Santa Barbara County Supervisors Are Planning to Give Themselves a 48% Raise
‘They typically only meet three times a month on average, and they are off for all holidays’
By Katy Grimes, February 12, 2025 5:15 pm
On February 25, 2025, the Santa Barbara County Supervisors are planning to give themselves a 48% raise.
You read that right.
According to Andy Caldwell, Executive Director of the government watchdog COLAB (coalition of labor, agriculture and business), that means they will be making $171, 309 per year for a part-time job. They currently are paid $115,000.
Can you imagine voting yourself a $56,000 raise? It’s laughable. It is also outrageous and unethical. Santa Barbara County does not have a budget surplus – they are faced with a growing deficit of “$23 million over the next five years.”
And of course, this pay increase will also serve to spike their pensions, meaning they will earn more in retirement because of the raise.
If they don’t like their current $115,000 salary for a part time job, then maybe they should find other work.
Caldwell explains the details in a recent column:
“It was strange timing when the county board of supervisors set in motion a 48% raise ($56,000!) for themselves when on the same 2/11/2025 agenda, they had to eat crow, and lots of it, by awarding a four- year contract for ambulance services to American Medical Response.
As a way of background, AMR and County Fire competed for an ambulance contract which AMR won fair and square. Nonetheless, the supervisors canceled the bid. Then the sups pretended they would have County Fire and AMR share a contract only to pull a switcheroo at the end and sole source the contract to County Fire.
AMR sued and got a 76-page preliminary court injunction against the county because it was blatantly obvious the county cheated AMR out of the contract. Not only that, but the State Attorney General and the State Emergency Management Agency also weighed in because they too believed the county broke the laws governing ambulance contracting. In my 34-year career as a county government watchdog, this was the dirtiest deal I have ever seen.
Moreover, while still in the original bidding process, County Fire secretly bought some $3 million worth of ambulances and hid them at Vandenberg (COLAB exposed this trickeration). Then, while the case was in litigation, county fire rented an airplane hangar to store the ambulances for some $15,000 per month. And finally, the supervisors spent some $1 million in attorney’s fees to defend this debacle.
Instead of asking for a raise, the supervisors should issue an apology to taxpayers. Regardless, the sups have scheduled a hearing for Feb. 25 to give themselves a 48% raise, meaning their salaries would go from $115,00 per year to $171,000 per year for a part-time job, not to mention the associated pension spiking that is going on here. Our representatives in Congress make only slightly more than this- $174,000!”
Caldwell adds:
“I know that being a county supervisor is a part-time job because several supervisors kept working in the private sector while they were on the board. For instance, newly elected Supervisor Roy Lee owns and operates a very popular restaurant in Carpinteria. The late Supervisor Joni Gray kept practicing law while former Supervisor Peter Adam still helped run his farming company. Furthermore, this year, the board of sups is only meeting 36 times. They typically only meet three times a month on average, and they are off for all holidays, including two weeks at Christmas, not to mention a four-week break every summer!”
Lastly, for the purpose of justifying this obscene salary hike, the county supervisors are comparing themselves to eight of the largest counties in the state, including Los Angeles County, which has a population of some 10 million people, and a $30 billion budget, Caldwell said.
To paint more of picture of this lot, Caldwell told the Globe that Santa Barbara county is also going ahead with plans to hire a DEI manager right in the county CEO’s office. While the pressure to hire DEI managers and implement DEI practices is now gone thanks to the new presidential administration, and most businesses and agencies are doing away with the insidious and useless programs, Santa Barbara public officials are digging their heels in and doubling down… on stupid.
These charlatans are also recalcitrant. Where is Santa Barbara County Counsel?
Perhaps the voters in Santa Barbara County can make a case for willful negligence – deliberate, reckless, with the intentional disregard for others.
These are the shameless charlatan “public servants:”
Roy Lee, First District Supervisor – roylee@countyofsb.org
Laura Capps, Second District- lcapps@countyofsb.org
Joan Hartmann, Third District- jhartmann@countyofsb.org
Bob Nelson, Fourth District- Nelson@bos.countyofsb.org
Steve Lavagnino, Fifth District- steve.lavagnino@countyofsb.org
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Are these people out of their minds?
If you knew nothing more than that these supervisors were planning to vote themselves an unthinkable 48% raise for what is part-time work you’d know they were the usual destructive politicians (and Dems, no doubt, by the way) doing a very bad and harmful job for Santa Barbara County. And sure enough the list of their shameless acts above is right there in black and white.
It WOULD be a good thing (and an entirely appropriate one) for SB County voters to “make a case for willful negligence – deliberate, reckless, with intentional disregard for others,” as Katy Grimes suggested.
Anyway, who cares if a Chair and Vice Chair comprise 40% of a deliberative body.
Let’s use a little DEI logic here that just might shame these shameless clowns.
I see from the picture that the majority of the board is WHITE! So let that set in😉
According to the DEI Gods..The only supervisor who would qualify for a 48% raise would be Supervisor Lee. But if there were standard DEI guidelnes put in place then he/him
would only get a 38% raise because he is a male. However, if he identifies as LGBTQ then we could raise it back to 48% increase.
Recall them all! They are obscene to think they deserve that type of raise on taxpayer dollars!
Great point! Ha ha
Alex, I’ll take “airline flight attendants” for $171,000.
All current members of the County Board of Supervisors are affiliated with the Democratic Party. Like typical members of the criminal Democrat mafia, no doubt they’re enriching themselves with all the grift and graft that they can?
Katy Grimes asked where is is Santa Barbara County Counsel? The County Counsel for Santa Barbara County is Rachel Van Mullem whom the Board of Supervisors appointed on May 18, 2021. Maybe she’s a member of the criminal Democrat mafia as well? She has an annual salary of $201,106 according to public records which was 145 percent higher than the average and 146 percent higher than the median salary in Santa Barbara County.
(https://govsalaries.com/van-mullem-rachel-69771170)
Wow, disgusting but not unexpected, of course.
Thanks for posting this TJ.
Blue governments do this. Give themselves a raise.
Enough to puke a dog off a gutwagon. Have these crazy Dems no shame?
They are giving themselves big pay raises because they are very concerned about vulnerable populations. This is Democrat logic.
How typical of clueless politicians. Is it torches and ax handles time yet?