Thought you’d seen the last of former Santa Barbara County Executive Officer Mike Brown? Well, think again.
Brown, who served as the county’s top employee for 14 years—until retiring in October—will now be on the payroll of the Agriculture, Business, and Labor Educational Coalition of San Luis Obispo County (COLAB of SLO).
In a recent interview with the Sun, Brown described what his new role—the coalition’s director of governmental affairs—would entail.
Essentially, Brown will be using his governmental and budgetary expertise to advise the COLAB board when it takes stances on public policies, laws, and regulations. He’ll also help represent the coalition before various state and local agencies, such as the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors and the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.
“The thing the Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo County COLABs are most concerned with is the ability of the counties and cities to provide services,” Brown said.
The money needed to pay for those services, he said, “doesn’t fall from the sky. It has to be generated.
“The core of all government funds is local property taxes,” he continued, adding that some local government coffers are up to 90 percent reliant on property taxes. “But those taxes are absolutely dependent on economic development. So the question becomes, ‘Are we [as a county] doing enough things to develop that established link?’”
Some of the things most affecting economic development, he said, are state, regional, and local regulations.
“In the last couple of years, there’s been an escalation of efforts [in San Luis Obispo] to expand the regulation of land use and business,” he said.
Brown specifically referenced the state energy regulations, which require most localities to reduce by 2020 their carbon footprint to pre-1990 levels. When addressing regulations such as these, Brown said, it’s important that the government do its homework.
“The largest cause of carbon and greenhouse gas emissions in the county is the traffic on [U.S. Highway] 101,” he said, referencing a county report on emissions. “It makes it challenging to address because the county doesn’t have control over the cars and trucks driving to San Francisco.”
He said government officials need to keep this in mind when making policies, and not penalize the little guys, like farmers driving their tractors.
When asked about the hiring process, COLAB’s executive director, Andy Caldwell, said the coalition was looking for a government insider who knew the area and could provide keen analytical insight.
COLAB, he said, functions as a government watchdog, and “who would be a better watchdog than someone who had been in county government for over 40 years?
“Mike has shown he understands the overall picture of where government money comes from,” Caldwell added.
He said many COLAB members feel the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors didn’t listen to Brown when he warned them about the impending budget gap.
“Year after year, he warned them in meetings that the county system was broken and needed to be redesigned. We feel he was never given the opportunity to bring that plan forward and put it into action,” Caldwell said. “We’re interested in working with him to get that plan going.”
He said Brown’s contract will take effect at the start of the new year.
This article appears in Dec 16-23, 2010.