Read the 2003 Sun article about the county split (.pdf).
In recent months, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors has split ways on contentious issues—the most visible of which was the Santa Maria Energy expansion project decision.
It’s really no surprise that environmental concerns are in one corner of the political boxing ring and economic concerns take a seat in the opposite corner. The match is one that’s plagued the county’s northern and southern halves for decades, a couple of times even leading to attempts at creating two separate counties.
Supervisors have managed to keep the fight at bay since the last county-split attempt failed in 2006, but the bell rang again last November. At an extremely long meeting on Nov. 12, 2013, the board voted 3-2 to allow Santa Maria Energy to expand its drilling operations on the Orcutt oil field, but tacked onto the project what some call an extreme emissions caveat. The decision was the capstone of months of loud, contentious county debate on the issue.
The three on the emissions-caveat side were 1st District Supervisor Salud Carbajal, 2nd District Supervisor Janet Wolf, and 3rd District Supervisor Dorreen Farr. The two on the losing side of that vote were 4th District Supervisor Peter Adam and 5th District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino.
Whether that vote split the board into North County versus South County is contingent upon who you’re talking to, but the same thing happened again when the Gaviota Coast Plan came before board on Dec. 3, 2013. Incidentally, that was also the same day the oil-production-tax question came before the board.
Less than a month later, the board split 3-2 again in favor of allowing county staff to draft a ballot measure for the oil-production tax. Whether that tax actually makes it to this November’s ballot will be decided at a hearing on Jan. 21. Also coming up this year are discussions about the county’s Climate Action Strategy Plan.
Looking into the near future, it doesn’t seem like the political split is going to hide its face anytime soon.
Only Sometimes
Clanging the starting bell is Supervisor Adam, whose district includes Orcutt and part of Lompoc. He recently sent out a letter to the media saying the Santa Maria Energy decision was indeed indicative of a north-south divide and even went so far as to liken the division to England (urban Santa Barbara) ruling over the colonies (everywhere else in the county).
Thus far, his sound-off against the south has taken the form of two letters to the media that criticize the way his fellow supervisors voted. He told the Sun he wants to make sure a discussion is had about things that have been kept under the mat for far too long.
“I need to keep stuff in front of people,” he said. “I know it’s controversial.”
But he added: “For the record, I am not, at this time, for a county split. But that could change.”
Although Adam gets riled up about such issues as the way the vote split on the Santa Maria Energy decision, he respects and gets along with his colleagues. He said the board agrees on 90 percent of its decisions. What supervisors don’t agree on are the other 10 percent of the items that come before them.
The majority of items that come before the board is decided on unanimously.
Supervisor Carbajal, whose district includes Carpinteria and Cuyama, said if every vote was split, the county would have a big problem, but luckily that’s not the case. He said the board has accomplished a lot in the last year with unanimous decisions. One of the bigger decisions to come before the board was the North County Jail, which supervisors unanimously opted to fund and build.
“Despite our differences, we just have to work through our differences, and when we can’t, we can’t,” Carbajal said. “Those are existent in any democratic society; they are bound to be.”
Carbajal also said the divide on the Board of Supervisors isn’t technically a north-south split.
“The benefits of the last redistricting is that it can no longer be north-south,” Carbajal said.
The last county redistricting process took place after the 2010 Census and went into effect in 2012. Geographically speaking, the districts are no longer divided north-south because Carbajal’s district includes Cuyama and Farr’s includes Guadalupe. His northern colleagues, however, have a lot to say about that—but that’s a story all on its own.
Supervisors Farr, Wolf, and Carbajal said splits can go all kinds of ways, and each has had his or her turn on the losing end of a split. The majority of split votes on the board last year were 4-1.
The supervisors disagreed on the outcome of a public hearing in a 3-2 split vote about once a month in 2013. Almost all of those disagreements had Adam and Lavagnino on the losing end of the decision.
Adam said those disagreements tend to happen over big items, some of which could stimulate the economy and create jobs.
In February of 2013, the board voted to send a letter from the county to the Department of Conservation Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources asking for a more extensive environmental review of a decision to expand the state-designated boundaries of the Barham Ranch oil field outside of Los Alamos. In March, the board voted to direct county staffers to develop a climate action strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the county by 15 percent.
In July, the board voted in favor of drafting an ordinance banning one-time-use plastic bags in the unincorporated areas of the county. In December, the board voted to pass the ordinance.
These are the kinds of things Adam and Lavagnino, whose district includes Santa Maria and some of Los Padres National Forest, said discourage businesses from setting down roots in Santa Barbara County.
However, it wasn’t any of those decisions that got the two North County supervisors riled up. That was the Santa Maria Energy decision.
“I felt like I was part of the solution of trying to bring us together, but that all blew up with the Santa Maria Energy project,” Lavagnino said. “Yeah, we passed it, but we crippled it.”
What really upset them about the Santa Maria Energy decision was that they felt the vote went against the way a majority of the people who spoke at the meeting wanted things to happen.
