In her 2017-18 county operating budget “executive summary,” Santa Barbara County CEO Mona Miyasato stated that this year’s budget theme is “One County. One Future.” I consider this to be highly ironic for reasons I have iterated before, and will reiterate today. However, before I do, I want to state unequivocally that I have the utmost respect for Miyasato, and consider her to be a highly competent public administrator. Indeed, I hold her harmless for what I am about to write.
For the past few months I have been traveling around the county giving a presentation that, among other things, highlights the tremendous disparity of wealth between southern Santa Barbara County, and northern Santa Barbara County. I suppose one might say the theme of my presentation is “A Tale of Two Counties.” The southern part of the county is blessed with tremendous wealth and economic opportunity, while the northern part is plagued by systemic crime, poverty, and a lack of economic upward mobility.
As I have suggested many times over the past 20 years in a variety of public settings, in my view, the county budget is essentially an exercise in leadership and vision. It is a public mission statement, if you will, that manifests and communicates the values and the priorities of the men and women we’ve elected to govern the county. The five individually elected supervisors are empowered by the voters to provide principled political leadership. This absolutely requires they work as a team, separate but equal. However, each supervisor also has a fiduciary responsibility to the roughly 80,000 constituents they and only they represent.
It has always been my view that a supervisor should be given tremendous deference when it comes to issues that pertain to their particular district. After all, the people of their district elected them, not any of the other four members of the board. All too often, though, by sheer force of political power, a supervisor will be outvoted on an issue that impacts their district, and their district alone. Allow me to put a finer point on this. When it comes to resource development in the North County for example, including Orcutt and various areas of the Santa Maria Valley, the two supervisors with the moral authority to decide what is in the best interest of the people who elected them, are outvoted by three (mostly) South County supervisors.
Imagine if a majority of red state governors met every Tuesday in Texas to negate the will of California’s elected governor on important issues of land use. Well, welcome to the Santa Maria Valley, because up here we have the functional political equivalent of that. And it’s resulting in a level of economic injustice, and a veritable crippling of upward mobility for tens of thousands of North County families in desperate need of help climbing the economic ladder. These families, most of whom are minorities, are in serious need of and in desperate search for economic, education, and, by extension, criminal justice. Because I’ll submit to you without fear of contradiction, a healthy, diverse North County economy with good-paying jobs and a public school system financed with the help of thriving local industries, is inextricably linked to lowering North County crime rates.
Allow me to conclude with what I found to be especially tragic about the proposed 2017-18 county budget. While reviewing Ms. Miyasato’s executive summary, conspicuously absent in the list of “priorities to guide the budget development process” was any mention of an economic vitality strategy or program. And this wasn’t an oversight. In fact, in a recent meeting I had with her in her office, Ms. Miyasato explained to me that due to budget cuts, no additional token dollars are being proposed, or allocated, for economic vitality. This is true even though voters recently agreed to increase the transient occupancy tax, a tax that has traditionally and historically been used for investments in economic vitality.
Well, let me just say it: This decision is penny wise and pound foolish. If we can’t “afford” to invest in economic vitality, then we can’t afford not to. Indeed, that is when we absolutely must invest in economic vitality.
Lastly, I also couldn’t help but see the sad irony of the herculean task being undertaken by the county to fund the ongoing operational costs of a North County jail. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the need and support the construction of a North County jail. And with the state covering the lion’s share of the construction costs, it’s a no brainer for the county to pursue this vital public safety asset. However, it is abundantly clear to this bleeding-heart fiscal conservative that if we continue to vote down revenue generation, job-creating local energy projects, while also zeroing out investment in economic vitality measures and strategies, no county jail will ever be large enough to hold the thousands of people, mostly young minority males, who will end up there because they lacked the economic and educational justice that a thriving economy would provide them.
Joe Armendariz is former two-term Carpinteria City Council member, and current executive director of the Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Association. Reach him at joe@armendarizpartners.com. Send your thoughts to letters@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 8-15, 2017.