ds? I can tell you. Because R's think short-term and what benefits their donor class. They cut INCOME to the government. They cut cap gains, they didn't tax hedge funds, they added more deductions, etc. Here is some food for thought . . . if you took all the tax brackets, added 2% to it, you would cut the deficit by a little more than 1/3rd.
I earned a 50k bonus for reading an article. I happened to read an article about Jr's tax cuts. I started applying it to what had transpired in the past. I picked up the phone and talked to our accountants. I was right in my assumptions. I then talked to my mentor, who happened to be my employer, and told him he needed to contact his personal accountant to see whether this situation applied to him. It applied to him. An action taken TWO years ago resulted in a check for just over $1mm from the IRS. He paid his account a few thousand dollars for the paperwork, wrote me a check for 50k, and then got a check for over $1mm from the IRS for something that happened two years prior. How the hell is that fiscal responsibility? So again, R's actions differ from their words.
You can TRY to parse the numbers, but you really don't know what you are talking about. I have been employed as a Santa Barbara County government watchdog for 35 years! That is my "day job". When I first started, salaries and benefits were only 40% of the budget, today it is well over 50%. And, back then they didn't charge the public a fee for every service and we did not have a $500 million maintenance deficit. Gov employees are spending money on themselves rather than providing services to the public. I guess if I write on Newsom in the future you will defend him too because you are that predictable and wrong.
So now youare saying the numbers are false? Wouldn't that be criminal?
The 40->50% figure can be for many reasons. That is a math equation. It can be 'good,' it can be 'bad.' I think it is a lot more nuanced than you are alluding to.
But as I pointed out, health insurance has gone up to insane levels. As that is part of employee cost, wouldn't that impact the 40->50% issue? That is just one component. There could also be the component of more employees, which I showed. I am not saying that we have too many or too few. That is a different discussion.
Go ahead and write about Newsom. I sincerely doubt you can say one positive thing about him. I can say both positive and negative things about Trump. That is the difference.
CA. Is a nightmare unable to take advantage of the growing economy because our politicians are corrupt governor senators and our own little carabal who cares about nothing except keeping illegals
OK. At what point and in what manner can the people of Santa Barbara County and/or city rebel and dismantle the status quo to install new forms of government to change the current mechanisms and the people who burden their constituents to the limit with such financial and misfeasance or malfeasance actions? Or, have our public servants become our masters, in all but name? At what point, will the taxpayers have had enough?
Ok. I sincerely believe that all people in Santa Barbara know this and are not happy. I suggest that we get a petition that insists that we change the salary of every government employee and tie it to pay grades. This is how government was first paid at every level. They will not get rich working fir the government but it will be an honor and privilege to serve and to get our city to a financially sound system that serves the people not the people who work for the government.
You can volunteer for lower wages to go work for the government.
When I read comments like yours, I am left scratching my head.
Please, go to Panda Express at LaCumbre. There are signs to hire and they will pay people over 80k a year.
So you want people to have more skills, more talent than counting money and making orange chicken, and get paid less? Makes no sense.
Government positions are competing with the private sector. This is capitalism. As Charlie Munger stated, "Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome."
Now, apply that to police and fire. Positions that are much different than an angry customer tossing their food at you. You want them to get paid less? That is why you will not get people. Now think FEDERALLY, and you see why military recruiters are having a hard time.
BUT THOSE HIGH-PRICED PEOPLE SHOULD ULTIMATELY BE ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR DECISIONS and the impact their control of our County has!!! WHY DOES DENNIS BOZANICH HAVE QUALIFIED IMMUNITY WHEN HE WAS FOUND BY OUR OWN COUNTY L.E. TO HAVE TAKEN BRIBES???
I agree. They should be held accountable. They should be held accountable in two ways: civilly and criminally. Now, some of these are employees and there is very little you can do civilly about it, but if they broke laws, HELL YEAH, prosecute them.
Regarding Bozanich, I know nothing about this. Qualified immunity is based on the law. If someone has that, then the issue is not what you want; the issue is that the law needs to change.
" . . Should be . . " Where have I heard that before . . .
Great point.
David, If this were the federal workforce, I’d largely agree with your framing. The senior leadership I’ve worked with in the federal system are extraordinarily capable. Many accept lower compensation than they could command in the private sector because they value mission, authority, and public service. That said, there's the bottom 25% in cubicle farms who don't know what they do for 30 years... we could do with less quantity and more quality at the federal level.
This breaks down at the state and local level here though.
Senior federal executives overseeing massive organizations, like the top guy at Vandenberg, managing billions in federal obligation authority, complex national-security operations, and workforces in the tens of thousands, are capped at around $218K in pay. No overtime eligibility.
When you compare that to local payroll using pay only:
• In the City of Santa Barbara, compensation exceeds SES levels through roughly the top 65 employees, with peak pay around $360K.
• In the County, compensation exceeds SES through roughly the top 165 employees, with top earners approaching $490K.
Even after removing executive leadership to make a private comparison with c suite removed, and averaging the next 300 earners:
• City average ≈ $200K
• County average ≈ $234K
Those figures sit at the upper end of the job market with senior leadership removed, particularly when pensions and long-term retirement benefits are layered in.
State and local policy decisions, such as land-use restrictions, regulatory layering, energy costs, permitting delays, and taxation, are primary drivers of California’s cost-of-living crisis. Every UCSB economic summit I’ve attended reaches the same conclusion: artificial scarcity and regulations are inflating the baseline cost to live and operate here.
The state and local government then adjust compensation upward to offset those same costs.
But private-sector workers and small-business owners don’t have the same insulation. They absorb the regulatory burden directly through higher compliance costs, higher insurance premiums, higher utility bills, and higher wages just to keep staff afloat.
So you end up with a cycle: Policy drives cost escalation, public compensation rises to match, the private sector absorbs the gap, and affordability worsens.
I generally agree with you that we want competent government employees, but there's no way to defend this bloat and waste across the state at this point, with increasing taxes making life tough for anyone who isn't in the government. Not sure when this hits rock bottom, but all tax consumers and no tax producers left won't be solvent.
Bob,
Thanks for the well-thought-out reply.
Are we truly comparing apples to apples here?
https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/sbcounty? That is a list of the salaries being paid to people for current job openings.
https://www.military.com/sites/default/files/2026-01/2026%20AD%20Pay%20Official.xlsx%20-%202026%20AD%20Pay.pdf That is the military pay grades.