“It’s a top-down control philosophy that those guys believe in,” Adam said. “Those guys don’t care about the economics at all … because they have no skin in the game.”
“Those guys” he’s referring to are his colleagues on the other side of the split: Carbajal, Farr, and Wolf. The skin he’s talking about is the battle against poverty and the need for higher-paying jobs, which are issues that are more prevalent in the north than in the south.
And while Lavagnino doesn’t talk about it in quite the same terms as Adam, he still feels North County got the short end of the oil stick. He said placing new regulations on companies that want to bring business to the county just compounds the message already out there. The only industries in North County are agriculture and oil, Lavagnino said. That’s because agricultural businesses can’t just pick up their acreage and go elsewhere, and oil companies stay because that’s where the oil is.
“If they had a chance, [agriculture] wouldn’t be here and oil wouldn’t be here,” Lavagnino said. “Show me a business that wants to put up shop in the most regulated county and the most regulated state in the country.”
With the Santa Maria Energy project, it seemed like everything was clicking for once: The planning and development crew was on board; the environmental impact report was sound; and union employees, environmental groups, and residents seemed to support the company.
“Santa Maria Energy was a beacon,” Lavagnino said. “I thought, ‘You get all those people together, then we’re really going to be able to do something.’”
Flip a Coin
Santa Maria Energy plans called for adding 110 more steam-injection wells to the 26-well pilot project southeast of Orcutt. The company was going to mitigate the 88,000 metric tons per year of greenhouse gas emitted by the project down by 29 percent by buying emission credits from other companies.
Many of the more than 100 people who spoke during the Santa Maria Energy hearing were in favor of the project going ahead as laid out by the county planning department. Some speakers, however, wanted the project completely wiped off the map, while some wanted less restrictive emissions regulations placed on the project, and some wanted more.
The loudest voice for more strict regulation was the Environmental Defense Center (EDC), which appealed the county Planning Commission’s earlier approval of the project on the basis that mitigating 29 percent of the emissions wasn’t good enough. When county supervisors upheld the appeal and told Santa Maria Energy to mitigate for more than 10,000 metric tons of emissions, Adam felt his colleagues didn’t listen to what the majority of the county’s population wanted.
“We wait until everybody stops talking, but we don’t listen, and that’s a problem,” Adam said. “We need to find some common ground.”
His main argument is that the north-south face-off centers on the economics of it all. By bumping up the amount of emissions Santa Maria Energy has to mitigate, he said, the county has cut into the company’s potential profit. This could manifest itself in different ways.
“They seem to think that there’s some magic money machine that’s going to make all their dreams come true,” Adam said. “They seem to think that if they take care of the environment, everything’s going to work itself out.”
Adam’s point comes back to the effect of the decision. He said it may not directly affect the south, but it does take a toll on his part of the county.
Santa Maria Energy officials told the board during the hearing that eating into the company’s bottom line would mean it could no longer support North County causes the way it has in the past. At the time, the company also questioned whether it could go forward with the project if profit margins were reduced.
Adam said there are two sides to the coin on projects like this one, and it’s not just whether you believe in global warming. It’s about balancing those two sides.
If it’s heads, the environment wins; tails, jobs win. And as far as he’s concerned, the coin always lands with heads right side up, which is hard on people in North County, who are impacted by poverty and need good jobs.
Supervisor Carbajal agrees that decisions on big projects with environmental impacts are a balancing act, and that where the balance is found depends on each supervisor’s perspective.
“We just have a difference of opinion on how to protect the public’s health … [on] the needle of balance between jobs and protecting the public’s health,” Carbajal said. “I think we all try to find the balance, and I think we all struggle with that balance, and we all tend to think our views are balanced.”
He said where his needle lies on the meter of jobs and public health was shaped by where he’s lived and his values, just like anybody else.
Calling his opinions southern is a mischaracterization, Carbajal added. Though he admits there are policy issues that still show regional and political divides, he warns against throwing language out there that could polarize the county.
“Years ago, it was really polarizing. Everything was north-south, and part of it was rhetoric,” he said. “There’s a few issues that have eluded our ability to find compromise, but I’m going to keep trying. I’m committed to try and find it.”
Election Rhetoric
Supervisor Wolf, whose district includes Santa Barbara, said that solely looking at how many jobs and new businesses come into an area is too simplistic.
“I think we’re smarter than that,” she said. “I just feel like this whole feeling—‘Oh, my God, we’re destroying the economy of North County’—is unfounded.”
She said the way Adam characterized recent board decisions in his commentaries to the media was unfortunate and conveyed negative rhetoric. She believes her decision in the Santa Maria Energy case was well reasoned and a compromise.
“This project is moving forward and jobs will be created,” Wolf said. “People should look at the facts and not the rhetoric.”
The rhetoric she’s referring to is the concept of a north-south split on the Board of Supervisors, and Adam calling out the south for imposing decisions on which the whole county doesn’t agree.
