Local governments have been making and/or crossing some interesting boundaries lately.
Lompoc is trying to prevent the too-long arm of the state from taking away the city’s control over where it puts new housing, which hasn’t really been happening in the city of arts and flowers.
“Last year we built zero homes,” Mayor Jim Mosby said at the June 16 meeting. “The year before that we built two single-family residences.” And this year, he said, they’ve got a few accessory dwelling units planned.
The city needs to pick up its pace: The state says Lompoc must plan to build 2,248 units by February 2031. Otherwise Sacramento will come in and overrule its objections to expansion. So, the City Council just approved some denser infill construction on Ocean Avenue and is trying to set precedent for more such plans.
“[How] I’m trying to look is proactive so that we don’t get our butts in a ringer and the state come in and mandating and doing this,” Mosby said.
In other corners of the Central Coast, there are a few new flavors of overreach: homestyle low-carb bread and salty-spicy trademark protection.
The Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office teamed up with the DAs from Ventura and Riverside counties to sue Kroger two years ago over labeling on a store brand of bread.
Consumer complaints about inconsistent and false labeling of Kroger’s Carbmaster bread somehow reached the ears of the county DA’s Office, prompting an investigator to take photos of the labels. Sure enough, the bread’s front label didn’t match the back, and it advertised fewer calories than it really contained per slice.
Is this really in the DA’s jurisdiction? Kroger didn’t think so.
One of Kroger’s Los Angeles-based defense attorneys, Jacob M. Harper, described the district attorney’s offices’ “efforts to ‘fix’ alleged packaging errors” as “overreaching.”
“The district attorneys may not, as a matter of law, enforce federal standards regarding FDA [Food and Drug Administration] Panel labeling,” Harper argued in court.
Nevertheless, the county Superior Court judge sided with the counties earlier this month and ordered Kroger to pay $1.25 million in civil penalties.
Meanwhile in Solvang, our little Danish town that could, a recent City Council discussion delved into copyright issues connected to Mayor David Brown’s app that invites people to “play at your own risk of having fun.”
Back in March, Councilmember Elizabeth Orona noticed that drone video footage on the Solvang Passport app looked like it was lifted from the official city website. Brown later removed the video from the app and added fine print stating that his app isn’t affiliated with the city. But that wasn’t enough.
At the June 22 council meeting, Orona wanted the city to officially copyright everything, which would have cost thousands plus $900 per hour in attorney’s fees.
Turns out, adding some basic fine print will cover their copyright. The council majority went that route, but not before Orona made a last jab.
“I hope no one steals any of our stuff.”
The Canary can’t reach very far. Send an Inspector Gadget appendage to canary@santamarisun.com.
This article appears in June 25 – July 2, 2026.