What I believe is happening is that people are comparing the 'pay' in one and then using Transparent California in the other. Transparent California is not that transparent :) When I looked half a dozen years ago, they showed their methodology. IIRC, when I looked, their methodology was FULLY burdened. And in technical terms, super duper fully burdened. This means all employer-paid side to that employee. For example, if the employee's health insurance is $ 2k a month and the employee pays $300 toward it, TC lists it at $ 2k. I do not think they consider employee payment towards it. They just see that there is 2k monthly for health insurance. I think this applies to the CalPERS payments as well. So this truly inflates the person's income as shown on TC.
Now, look at that military pay. That is unburdened. It is not showing both sides of taxes; it is not showing benefits, allowances, retirement, etc. That is showing the unburdened side, just like you would see in the county's job listings!
So I ask: when you look at the wages listed on the county site, do they match the TC listings? Do they seem to match the local market? The first one I looked at was head of accounting for child services. As that hits relatively close to home, my wife is in accounting, and that number is about 20-30% less than what the private sector is paying for the responsibilities and skill set required.
I will point out that pensions were reformed, and state employees no longer receive those incredible retirements. I do not know the exact grandfathering date for the old system, but IIRC, they had to have X years of service before 2013 to get it. So those employees who had that high pension may have all retired or are dang close to it.
I think this is where people will see that we agree, even though we disagree on many methods. I firmly believe you want land-use regulations. Why? Because I do not think you want to see the 'Spot' in Carp being leveled and a 12-story hotel built there. I do not want to see here what I saw growing up in South Florida. Go along the beach, and for 2 miles out of twenty, you can actually see the ocean. The rest are 20-40-story high-rises along the ocean. I do not think you want what we see in Louisiana or Houston, where you can have a strip club next door to a chemical plant, next door to a church, next door to a school, next door to a pot store, next door to a Chipotle.
So yes, of course, all the ECON summits will state that regulations create scarcity. Without regulations, you still get scarcity, just later. Once the land is owned by someone, it is out of the pool. With regulations, its use is limited, but it is still scarce.
I realize this may seem odd to you. I bounce back and forth between SB and a place we have in Florida. Florida is flat and every thing, when driving seems expansive. Here, things seem like you are driving in canyons. Going down Mission between the 101 and State, you feel how close things are and have that canyon feeling. In most places in Florida, you never get that feeling. However, that is changing. Sunrise Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale, where it aligns with Federal Highway, used to feel expansive. On the south side, you had Holiday Park, and the tallest building was a 3-story building; most were one-story, a few two-story, and a few three-story buildings. The north side was mainly one-story buildings, but there were a few 5-story buildings. This all along a road that is 7 lanes (iirc) wide. Since 2000, the south side has been filled with buildings over 20 stories tall. They are literally building->sidewalk. There is no setback. The north side has also been built out. What you have now is Mission, but a much deeper canyon. That is what happens when you loosen land usage regulations. The city has lost its charm, and the infrastructure to support all the new housing is lacking. Ask yourself the simple question: Can South County, Carp->Goleta support an additional 200k of people? An additional 500k people?
My answer to that is no. I do not see the roads or the water capable of supporting it. So we already have land scarcity. Thus, we will have la imited supply, with rising demand. Therefore, housing prices will go up.
Because the area's citizens demand services from the government, the government will have to pay more to attract workers. The workers need a place to live. And before we hear from the others who state, "They should just commute." That is fine. All that does is raise wages, because given a choice between a 100k job that requires a 2.5-hour commute per day and a 95k job that requires a 30-minute commute per day, very few people are going to take the 100k job.
There was a reason why, when the building on Chappala, the 4 story place went into BK, I had an idea. It was beyond my wallet, but it would have been nice to buy it outright, then do a lease/sale to public employees at rates that made sense. The building would be filled with teachers and cops :) But it was a place for them to live.
And to put a fork in this topic. If you want to see where this is heading, just look to China. A worker in a Chinese factory is paid a low wage, but their compensation also includes dorm-style housing and three meals a day.
David,
- I didn't include active duty military at all. Federal civil servants. That is apples-to-apples to state/county/city civil servants. Also apples-to-apples, I did not use full-burdened rates at all. I used pay only. Fully burdened compensation, our county and city employees are hitting $600k-800k. It's all broken down and publicly available. Federal high grades also cannot receive OT.
If you think the assistant to the assistant city manager making double the salary of the person running DARPA or Naval Sea Systems Command (90k plus employees and $45B plus annual TOA), makes any sense, not sure what to say...
- I don't think there should be any RHNA or all these bloated regulations from Sacramento. I think the only people who should determine how Carpinteria develops are Carpinterians. We are overregulated to the point that nothing gets done and costs much more. At last year's economic summit, there was an example of a neighborhood development in Visalia that began planning 25 years ago and finally broke ground in 2024. Houses were supposed to be 200k, $2.5M by the time they got through all the 20-year CEQA issues and such. CA has 4x as many regulations as any other state in the West. #1 in the U.S.
Gavin Newsom was on Ezra Klein a few weeks ago, having a rant about "authoritarian" Trump when asked about the presidency, then in the next sentence says something like, "A great thing I did as Governor was to take the power away from local cities with RHNA because they were making bad decisions on housing development, and we have made better decisions for them from Sacramento." WTF? He literally just whined about authoritarian power and then gave an example of how he uses it in the state with his supermajority...
Sacramento, with its supermajority rubber stamp, has been passing 1200 new laws per year on average. That's insane. I mean, even if you agreed with Prop 50, it was a constitutional amendment put through faster than you can get a permit here to move your toilet. Constitutional amendments should have more rigor...
There's really no defending this state or local government...the same people griping daily about Democracy have none here. The government is in full control of everything, with institutional self-reinforcement of public-sector compensation, supported unions and NGOs, and a loop back to campaign support keeping the same supermajority cabal in office.
Bob,
Again. /respect. I enjoy our conversations.
Let me start with the easy one. Newsom had his head up his ass with the mandates. When it happened, I was like, wait, wut. This makes no sense. Ridgecrest is different than Bakersfield, which is different than SLO, which is different than Malibu. You can't apply a one-size-fits-all. I can understand a very high-level principled version, but what came through, NO. For example, there should be state-mandated, no oil wells next to a school :) earthquake requirements for public buildings, hospitals, and schools.
