AnonymousBy an edhat reader
Susan Epstein abruptly dropped out of the 2nd District Board of Supervisor race yesterday in an email stating “personal reasons.” Epstein had quite a big backing and it seemed to be a bit of a shock for her dropping out of the race. While I hope she and her family are ok, it’s left me wondering who, if anyone, will challenge Gregg Hart in this race? There are 3 months to go to the primary and I’d like to see another challenger, is anyone else thinking of throwing their hat in the ring?
That number includes medical and dental and pension benefits. Last time I looked they made about 86K per year in actual salary, but there have been two small increases since then . There are a bunch of Department heads and their assistants who make more than that. Pretty strange when the bosses make less than the minions.
Why would you assume anyone would run against Hart? The Dem machine muscled another qualified candidate out of the race to allow their preselected candidate an open field. Just hope we don’t get our own little local Trump to run and repeat the loss caused by similar backroom dealings at the DNC.
Hart is a shoe-in…DNC only talks about diversity and transparency to get votes. Has anyone visited San Francico lately? OMG!!!
Taxpayers pay the full $140,000 to each supervisors. County unions decide how much of that $140,000 gets spent on tax free benefits for each supervisor. If they don’t like this take-home pay they need to tell the unions to find cheaper tax free benefits, so they can freely spend more take home pay on themselves.
Supervisors have very little power and even less discretionary county spending, since the vast majority of the county budget is pass-through funding for categorical projects. Their primary job is general oversight and bringing in the perspective of their own districts to the final decision making process. The hired County CEO does the real work.
The supervisors are figureheads handing out favors that ensure their next election. For $140,000 of our tax dollars each. There is no reason they should be paid so much and zero reason they should ever receive a taxpayer funded lifetime pension.
Maybe there was a backroom deal for another slot somewhere else?
They get paid the full amount – they chose how they want this full amount allocated between benefits, perks and take home pay. Taxpayers pay for the benefits. This amount does not just drop out of the sky. It is 100% funded by the taxpayers. That is the only way to look at how elected officials are paid. What we pay them; not what they choose to tqke home as cash versus what they also get as taxpayer funded benefits.
They get paid the full amount – they chose how they want this full amount allocated between benefits, perks and take home pay. Taxpayers pay for the benefits. This amount does not just drop out of the sky. It is 100% funded by the taxpayers. That is the only way to look at how elected officials are paid. What we pay them; not what they choose to tqke home as cash versus what they also get as taxpayer funded benefits.
Why should they make more when they do so little. The administrative staff does all the work. They have few actual duties and they did chose to be elected public servants. This is not intended to be a career choice.
They are not the bosses. The county CEO is the boss. The supervisors merely oversee the county CEO, not the individual employees. These are your elected public servants. And they are obviously over-paid for what they do. And fail to do, like ensure the budget is balanced and county infrastructure is maintained.
Hart has ruined Santa Barbara. Lord only knows what he will do to Santa Barbara. I am praying for a miracle to save us!
Local Dems = loons! They brought us dumb as dirt Friedman and Murillo. Please send us someone with a high IQ and critical analysis skills! If we get Hart we are doomed!
Murillo = Trump’ish Dem! Hart is almost as bad. Hate to say it be we need a Republican to save us from the Local Democratic Party. They are a bunch of nuts as far as I am concerned. – This is coming from a STRONG Bernie supporter and a Bernie 2020 girl!
It’s actually not a great job, the base pay is only about 100K, much less than many of the Department Heads that they supervise. That’s why Das won’t stay very long. Why is Roger Aceves staying out of the race? How about Helene Schneider if she makes a quick move to be in the District?
civilengineer, with salary plus benefits, Janet Wolf received $142,000 in 2016, the last year listed in Transparent California.
I think the filing date closes in a couple of weeks so whoever decides to run against Hart and his deep pockets will have to move quickly. Hopefully, there will be someone like Wolf who makes the effort to get along with those she may disagree with politically.
Don’t assume the candidate who dropped out is dirty. Why not assume the candidate who stayed in is the one playing dirty tricks. At this point, nothing is gained spreading rumors one way or the other. Keep an open mind.
To enter elective politics is a voluntary act. Follow the money if you want to learn what is dirty in politics. Who has the most financially at stake, and what will they do to stay in power. In county government, millions of tax dollars are in play – who hands out those millions of dollars. And most importantly, to whom. Start with the county budget, if you want to rumor monger.
