Lompoc’s little rebate program for local residents seems to be backfiring.
After the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office charged City Councilmember Steve Bridge with a litany of offenses, including committing fraud on the energy and conservation rebate program applications, the city is taking a closer look at things.
As part of the city’s annual audit for the last fiscal year, it found 11 questionable rebate payments—including a couple received by City Manager Dean Albro.
Mayor Jim Mosby said he was “astonished” to see that two of the payments that probably shouldn’t have been processed went to Albro. The city manager did recuse himself from the discussion and insisted that he followed program guidelines and didn’t break any rules or laws.
But he didn’t include a contractor’s license number on his applications, and apparently he wasn’t the only one. At least Bridge “ginned up” a license number for his application, amirite? Bridge is saying the same thing: innocent, man!
Isn’t Albro the one responsible for running the program? Should he benefit from something like that?
Lompoc Utility Commissioner Martin Bender thinks not.
“At the end of the day, my bigger concern was that you had a city manager who also submitted rebates improperly, and he’s supposed to oversee the program,” Bender said.
On top of all that, the city seems to have run the program in a slapdash manner that may have been confusing for residents—with changing rules about licensed contractors and other things. Mosby said he didn’t think that residents were intentionally filing fraudulent applications.
“I think there was a level of—from what I see—it was a level of innocence, ignorance, complacency, apathy that was going on with the process,” Mosby said.
Now, the city is going to hold a third-party review of the rebate program that goes back at least two years. You think they’ll find other city officials doing things they shouldn’t be doing?
In Solvang, there seems to be some debate over what city officials should be doing when it comes to their personal business matters. Yes. The City Council is still talking about Mayor David Brown’s Solvang Passport app.
Now, council members are tinkering with adding a line into the ethics code—“Members of the City Council shall promptly notify staff and the City Council of any new material financial interests that arise during the members’ term in office.”
It’s too “self-policing,” according to Councilmember Elizabeth Orona, whose hitch in her giddy-up about this app seems to be getting bigger by the day.
“I do not agree necessarily with self-policing ethics,” she said, adding that the policy essentially needed more teeth.
How else would someone disclose new financial ties? Somebody else reporting it? I guess that’s what happened in this case—a business owner inquired about what he initially thought was a city-owned app that businesses could participate in.
And it spawned this months-long conversation about Brown and what he was allowed to do off the dais. Solvang Skate Shop owner Robby Hargreaves apologized for his role in all of this, telling the council on April 27 that he didn’t mean to cause any hardship.
“I look at you as a mentor, and I love you,” Hargreaves said during public comment. “I’m not taking a shot at you, Dave.”
The Canary is guessing there’s no love lost. Send some to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in April 30 – May 7, 2026.