But this goes back to my comment to someone else: if I agree with a politician 100%, then I am in a cult!
I think your numbers are way off for fully burdened employees. Those numbers are drastically higher than even Transparent CA states.
In regards to the number of laws, aren't a majority just tweaks to existing laws? Then, ranking them, isn't the second highest, just budget line changes?
"There's really no defending this state or local government...the same people griping daily about Democracy have none here. The government is in full control of everything, with institutional self-reinforcement of public-sector compensation, supported unions and NGOs, and a loop back to campaign support keeping the same supermajority cabal in office."
Didn't you just also describe the Federal Government? Why do we have two Dakotas? :) That was politics. I will say that I am for unions. I think there should be some tweaks to what can be negotiated. I do not want the gov or president, on a whim, to be able to fire a person or a department or an agency.
I do not understand what is wrong with an NGO. Are you talking about NGOs that get gov funding? Sometimes it is more cost-effective for the NGO to do the work than to hire FTEs and handle it internally. In essence, it is the same as hiring a company to build a road. It is a project.
If you were a state candidate, I would ask you this question.
Do you plan to take any action regarding CA labor laws?
This is something that I learned comparing Florida to CA. FL treats the employer as more important than the employee, often at the benefit of the employer and screwing over the employee. CA treats employees much better, but is still biased toward employers, just not as much as FL.
I never knew this until I moved here. In my line of work, I have a minimum wage. This is with an asterisk, of course. If an employer wants to hire me and claims I am exempt from overtime because I am salaried, then the minimum wage applies. This year, I think it is over 100k. Of course, if the employer does not want me exempt from overtime, then the minimum wage does not apply. How did this come about? Because employers were paying nerds low wages and demanding they work 80-plus hours a week, stating, "You are on a salary." In Florida, the employer can still do that.
In CA, if I am on call, I am to be paid my wage. In FL, if I am on call, I do not have to be paid my wage. If you think this through, being on call is akin to not having time off because you have to be available to come in at a moment's notice.
This is why I think CA is a fair state for employees and employers. When I hear that Texas or Florida is business-friendly, to me, that reeks of one thing: "We can screw over the employees with no consequence."
Now, as a federal candidate, would you do anything to corporate burden shifting to the public sector? As an example, Walmart will not hire security guards to just walk around. They will catch someone stealing, then have the local police come and arrest. This has caused numerous local municipalities to go nearly bankrupt because they have to keep police at Walmart all the time. Whereas, if Walmart employed security to walk the store, thefts would decrease dramatically, thereby alleviating demands on the municipality.
Sometimes people do not realize how good they have it. You mentioned how long it takes to get a permit to move a toilet. That may be true, and it should be studied why it takes so long and how to solve it to move it more quickly. My driver's license is close to expiring. I got a letter from the state. Ten minutes later, I have a new temporary license, and my new license is being mailed to me. Now, let me compare that to Florida :) I would have to go to the DMV to renew. Assuming I were back in South Florida, that means I would show up before the DMV opens and stand in line. Hopefully, by the end of the day, I will get my new license. When your license is up for renewal, you are taking the whole day off. CA has a centralized system for issuing physical licenses, whereas FL has a decentralized system. CA has a great solution for renewals, whereas FL forces me to go to the DMV. What is the tradeoff? I can get a permit to move my toilet quicker in Florida :)
I will just add this to your food for thought. Florida sits largely on karst limestone, with the Floridan Aquifer beneath much of the state. Because limestone gradually dissolves, underground cavities can form, and when groundwater levels drop — due to drought or pumping — sinkhole risk can increase. Florida also has a long history of wetland drainage and development, particularly in South Florida, which has altered natural water flow over time. However, modern development is subject to environmental permitting and oversight by regional water management districts; wetlands cannot simply be filled without regulation. AKA, they have gone more CA :)
The 2021 Surfside condominium collapse was not caused by sinkholes or aquifer conditions, but by long-term structural deterioration, water intrusion, and maintenance failures. California, by contrast, requires extensive environmental impact review for many projects and enforces strict seismic building codes. That said, California faces its own infrastructure and environmental risks — including earthquakes, wildfires, landslides, levee vulnerabilities, and groundwater depletion. Now FL is going more CA in its building codes.
The two states operate under different geological conditions and regulatory approaches, resulting in different types of risk. I am seeing that FL is just as reactionary as CA is, and is becoming CA in laws. I saw it after Hurricane Andrew. I saw it after Surfside. I saw it after the FIU bridge collapse.
Now, tying this all together and hopefully putting a smile on your face. Both FL and CA want what is best for their residents. They just differ in how to get there. FL has now begun adapting to FIRES as its latest natural disaster. Where do you think they are going to learn from? :)
Very good Bob. Enough to make ya sick, but I can't blame them. Why not grab it as long as the stupid voters keep voting for ya?
Don't forget Fast Food chain employees get paid $20 an hour as per Newsom.
I believe the sign for $80 k was for a management position.
Correct, GM. It was for management with a 1-year path, and IIRC, it was north of 80k. The lower levels were, IIRC, and do not hold me to this, it's been a while, 60-70k?
Well, I sincerely believe most all people in Santa Barbara DON'T KNOW THIS about governmental costs going up compared to population growth.
What is truly demoralizing is the frequency with which local voters keep voting for politicians who perpetuate this gross abuse of self enriching tax policy in the name of “ public service”
It’s the voters stupid! As long as Santa Barbarians continue to vote for people with a “D” beside their name, with no consideration for the consequences, we will live in an over taxed uninformed Community. The fact that a mileage tax for Californians is even being considered says it all. Stop voting emotionally & educate yourself. It may take a little longer, it may tax your brain a bit but ultimately it will help inform you about why the costs of living is so high in California & Santa Barbara in particular.
When government is the largest local employer, why would local voters vote against their own self-interests? Can Big Government decide to downsize itself?
In other words when will Big Government's own self-interests make their own survival worth fighting for? Obviously when they run out of other people's money. Time to visualize how this will happen.
