In a new episode of Newsmakers TV, political reporter Josh Molina takes aim at the bad optics emitted by the Board of Supervisors this week, in awarding themselves a five percent pay increase.
Conducting a hasty bit of lowball business, four supervisors thought it a fine idea to boost their salary package – currently $140,000 in total compensation, counting benefits atop a $107,097 annual wage -- by more than $6,000 a year. Two cheers for Fourth District Supe Bob Nelson (“I took the job knowing that pay doesn’t equal the workload”), the only one with the smidge of common sense needed to oppose the move.
Don’t even get us started on the 20 percent they spiked their auto allowances.
More galling even than the self-dealing salary bump, at a time when the financial struggles of local residents to afford housing and the steep cost of Central Coast living top the public policy agenda, was the woe-is-me tone board president and First District Supervisor Das Williams, felt compelled to sound.
“I basically would not be able to do this job if my wife wasn’t basically heavily subsidizing this effort,” whinged Das, who’s been feeding at the public trough for two decades.
We should be so lucky.
Elsewhere on the county docket, Nick Welsh details, Sheriff Bill Brown extended his feud with staff and supervisors over future funding for local jails, a complex and consequential conflict that involves both costly budgetary issues and ideological policy differences over the proper balance of public safety concerns and criminal justice reforms.
And KEYT’s Lily Dallow joins the gang to discuss the history-making Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto, the Grand Marshal of this year’s Fiesta Parade, the first Barbareño Chumash elder to be selected to play a prominent role in Santa Barbara’s biggest annual community bash, a traditional tribute to the Spanish colonial era which this year spotlights a new sensibility, sensitivity and openness to cultural diversity,
Plus: A simmering debate at City Hall over a special housing fund; a big new tiny home community for the homeless; Jason Harris, we hardly knew ye.; and all you need to know about Chubby Checker's big block party.
All this and more, right here, right now on Newsmakers TV.
JR
Check out the latest episode via YouTube below or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here. TVSB, Cox Cable Channel 17, airs the show at 8 p.m. Monday-Friday and at 9 a.m. on weekends. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program at 5:30 p.m. on Monday.
Lead image: New Yorker cartoon.
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