There were no literal weapons in the recent skirmishes on battlefields at the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors hearing room and Superior Court. Just sharp words, pointed memos, unassailable lawsuits. This was “lawfare.”
Fourth District Supervisor Bob Nelson used that term to describe what American Medical Response (AMR) “deployed” to get its new four-year contract, which three of his fellow supervisors recently approved.
The ambulance company sued the county in 2023 because the supervisors overruled the Local Emergency Medical Services Authority (LEMSA), which had originally awarded the contract to AMR, and gave the contract to the county Fire Department instead. Going against LEMSA violated the state’s request for proposal rules, and shortly after the AMR lawsuit was filed, state Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a brief in the case questioning the county’s methods. In addition, a Santa Barbara County Superior Court judge granted an injunction against the county Fire Department contract and extended AMR’s contract.
Now the fire chiefs of the county are pissed, even though they wouldn’t have gotten the contract. Better it go to the county than a private company that doesn’t have the same accountability as government entities, amirite?
“AMR has a documented history of unreliable response times, yet the county is deciding today to potentially extend that contract for another four years,” Lompoc Fire Department Chief Brian Fallon told the supervisors during their Feb. 11 meeting.
Seriously, though, the supes may have had the right idea—to improve ambulance response times—but they did it in the wrong way.
They did try to bake some accountability into the contract, which Lars Seifert with the Public Health Department said was “a leading effort” in the state to monitor delivery of care. Basically AMR would have to pay a fine if it didn’t respond to at least 90 percent top priority calls in under eight minutes. For anything less than that, AMR must pay penalties, and if AMR dips below that 90 percent standard for three months in a row, it’d be a breach of contract, Seifert said.
On a different front, the board also made moves to protect itself from lawfare coming from local vintners. Four winemakers protested and one angry vintner threatened a lawsuit if the supervisors approved the wine business improvement district (BID), which they did on Feb. 11. According to county Deputy CEO Brittany Odermann, the agreement with the Santa Barbara County Vintners Association “would indemnify the county.”
Vintners Association CEO Alison Laslett has said that the regional BID is “meant to represent all wineries equally,” using a 1 percent tax on all direct-to-consumer winery sales to fund marketing of the entire region.
That equal treatment needs to begin now because it hasn’t looked so fair, which is why Lompoc initially voted against joining—though Councilmember Victor Vega later changed his vote to join.
Laslett had said that if the BID passes, it would have 300 members. But the 129 supporting wineries make up nearly 60 percent of the BID—in average wine sales. That’s not the same as 60 percent support winery-wise. The four protesting wineries made up less than 2 percent of sales. How’s this going to even out, without lawfare?
The Canary has double indemnity. Send legal pads to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 13-23, 2025.