“This is becoming very political,” Wolf said. “We’ve got an election coming up, and it’s no secret that [Adam and Lavagnino] would like to see me gone, and I’m not going to let it get in the way of how I make my decisions.”
Both Wolf and Lavagnino are up for re-election this year.
The hearing for the Santa Maria Energy project was a difficult one to maneuver through, Wolf continued. Passions were high on both sides, and residents sent numerous e-mails and letters conveying support for the project and against it. As with any decision, you just weigh everything that you can, she said. With Santa Maria Energy, Wolf felt it was in everyone’s best interest to set a higher emissions standard.
In terms of weighing jobs, public safety, and the economy, she said, everything that came out of that decision was a win. Santa Maria Energy ended up merging with another company before the end of 2013 and is generating capital to move forward with the project, which will create jobs and stimulate the economy in the north. In addition, the county was able to place a strong emissions regulation on the project.
“The fear that oil companies and new businesses don’t want to be in Santa Barbara County is unfounded,” Wolf said.
She points to the U.C. Santa Barbara Economic Forecast, which shows a resurgence of oil production within the county.
Supervisor Farr, who has the biggest district geographically—it extends from Guadalupe to part of Lompoc, and then swings east to Buellton and the Santa Ynez Valley—also said oil production is experiencing a renaissance in the county. Farr added that many of the decisions made regarding oil companies, projects, and well drilling don’t even come before the Board of Supervisors, but rather are dealt with on a staff level or by the Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources.
One of the reasons the Santa Maria Energy project came before the board was because it was going to be such a high greenhouse-gas emitter. Most projects—of any kind, not just oil—don’t emit anything above 10,000 metric tons, which Farr said is the county screening line for putting projects through a more rigorous planning and development process and having companies apply for a discretionary permit.
She said the nature of the permit for Santa Maria Energy was what made it so volatile.
“It was a discretionary permit,” Farr said. “We could have out-and-out denied the project.”
But, as every other supervisor pointed out, the board didn’t deny the project, and Farr doesn’t believe the decision will sway oil companies away from Santa Barbara County.
“The market for oil is driven by worldwide market forces,” she said. “And, clearly, with the price of oil going up as it has, there are enhanced oil recovery projects coming forward.”
The next big project coming down the pipeline is from the Pacific Coast Energy Company, but it’s in the early stages and most likely won’t be ready for approval until 2015. Kevin Drude, deputy director of the county planning department’s energy division, said it’s similar in size and scope to the Santa Maria Energy project.
Whether it will make the same splash Santa Maria Energy did in the political spotlight remains to be seen, but it’s almost sure to attract the same sides of the oil debate.
Unfortunately for Supervisor Farr, who bridges the geographical divide, it’s a difficult district to maneuver. While the issues may be north or south for some people, they aren’t for everyone.
“For people who live in the middle like I do,” she said, “they don’t want to chose which part of the county they align with because they align with both.”
Farr added that the north-south thing is so much a part of the county’s history that it’s become an easy thing to seize onto when people are unsatisfied.
“It’s an issue that kind of ebbs and flows, depending on how happy people are with the way a vote goes,” Farr said. “Sometimes rhetoric gets sharper as we start to move into an election cycle.”
Divided Conscious
Perhaps north-south is pushing the rhetoric a little, but the county is nowhere near the state it was in at the beginning of the century. In 2002, a group of Santa Barbara County residents got together to form the Citizens for County Organization.
The group worked for a few years to gather enough signatures to garner support for a county split. The north half was to be named Mission County, and the south to keep the Santa Barbara name.
Eventually the split made it to the county ballot in 2006, but it failed. It was the second time in recent history the county has tried to split. The first was in the late 1970s, when the northern half of the county was to be named Los Padres County. That attempt also failed.
In 2003, Sun writers hit the streets in the city of Santa Barbara to find out what people thought of a county split. Some of the issues reporters learned about are the same ones that have come up recently, pitting the environment against development.
Howard Wittausch, an architect and civil engineer, told reporters that South County environmentalists hope they can slow development and growth in the north.
K.C. Williamson told the Sun the split would be a waste of money, and questioned the motives behind the desire.
“A lot of effort behind it is funded by development interests that feel constrained by the environmental [consciousness] of the South County,” he said.
In a recent interview with the Sun, Andy Caldwell of the Coalition of Labor, Agriculture, and Business said the same issues have plagued the county for decades, at least 30 years or more. Those issues surround land-use and resource development, and he said it’s based on lifestyle and geography.
South County has an economy based on the tourism industry and U.C. Santa Barbara, with easy access to the coast.
“The North County economy is totally different. It’s all resource industry-based, which means you depend on the land to make a living,” he said. “So there’s this conflict.”
And, yes, things have been quiet on the north-south front for years, but the economy is changing, so Caldwell said the rhetoric is changing.
“What has happened in the last six to eight months is that oil companies have had a resurgence,” Caldwell said. “So things weren’t as contentious [before], but mind you, we were in a recession.”
Contact Staff Writer Camillia Lanham at clanham@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 16-23, 2014.