___Vote against all new tax increases
___Ban public sector union* participation all future elections
___Create independent election offices, not staffed by public sector union employees
___Require elected officials full disclosure of public sector union support before any vote
___Demand public sector union supported candidate recusal from participation in later contract negotiations with public sector union interests.
___Educate voters about the inherent conflicts of interests created when public sector union interests dominate the political process
*Public sector influence: members, union itself, union-supported political action committees, dark money,
Dream on . . .
Thank you Andy. I wonder about all these GRANTS given to Liberal/Progressive operatives POSING AS NONPROFITS---also the fact there are SO MANY ATTORNEYS WORKING FOR THE COUNTY when the County is consistently making decisions that gets them SUED SUCCESSFULLY IN COURT!!! WHAT are dozens of HIGH-PRICED ATTORNEYS ACTUALLY DOING if they are GETTING US SUED SUCCESSFULLY! WHEN do these INDIVIDUALS become accountable for their BAD DECISIONS?!?
FOR INSTANCE: Dennis Bozanich is a dirty politician who was given the reins to the County by Mona Miasato back in 2016 and he SINGLE-HANDEDLY RUINED Santa Barbara County Cannabis Policy by TAKING BRIBES from the Cannabis growers. I heard that our very own District Attorney's Office and Sheriff's Office are the ones who discovered Dennis Bozanich had accepted a large amount of cash deposited in a secret location on Santa Rosa Road near Lompoc. THAT is the real reason why the PROGRESSIVE P.O.S. Dennis Bozanich RESIGNED HIS POSITION IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT and left---all after being very arrogant and very cavalier about our County's Cannabis Policy. WHY do these INDIVIDUALS, who all happen to be Liberal/Progressive Political Operatives get QUALIFIED IMMUNITY when their actions are CRIMINAL???
Why do governments want to keep giving our tax payer money to Illegals?
So that they will vote for them in elections.
Thank goodness Voter ID will be implemented either by a vote by the Senate and signed into law via an Executive order.
I hope the new Fraud department will find all the waste and abuse of funds in California and SB County.
Moving on to government salaries. I believe besides their base salary,government employees,unlike employees of other businesses,get a lot of benefits such as a fully funded Health Care for themselves and their families.
Are most government employees backed by a Union?
Any government salary,including teachers,is reported on Transparent California. Just search a name and you can see their entire salary plus benefits on there.
Thank you Andy Caldwell
There’s a list a mile long, here’s a start.
Privatization!
SB golf course saves over $400,000.00 a year by privatizing the upkeep of the grounds!
Our parks and medians are shabby, the golf course isn’t.
Does the City of SB need an art department with at least one graphic designer for every department?
I smell corruption. It's everywhere else, why wouldn't it be here too?
Same old story with these Democrap dominated city,county,state governments - their parasitic relationship with their zombie voters (legal or illegal) in California is only to serve themselves not the citizens they were elected to serve and protect. The infection of these parasites in our local governments will eventually sicken the entire population as we all suffer their self-righteous decisions.
And the Santa Barbara resident, and the California voters. Will continue to vote for Democrats. Keeping clowns like Governor Newsome in office.
It’s always interesting to hear others try to rationalize, excuse and justify the size of government and cost to the taxpayers. California ranks a surprising 13th of all states coming in at 492 employees/10,000 population. Clearly, the 4700 SB County employees, making up 20% of the entire non-farm workforce, does seem bloated.
More importantly, what do we get in return from our County employees? Deferred or non existent maintenance, delayed service calls, sky rocketing overtime, and benefit costs, all while County employee wages has quickly outpaced private sector jobs.
How much longer can this continue while city/county/state deficits continue at record pace? Further, is the County tax base expanding or contracting? Currently 1 in 7 properties in SBCO are tax exempt. Land grants/trusts have gobbled up over 200,000 acres of taxable farm land. I suppose a detailed study of our tax base would be helpful, but how is that possible when our own County Tax Assessor, Joe Holland, appears to be missing, absent from his position, and persona non grata!
In the meantime, we see County and City governments continue to do what they do best, raising our taxes, specifically sales taxes.
All this is troubling when one considers Calpers is only 70% funded and could be teetering on insolvency. Guess how they’ll make up the difference?
To make things worse, if you’re like me and considering cashing in and leaving for Florida or Texas, County and State officials are thinking about taxing further on real estate gains and even unrealized gains!
https://www.richstatespoorstates.org/variables/public_employees_per_10000/
Good! I hope they keep demanding more & more money and generating new taxes! Maybe, eventually, the average stupid voter will wake up and stop voting these Commie-crats back into office!
Great article, Andy. Every political candidate should be required to provide their credit card(s) balance history. That should give a voter a clue as to how they will manage the spending of taxpayer money.
Andy, again . . . WHY? I figure your goal is the proverbial "Starve the beast." That is just stupid. We all rely on the government. No one can live without it.
It took me 3 minutes to read your rant, 25 minutes to research and type this up. I can not find FY2000 County budget, so I went to the earliest I could get the PDF from. I only used the approved budgets.
This stuff is just like the HOA I have to deal with for some of my properties. People just want to complain, but NEVER look at the financial data. They proclaim people in charge are idiots and stealing their money, but when pressed to say where the 'fraud, waste, and abuse' are, they can't find it.
If we’re going to have an honest conversation about Santa Barbara County spending, we should use the actual adopted budgets — not headline totals that mix operating costs with capital projects, debt service, and pass-through funds.
Using the County’s adopted budgets (the ones I uploaded and reviewed), countywide operating spending in FY 2012-13 was about $873 million. In FY 2023-24, the comparable countywide operating budget is about $1.365 billion. That is a 56% increase over roughly eleven years. Inflation over that same period was roughly 35–40%. When you adjust for inflation, real operating growth is closer to 13–15%, not 300%+.
The commonly cited $1.69 billion number includes capital projects, enterprise funds, restricted funds, and debt. It is not just “money spent running the county.” Comparing that to a 2000 operating figure is not apples to apples.
Staffing tells an important part of the story. Between FY 2012-13 and 2023-24, total county staffing increased by about 842 full-time equivalent positions. Of that increase, roughly 467 positions — more than half — were in Public Safety. Public Safety staffing grew from about 1,203 FTEs to about 1,670 FTEs, nearly a 39% increase.
