The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office’s contract with a rental car company for its law enforcement vehicle fleet gives a whole new meaning to the company’s slogan: “Enterprise. We’ll pick you up” … in handcuffs.
Since 2021, the Sheriff’s Office has rented its fleet from Enterprise at a cost of $3 million with an additional $450,000 surprise request for approval from the county Board of Supervisors at the end of the pilot five-year contract due to “unanticipated” “pandemic-driven” cost increases. Second District Supervisor Laura Capps was not happy.
She pulled the item from the Nov. 4 consent agenda and had some things to say about the department’s expenses.
“We’ve had a pattern of unanticipated costs from the sheriff’s department,” Capps said at the meeting. “An unanticipated cost to me would signal that, maybe, it’s not working.”
“There’s been a lot of unanticipated costs from the sheriff’s department and I’m repeating myself because of the consternation that has caused, not just to the board but to other departments and to the public,” she added. “This one gives me less heartburn because it’s not additional pressure on the general fund at a time when we’re considering layoffs in other departments.”
I wonder how much heartburn Capps has from Sheriff Bill Brown declining to acquiesce to the board’s request that his department inform them about notifications the Sheriff’s Office receives regarding ICE operations. I bet there’s a little animosity in there, dontcha think?
It’s rough when the elected sheriff doesn’t have to do what the elected county governing body asks of him. And even with purse-string power, it always seems like the board is begrudgingly funding Brown’s extra department “needs.”
But at least the county’s law enforcement arm does have to abide by one former Santa Barbara County supervisor’s piece of legislation—even though it really doesn’t want to!
Assemblymember Gregg Hart (D-Santa Barbara) took the law into his own hands and with the help of his fellow legislators and the governor made it so the local sheriff’s offices that oversee the local coroner’s offices don’t get to use in-house help to autopsy in-custody deaths. Which makes so much sense, if you think about it even just a little bit.
But Brown’s department is offended by the notion. One of his lieutenants told the Sun they were in “lockstep” with the State Sheriffs’ Association, which opposed Hart’s bill and called it “unnecessary and a solution to a problem that just doesn’t exist.”
Um. Just because you don’t think it’s a problem doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. We are one of three states left in the United States that does things this way—so, clearly, it’s a problem.
A 2024 county grand jury report examining in-custody deaths recommended an independent autopsy in those cases, but Brown declined the suggestion, saying, “While there could be a perception of a potential conflict of interest, … our agency has never been found to have had an actual conflict of interest.”
But even the perception of a conflict damages public trust, Hart said. And just because you’ve never been “found” to have one doesn’t mean a conflict of interest doesn’t exist.
“There is no confidence in those investigations and those circumstances,” Hart said.
Exactly.
The Canary has a conflict of interest with coal mines. Send fresh air to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 6 – Nov 13, 2025.