Cutting enforcement: Santa Barbara County supervisors take cannabis tax revenue away from Sheriff’s Office

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Deemed overdue for a trim, Santa Barbara County’s budget to enforce against illegal weed is too big, the Board of Supervisors recently concluded.

Fifth District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino described the board’s unanimous June 17 decision to disband the Sheriff’s Office cannabis compliance team as “redistributing the manpower where it’s most needed.”

“Having that strong of an enforcement team at this point really didn’t make a lot of sense,” Lavagnino told the Sun. “It’s not that the sheriff’s department was doing anything wrong. They did what we asked them to do. The landscape has just changed over seven years, and we need to put resources where they’re most required.”

Established in 2018, the compliance team was set to cost the county $3 million-plus in the 2025-26 fiscal year. Reallocating that cannabis tax revenue to support new initiatives and reassigning some of the unit’s members to different roles within the Sheriff’s Office were tied to the board’s 5-0 vote.

On June 20, the Santa Barbara County grand jury released a report on cannabis taxation and expenditure findings that were consistent with county staff’s research. The timing was coincidental, according to Lavagnino.

“I think that’s the first time I ever looked at a grand jury report and thought, ‘Oh, we just checked off that,’ … It was so weird,” Lavagnino said. “It’s just intelligent people all looking at the same thing and kind of coming up with the same conclusion.”

The grand jury report noted that the county’s cannabis tax revenue has “steadily declined from its high of $15.7 million in 2020-2021 to less than $6 million in 2023-2024.”

Unlawful grows in the area have also declined, the jury determined, based on state-filed law enforcement reports, which “indicate that there has been negligible illicit cannabis cultivation activity in Santa Barbara County for the past three years.”

Lavagnino said that illegal marijuana cultivation operations in Tepusquet, the Lompoc Valley, and other areas in the county were “a real problem” when the compliance team formed in 2018.

“People were growing hundreds of acres of illegal cannabis,” Lavagnino said. “So yeah, we did need to have a real robust team to go out and eradicate these grows.”

Some members of the defunct compliance team are set to transfer to work for the Sheriff’s Office narcotics unit as cannabis experts, while one deputy will fill the shoes of a felony warrant detective, a newly created position Lavagnino lobbied often for over the past year and half, he said.

“If you’re persistent and you believe in something, just keep hammering at it. Eventually, I think everybody finally saw the writing on the wall that I wasn’t going to go away on this issue,” Lavagnino said. “I’m just glad we’re finally going to address what I think was a glaring hole in our justice system.”

At an April Board of Supervisors meeting, Lavagnino noted that there were more than 1,800 people wanted on active felony warrants throughout Santa Barbara County, according to Sheriff’s Office data at the time. The new warrant detective will help decrease that number, Lavagnino explained.

Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown told the Sun in a statement that the compliance team’s disbanding won’t stop the Sheriff’s Office from investigating, citing, or arresting “those who break the law by illicitly growing, manufacturing, possessing for sale, or trafficking marijuana.”

“We will also continue to ensure that licensed cannabis growers and distributors are compliant with state and local law,” Brown added.

The Board of Supervisors’ June 17 decision also diverted some cannabis tax revenue to help nurture mental health services at a local nonprofit.

Second District Supervisor Laura Capps proposed the $240,000 allocation to help the Immigrant Legal Defense Center hire two new therapists. The firm has offices in Santa Barbara and Santa Maria.

“When I learned that there was only one therapist who was dealing directly with the families of those who have been deported, and there was a backlog of 65 people right now, today, wanting help, it just spoke to my heart,” Capps said. “In my view, and in the view of many, we are in a crisis right now when it comes to these deportations and the fear that’s coming from ICE. … So, I wanted to see if we could do something very meaningful with the cannabis funds to help address the crisis.”

Capps led a brief presentation at the board’s June 17 hearing that outlined what she learned from Immigrant Legal Defense Center Executive Director Julissa Peña about some of the nonprofit’s current clients.

One of Capps’ examples was about a 5-year-old Santa Maria resident who’s struggling with separation anxiety but “benefiting from [the center’s] one existing counselor right now,” she told the Sun.

“He’s a citizen and his mother’s awaiting a deportation hearing, and it likely won’t go well. So, she’s making this excruciating choice to potentially leave him in the states. … Many of the people needing these mental health services are children and they’re citizens,” Capps said. “I hope that no matter how you feel about what the Trump administration is doing, … you would still see that there’s ramifications that need to be addressed.

“Therapists can’t wave magic wands, but they can really help, … with coping skills, at least to help soften the devastation,” Capps continued. “Beyond the money and beyond the therapists, I’m proud of the signal this sends that this county stands with this community, the immigrant community.”

Supervisor Lavagnino said he got a negative email about the decision a few days later.

“The person was saying, ‘Hey, this isn’t our responsibility. I’m a taxpayer, and I don’t support this.’ And I was like, ‘Well, first off, that’s why it didn’t come out of property tax, sales tax, or TOT [transient occupancy tax], so the average taxpayer did not pay for this,’” Lavagnino told the Sun. “It came out of the cannabis funds that’s paid for by the cannabis growers.”

Lavagnino called Capps’ route an “ingenious” way to show support for local immigrant families “while still staying in our lane, … [and] not getting involved in the political theater of it.”

“These kids are caught up in a situation they didn’t create,” Lavagnino said.

Reach Senior Staff Writer Caleb Wiseblood at cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.

This article appears in Jul 3-10, 2025.