Public safety is not administrative bloat. It includes sheriff’s deputies, jail staff, probation, fire protection, the district attorney, and the public defender. These are 24/7 operations. They carry overtime costs, higher pension formulas, workers’ compensation exposure, and substantial equipment and facility needs. When public safety staffing increases, both operating and capital costs increase. More deputies and firefighters mean more vehicles, radios, protective gear, stations, jail beds, and ongoing maintenance.
Insurance costs are another major driver. Over the past decade, California counties have faced rising liability exposure, wildfire risk, workers’ compensation costs, and sharply higher employer pension contributions through CalPERS. Healthcare inflation alone has significantly outpaced general inflation. When people cite a fully loaded employee cost figure, that number includes salary, employer health contributions, pension contributions, retiree health obligations, payroll taxes, and workers’ comp. Much of the increase reflects benefit and pension costs set by actuarial and market conditions, not simply wage hikes.
It is also worth remembering that population growth is not the only driver of service demand. Between 2000 and today, service expectations and regulatory requirements have expanded significantly. Behavioral health services are broader. Homeless response programs are larger. Wildfire readiness is far more intensive. Cybersecurity, digital records management, body cameras, emergency communications systems, and environmental compliance requirements barely existed at today’s scale in 2000.
It is entirely reasonable to ask whether 2000 service levels were adequate by today’s standards. Jails were overcrowded. Behavioral health infrastructure was limited. Wildfire risk mitigation was far less developed. Technology systems were primitive compared to modern compliance expectations. If services were expanded or modernized over two decades, costs will reflect that.
Traffic impact fees and development fees also deserve context. Those funds are legally restricted; they cannot simply be diverted to salaries. Fee increases often reflect higher construction costs, updated engineering standards, environmental mitigation requirements, and inflation in materials and labor. Construction costs in California have more than doubled since 2000. That alone explains much of the fee growth.
None of this means government spending should escape scrutiny. Compensation and pension costs are substantial. Long-term liabilities matter. Structural cost pressures are real. But the narrative that the County’s operating government “exploded” 300%+ while doing nothing more than serving a population that grew 10% does not hold up when you examine the actual operating budgets and staffing allocations.
When you look at the real numbers, most of the growth over the last decade has been in public safety, health and human services, insurance, pensions, and compliance-driven infrastructure — not administrative excess. That is a more accurate place to start the discussion.
While we do rely on some government, we can certainly benefit from less government. I appreciate that as a Democrat, you are an apologist for government bloat and waste but your attempt to recast the bloat into compartments each necessary and reasonable is unconvincing. Why dismiss capital expenditure or debt service? It is all part of the taxpayer burden and the result of decisions made by our leadership. Why not pay the fire chiefs the same as your often referenced panda express salary? In my interactions the chief is worthless bloat who could not answer a simple question about fire code. I could go on and on but the simple fact is that government is bloated, inefficient and over staffed with over paid buffoons. Your apology for the waste does not convince anyone.
The back of the IRS 1040 booklet shows in graphic terms the largest government expenditure today is ........service on the national debt.
Not the military, not health care, not public education, not social services, not any other sector of government services, but today in fact it paying for our national debt service.
Using debt to provide government services means today we are living off of crack. When will government employees, voters, and elected officials finally recognize this is unsustainable?
Loweg, I agree that Debt Service appears to be outsized. In a lot of ways it's a lot like "Bad Debt".
Jeff,
I am sensing that you are 50% sincere and 50% just howling at the moon. So I will ask you some questions.
What can we benefit less from the government? NO, I am not saying we should have more; I want to know what you would cut. This will end in the infamous, one man's junk is another man's treasure category.
You are the one claiming bloat.
You are the one claiming waste.
Show me where it is.
So let me understand this: you want to pay the fire chief the same as someone who puts orange chicken on a plate. You feel that you are going to get the best of the best for that?
ROFL.
You can argue the competency of the current chief all you want. That is a good, solid discussion. Arguing that you can get what you want in skills for the same as a Panda scooper is comical.
DOGE and CA DOGE has shown us vividly where government costs can be saved. Why are you still rejecting those findings?
Your commentary is so cliche ridden with repeated reference to howling at the moon, Panda Express and reminders that context matters ad nauseam. Certainly what I would want to cut you will believe is absolutely necessary so going back and forth is a useless exercise but I will toss out a few. Zero dollars for anything having to do with global warming including any subsidies for energy efficiency or electric cars (electric cars are gay AF). Privatize fire and police. Zero dollars for homelessness. Eliminate the architectural review board, what a bunch of assholes. Drastically reduce empty bus service. Stop building bike lanes and narrowing roads. Stop wasting money on renovations like the cabrillo rec center or the new police station. City and county workers need to take a pay cut. 300k for a fireman who does not know shit from shinola is too much. I am confident that the Panda kid could do as well for less. I know they are not all SB county but I pay for all of this waste fraud and abuse. Please don't bother to reply with more verbose cliche ridden bullshit about how you disagree with everything. I already know.
Congrats, you have dented about 1/10th of 1% of the budget.
I do not have to agree or disagree with you. I have already stated that one man's junk is another man's treasure. This is democracy at play. I do not get everything I want and you do not get everything you want.
But, see, this is where I have issues with your positions. To me, they are hypocritical and not driven by principles. Let's start with the easiest.
You do not want subsidies for EV's. Ok. Why is it not a principle of no subsidies? See, isn't this the conservative argument of picking winners and losers? Gas is heavily subsidized. Vehicles are heavily subsidized under Section 179.
Now, I will argue with you about climate. What Trump did two days ago is dangerous. We have already seen the results here in LA when polluters were allowed to operate without oversight. People died at earlier ages, thus an economic shift where polluters had profits and shifted liabilities over to the government. Heck, you can just look in Louisiana and see the results.