Gregg Hart does have a curious history in Santa Barbara politics. When Hart first served on city council a number of years ago, he was part of the decision team that created the City’s current fiscal meltdown. Now when it comes time to clean it up in the City, Hart bails out. Hart now wants to leaver the City of Santa Barbara with its billion dollar unfunded liability for employee pensions and crumbling infrastructure, that Hart helped create during his first stint in office. What will Hart do for the County of Santa Barbara who is also facing similar long-term fiscal mismanagement? Hart’s last act for the city was to raise taxes in order attempting to cover over his own role in the City’s current fiscal meltdown. Past is prologue.
We need to remember these are non-partisan offices. Get party politics out of our school boards, city hall and board of supervisors. We don’t need career politicians from either party. We need neutral, citizen over-sight who understand tax dollar funded balance sheets.
I have to say that it a appears there is an organized alert that goes out to trolls from the far right to dump nasty aspersions and unsupported innuendo on any publicity mentioning centerist or progressive politicians or government employees. It is so tiresome. We need public service and we need to pay public servants a fair salary least we end up with corrupt and incompetent leadership and service that can be bought by any private bidder. Do we want this country to end up like Russia?
I don’t see a lot of far right opinions here. Even progressive and democrat voters can tire of backroom shenanigans and false choices that the parties present to us. Hart is the epitome of a Dem Machine candidate and to have him run unopposed by anyone on the political spectrum does our town a disservice.
As an ex-county employee/drudge, you do have a point. I laugh when people complain about the overpaid government worker; I never made more than maybe 32K. I agree, the benefits were good. The working conditions and bs were horrible. And I worked HARD, as did my colleagues, at pretty thankless, often public jobs.
93109, how did Hart ruin SB?
We do pay our public employees exceptionally well. How they chose to spend that money is their problem. But they are paid extremely well. Transparent California has been a huge breakthrough to establish what has been going on behind the scenes that created the current massive unfunded liabilities the city and county now face. Roll up your sleeves and let’s work on a solution. Reduce compensation packages, terminate those who attempt to extort taxpayer dollars, reorganize the administrative chart, cross train redundant employees, and bring back non-partisan over-sight to the elected governing boards.
You need launch a good discussion topic with your comment about government employees – pay us what we demand, or we else will rob you blind and abuse our positions of power.
How many of you spend $55,000 a year on medical and dental insurance and save the rest for your retirement out of your $140,000 a year compensation packages? Plus paying $1000 a year in union dues. This is how the county employees chose to receive their compensation packages. By keeping the “salary” part low and the tax-free benefits high, they do pay less in income taxes.
Who is benefiting from no competition in this race? Obviously the coffers of the local Democrat Party and their friends who support the Democrat agenda PAC’s who have an existential interest in the outcomes of each local election. This is a way to not follow the money in this election. There will be no money spent.
The commentors here do not generally reflect SB views as they are against many of the politicians that have no trouble getting elected. Must be very irritating to have your views ignored by the nonposting majority.
Ironically, the city election process is set up which does allow a less than majority vote candidate to win. This has happened now twice in recent years (Schneider and Murillo). That means the majority of voters wishes are getting ignored, by this minority of voter windfall. What did Murillo get – 28% of the vote in a far too broad of a candidate field? This means the 72% of the voters who did not want her, did get ignored. Yes, that is irritating, but that is the way it is right now. What do you think the chances are for mayoral election reform getting passed by this current highly partisan city council? Let’s convert this to a two stage process: a primary to select the top two mayoral candidates and then a final election between those two top vote getters. We do this for other races that generate a large field of candidates.
Transparent California discloses what each county and city employee make today, plus what pensions they now receive for life. Look them up by name or by job title. The average county or city worker today makes well over $100,000 a year and the pensions their now receive for life are staggering. Never forget, it is what each government worker costs the taxpayers that drives our unsustainable public debt. This huge goverment pension hole is now crowding out our current ability to attend to our public infrastructure, roads, let alone cover any improvements. We are sinking under public debt to support government workers who are very generously rewarded today. After 1999, everything changed so measure any prior government workers complaints about being “under-paid” from that date forward. Yes, Gregg Hart was around back then when he failed to stop this huge gap we see now between government income and government employee expenses. That is how he played a role ruining this town. he refused to account for the numbers that were guaranteed never to work, and has taken government union member money for his campaigns ever since.