I could have written your reply for you. Like High School debate club only not as good. Certainly my list was a few of many many bloat reducing efforts. And I said nothing about gas subsidies and If you knew anything about conservative thought, I am opposed to all subsidies. As far as climate, every prediction of the climate alarmists have been wrong and back casting of models has been a miserable failure. Consider this lame narrative of the "climate scientists who are not scientists at all. Consider the phase relationship of CO2 levels and temperature, which in the past have been generally higher than today, much higher, and life albeit not human life, thrived. In the distant past it is said that higher temperatures caused the release of more CO2 gas. But it is said that more CO2 causes higher temperature. How did we ever have ice ages? How did this ever resolve? Today it is said that the release of CO2 gas is causing the temperature to rise. Which is it? It is a car and it is a truck, it is an El Camino. The El Camino theory does not stand scrutiny. Even the most biased models by the most zealous "climate scientists" predict about 1.5 degree warming in 150 years. Is that enough to commit economic suicide and drive around in gay electric cars? I think not. In 150 years the known amount of oil on earth will be long depleted so why all of the bullshit. Government emergencies real or perceived allow more government spending which gives the government more of my money to waste in ways which are good for "climate scientists"
Woo hoo, MS Word cut/paste handles subscripts!
Jeff, you’re raising several different arguments at once, AGAIN — about subsidies, climate models, CO₂ history, economic tradeoffs, and government incentives — so let’s separate them.
1. Subsidies
If you oppose all subsidies, that’s a philosophically consistent position. But in practice, fossil fuels have received direct and indirect subsidies for decades (tax preferences, depletion allowances, below-market leasing, infrastructure externalities). If the argument is for a free market, then that principle applies across the board — oil, gas, renewables, EVs, ethanol, all of it.
2. “Every climate prediction has been wrong”
That’s not supported by evidence. Many major projections from the 1980s–1990s have tracked closely with observed warming when actual emissions are plugged into the models. Models are not crystal balls; they generate scenarios based on inputs. When emissions followed high-end pathways, temperatures followed high-end projections.
No scientific model is perfect — but “miserable failure” is not an accurate description of the overall record.
3. CO₂ and Temperature Phase Relationship
You’re referring to ice core data showing that during glacial cycles, temperature increases slightly preceded CO₂ increases. That’s true — but incomplete.
What happened historically:
Orbital changes (Milankovitch cycles) slightly warmed the planet.
Warming oceans released CO₂.
CO₂ then amplified the warming through the greenhouse effect.
So CO₂ acted as a feedback amplifier, not the initial trigger.
Today:
Humans are injecting CO₂ first.
That CO₂ is acting as the forcing, not the feedback.
That’s why this situation is physically different from past natural cycles.
4. “CO₂ was higher in the past and life thrived”
Also true — but context matters:
Those higher CO₂ levels often corresponded to much warmer climates.
Sea levels were dramatically higher.
Human civilization did not exist in those conditions.
The question isn’t whether life survives — it’s whether modern agriculture, coastal infrastructure, and economic systems remain stable.
Dinosaurs thriving in a 1000+ ppm CO₂ world doesn’t necessarily translate to stable global supply chains for 8 billion humans.
5. “How did we have ice ages?”
Ice ages were primarily driven by orbital mechanics, not CO₂ alone. CO₂ then amplified or dampened those changes. The climate system has multiple drivers — orbital variation, solar input, volcanism, ocean cycles, greenhouse gases.
There is no contradiction in:
CO₂ sometimes being a feedback in the past
CO₂ being a forcing today
Physics works the same way in both cases.
6. “Only 1.5°C in 150 years”
We’ve already warmed about 1.2°C since pre-industrial times — mostly in ~120 years. That warming has already increased:
Heat waves
Heavy rainfall intensity
Wildfire risk
Coastal flooding events
1.5°C is not “nothing” — it’s enough to materially shift weather patterns and risk distributions.
The debate isn’t whether Earth explodes. It’s about probability shifts and economic risk management.
7. “Economic suicide”
That assumes:
Transition costs exceed damage costs
Fossil fuels remain cheap indefinitely
Innovation doesn’t lower clean tech costs
But renewable energy costs have fallen dramatically over the past 15 years. EV adoption is partly market-driven, not just regulatory.
You can argue about policy design — that’s legitimate.
But framing it as binary “economic suicide vs. sanity” oversimplifies a complex tradeoff.
8. “Government emergencies = spending”
Governments do expand during crises — that’s historically true.
But skepticism about government spending doesn’t automatically invalidate physical climate science.
You can:
Distrust government efficiency
Oppose subsidies
Support market-driven energy transition
Question regulatory overreach
…without rejecting the underlying thermodynamics of greenhouse gases.
The Core Issue
The climate debate often gets framed as:
“Alarmists vs. deniers”
“Science vs. freedom”
“Planet vs. economy”
But the real debate is about:
Risk tolerance
Time horizons
Cost distribution
Market vs. regulatory mechanisms
It’s legitimate to question policy responses.
It’s much harder to argue that greenhouse gas physics itself is incoherent.
CO₂ absorbs infrared radiation. That’s laboratory physics, not ideology.
The serious debate isn’t whether CO₂ warms the planet — it does.
The serious debate is how much warming is acceptable, how fast we adapt, and what policy tools are least economically disruptive.
Just ask yourself, why does Herr Leader want Greenland? What has changed over the last 50 years that would make it desirable?
Starve the beast is exactly the right answer. Inject the beast with daily Wegovy shots.
Automatic salary increases, no brakes on benefits costs, automatic COLA and lavish under-funded pensions with future costs imposed on future generations are NOT ESSENTIAL GOVERNMENT SERVICES -they are now used as taxpayer extortion rackets.
Here is what I hear you saying: Give us more money for our own government employee self-interests, or we will cut off all the government services you actually need.
Government employee costs must be tamed. Necessary government services must be fiscally sustainable. This current ratio is fatally out of balance.
The job of elected officials is to independently determine the scope and funding resources for vital government services; not pander to the public sector unions who backed their very own elections which lead to drowning our local governments in unsustainable debt that is pushed off to future taxpayers.
False dichotomy argument : (1) reigning in government employee costs does not mean (2) eliminating government services.
I am not sure how you think this through. But aren't most of these positions covered by a UNION? Therefore, these are negotiated wages. It takes the 'buyer' and the 'seller' to agree. It is not a free-for-all.
I think you are misguided about how pensions work for public employees. I think you are missing the point that there were many pension reforms, and they are no longer this massive payday. As an example, I just checked the county's retirement system. A person who worked for 30 years, with an average monthly salary of 8,500 in their last year, would receive $2,500 a month. Purely anecdotal, my father-in-law, who retired from GE about 30 years ago, gets $5k a month plus full health insurance for him. Just like the private sector, the public sector changed their pension plans. There are some that are grandfathered in that started way back, but they are a dying :) breed.
I repeat myself here David, but I don't want you to miss this prior comment. Where do we go from here, now that we know there is a major problem? Let's keep talking.
_________(Repeated prior post to David Bergeron)
When government is the largest local employer, why would local voters vote against their own self-interests? Can Big Government decide to downsize itself?
In other words when will Big Government's own self-interests make their own survival worth fighting for? Obviously when they run out of other people's money. Time to visualize how this will happen.
___Vote against all new tax increases
___Ban public sector union*** participation all future elections
___Create independent election offices, not staffed by public sector union employees
___Require elected officials full disclosure of public sector union support before any vote
___Demand public sector union supported candidate recusal from participation in later contract negotiations with public sector union interests.
___Educate voters about the inherent conflicts of interests created when public sector union interests dominate the political process
(***Public sector influence: members, union itself, union-supported political action committees, dark money, Hatch Act, First Amendment ....)
Lowreg,
You have an assumption for the basis of everything you wrote. If that one assumption is wrong, then the rest falls apart.
"When government is the largest local employer, why would local voters vote against their own self-interests?"
Voters vote against their own self-interests a LOT. How many farmers voted for Trump and now have to take bailouts because of his actions, ones that he ran on!
I can understand the disdain for unions, but the converse is what we had before: employees at will, at the whim of the highest person in government. You didn't get workers; you got people who were forced to agree with everything. That is a dangerous slope that I do not want to be on. Now, if you want to change some of the terms in the contract and make them not allowable, that is a healthy discussion. But throwing the baby out with the bathwater is bad imo.
IMO, the only way to lower the spending is for citizens to stop demanding services. Services cost money.
David, Your intentional generalities detract from the specifics under discussion. To wit: when government employment is the largest sector in our local economy , what would get a majority of local voters to vote against their own self-interests?
Everyone votes for their own self-interest, we agree on that. The issue is how do we stop the current train public debt wreck we are now on, having let government employee interests take over the local political agenda instead of putting fiscal probity first and foremost.
The current Democrat tax and spend ethos must be replaced. And not with a GOP/Independnett tax and spend either, but a new look at productive revenue enhancements and government services efficiencies, while clawing back the now known waste fraud and abuse of recent years.
Prop 98 reform is absolutely critical. Stop shoveling unaccountable billions into the current state school system that delivers such concisely poor results, which now includes students leaving the classrooms to protest for even more Democrat dysfunction. We are getting almost zero ROI for the Prop 98 mandated funding. That must stop too.
Yes there was a degree of recent pension reform creating a form of two-rewired government employee compensation. But the prior pension and health care obligations remain in place, and we are not talking about just the mind-numbing million dollar government pensions.
We are talking about the cumulative effect of the ones already in place that were underfunded and over-promised, the continued gaming of the system including enhanced "disability" pension opt-outs and boosting last three year special job classifications, plus covering over the actuarial flaws already built into the system - having badly estimated longevity and investment income returns ...... etc.
Every year now well into the near future political entities budgets are getting squeezed for higher pension and benefit payouts, leaving less money for "real government" functions and then casting these growing employee cost off on the tax payers via extortion threats. for even higher taxes. This is not a healthy operational model. It must stop.
Instead of an honest and public admission of what a long series of "term limited" elected officials, 99% supported now by local union interests, have inflicted on tomorrow tax payers. That is where we must start and that remains missing in action.
Let's keep this discussion going. The past few yeas of Democrat induced "election reform" measures plays into this current intratable msss as well. That is also on the table for a reassessment as Democrats jockey to control the top two names on the now wholly dysfunctional jungle primaries (currently shown by the "top two" Steyer and Swalwell political theater)
Who can really start solving these long term state and local fiscal issues - more of the same from the party who created it, or a new look by the party long and viciously maligned by the very same party that created the problems in the first place.
We continue now to have both have a spending problem, along now with a looming revenue problem - we are in double jeopardy now thanks to well over a decade of Democrat super-majority governance.
Voters are finally saying enough is enough. While through you, we are still hearing let's keep doing more of the exact same thing. And thus the parameters of the upcoming primary elections are being defined. It shall be an interesting next few months.
We finally have credible GOP opposition who get it, and Democrats are reduced to running two political oddities their best and brightest in defense of their very reckless and incestuous status quo. The Democrat Mean Machine has yet to crunk up in full forces though it tried t odd a number on one of its'won Katie Porter who continues to sound strongly in the polls, what i the message that tells us?
As I stated, NO, we do not agree. The WHOLE basis for your point requires one thing to be true. People vote in their own best interest. I have stated that they do not. You have single-issue voters, i.e., guns and abortion. They will vote on the position on that topic, regardless of their own self-interest. You have people who vote party line regardless of self-interest. It goes on and on.
So, no, I will not agree that people vote out of self-interest.
You had to throw in the 'waste, fraud, abuse' cliche. For that, I am going to ask that you define this. I want numbers, not phrases. Waste is subjective. Is it a waste to toss the pencil at half usage instead of sharpening all the way to the eraser? Fraud is a @#$%^ CRIME. The government would be a VICTIM of it. You can not stop it . . . EVER. You can only find it, prosecute it, and work on recovering it. What the hell is abuse? What does that even mean?
You want to argue efficiency? Let's do that. What is the most efficient program in the federal government? SSA. Their operating costs are about 10-12% of what Wall Street's most efficient program is. And that is with all the handcuffing that Congress puts on them.
The public and private sectors are run by HUMANS. Humans have flaws. We can argue that the private sector tends to run on 3 to 5 year cycles for refreshing (tax laws drive this), compared to the public sector,r which runs on a run it until it dies philosophy :) That would be a better argument.
My former neighbor was Paul Orfalea. He said something once that resonates. I will paraphrase him. He was talking about the bottom 10% and how companies would rotate out the bottom 10% every year. He stated that mathematically, there will always be a bottom 10%. Why are you focusing on the bottom 10% when you should be working harder on the top 90%.
Education is an interesting thing. My child attended both public and private schools. Do you know the differences other than my wallet :) Public schools have to take everyone; private schools can cherry-pick. Public schools will get the kids whose parents are struggling financially and are each working multiple jobs. Private school families may have one breadwinner and a parent at home when the kid is done with school. Private school students will have much smaller class sizes and access to tutors, among other benefits. Private schools will have much more to spend per student than public schools. Is your solution to lower that and expect better results? That makes NO SENSE to me.
So what if the students left for one day to protest? Seriously, that is your beef? What is it, something like 180 days a kid is in school? So 1/180th you are complaing about. ROFL.
"the prior pension and health care obligations remain in place, and we are not talking about just the mind-numbing million dollar government pensions." Correct. The prior system still has some pensioners. They will DIE. Then it goes away. You are demanding that the government break a contract. I showed you the link, using TC, to what current retirees are seeing. I was seeing $1500 a month to $3k a month. There is THEE reform at work.
"Every year now well into the near future political entities budgets are getting squeezed for higher pension and benefit payouts" No, that is not true.
Here is where we differ drastically.
You see parties.
I don't give a @#$ about parties.
You seem to want to root for team R over team D.
I am driven by principles, not party allegiance.
I realize that if I agree 100% with a politician, then I am in a cult. I realize that if I agree more than 50% it is probably a candidate for me. And as I have pointed out to Mr. Smith, we both want the same thing; we just differ on how to get there. I will always disagree with any politician who wants to create a tiered system of humans. I feel the person who wipes my parents' ass in the nursing home is just as valuable as the person who does my taxes. Generally, one party does not see things that way. Their actions show that they want to tier people into classes.
Transparent California makes a liar out of your claims, David. I suggest you learn about the Transparent California website tracking both government employee compensation packages and re-structured lifetime government employee pensions that are now coming due.
Along with getting familiar long-standing California political pundits like Dan Walters and Steven Greenhut.
You are blatantly manipulating outdated data for effect, and not projecting the impacts of future taxpayer pension burdens after the major reconfiguration of the government pension plans in this state a few decades ago.
No, I am not manipulating anything.
I am well aware of Transparent California.
I do not think you are aware of public sector pension changes.
https://archive.gov.ca.gov/archive/gov39/2012/09/12/news17720/index.html
https://transparentcalifornia.com/pensions/2024/santa-barbara-county-pension/?&s=-retirement_year
As I mentioned, some were grandfathered in with very high pensions. Those days are GONE.
You continue to manipulate, David.
Current pensions are unsustainable , and using "averages" which include pension formulas for much lower earlier compensation schedules, and lower survival spousal payments for those "30 year employees" do not portray the real issues we are forced to fund today and well into the near future. Pay attention Gen Z, this is your future we are talking about.
How far down into the weeds do we need to go over your intentional deflections, while ignoring the hard future decisions that must be remedied now starting with the upcoming state elections?
Reforming government employee costs is kryptonite for any Democrat politician. That is a given. This means only one thing - we must throw all the current bums out, get a new majority dedicated to fiscal reform and downsizing government, while materially curtailing current unsustainable government employee compensations packages.
Make government employee benefits look more like Social Security and Obamacare as the baseline, then offering 401K pension options, and a choice of employee funded group health insurance options
I believe you need to learn how employees are paid in the public sector.
https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10051.pdf
https://www.calpers.ca.gov/members/retirement-benefits/service-disability-retirement/social-security-and-your-pension
https://www.calpers.ca.gov/members/health-benefits/plans-and-rates
IIRC, the health insurance is something like 80/80 or 70/70 (I forgot, it was some funky matching number.) That formula is the percent that the employer pays for the employee, and the 2nd number is for dependents.
See, this is where we differ drastically. I want to remove the BURDEN on the employer. I want the BURDEN shifted straight over to the employee. But I want a public plan that is paid out of payroll taxes, employee-only.
And again, here you are with team R versus team D. You believe that team R is all about reform, yet . . . THEY SAY ONE THING and DO ANOTHER!
HR1, the one big beautiful bill, is not about reform at all. That #$%% bill pushed so much debt onto the deficit. I suspect you will tell me how wonderful it is.
Why does the deficit grow drastically under Rs, but never under Ds? I can tell you. Because R's think short-term and what benefits their donor class. They cut INCOME to the government. They cut cap gains, they didn't tax hedge funds, they added more deductions, etc. Here is some food for thought . . . if you took all the tax brackets, added 2% to it, you would cut the deficit by a little more than 1/3rd.
I earned a 50k bonus for reading an article. I happened to read an article about Jr's tax cuts. I started applying it to what had transpired in the past. I picked up the phone and talked to our accountants. I was right in my assumptions. I then talked to my mentor, who happened to be my employer, and told him he needed to contact his personal accountant to see whether this situation applied to him. It applied to him. An action taken TWO years ago resulted in a check for just over $1mm from the IRS. He paid his account a few thousand dollars for the paperwork, wrote me a check for 50k, and then got a check for over $1mm from the IRS for something that happened two years prior. How the hell is that fiscal responsibility? So again, R's actions differ from their words.
You can TRY to parse the numbers, but you really don't know what you are talking about. I have been employed as a Santa Barbara County government watchdog for 35 years! That is my "day job". When I first started, salaries and benefits were only 40% of the budget, today it is well over 50%. And, back then they didn't charge the public a fee for every service and we did not have a $500 million maintenance deficit. Gov employees are spending money on themselves rather than providing services to the public. I guess if I write on Newsom in the future you will defend him too because you are that predictable and wrong.
So now youare saying the numbers are false? Wouldn't that be criminal?
The 40->50% figure can be for many reasons. That is a math equation. It can be 'good,' it can be 'bad.' I think it is a lot more nuanced than you are alluding to.
But as I pointed out, health insurance has gone up to insane levels. As that is part of employee cost, wouldn't that impact the 40->50% issue? That is just one component. There could also be the component of more employees, which I showed. I am not saying that we have too many or too few. That is a different discussion.
Go ahead and write about Newsom. I sincerely doubt you can say one positive thing about him. I can say both positive and negative things about Trump. That is the difference.
David, why don't you know who Dan Walters is?
When does it end
CA. Is a nightmare unable to take advantage of the growing economy because our politicians are corrupt governor senators and our own little carabal who cares about nothing except keeping illegals
OK. At what point and in what manner can the people of Santa Barbara County and/or city rebel and dismantle the status quo to install new forms of government to change the current mechanisms and the people who burden their constituents to the limit with such financial and misfeasance or malfeasance actions? Or, have our public servants become our masters, in all but name? At what point, will the taxpayers have had enough?