Santa Barbara County Grand Jury
• 2012-2013
• Agency Response
Salud Carbajal First District, Chair Board of Supervisors Janet Wolf County Administration Building Lille*
⚠️ Translation Notice: This content has been automatically translated. The original English text is the official version. Translation may contain errors.
⚠️ Este contenido ha sido traducido automáticamente. El texto original en inglés es la versión oficial. La traducción puede contener errores.
Findings and Recommendations 4 findings
F1
The principle vehicle for taxing oil production in California, the property tax, was lowered substantially with the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978. The Board agrees with the finding.
Related Recommendations (1)
R1
That the members of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors follow the recommendation of the Chief (County) Executive Officer of the County of Santa Barbara and allow the voters to decide if an oil production tax will be implemented by putting the issue on the next county-wide ballot. This recommendation requires further analysis. On February 14, 2012, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors considered and voted in open session on a motion to place a general tax on oil production before the voters. That motion received a 3-2 vote. The placement of a general tax on a ballot requires a 4/5 vote of the Board of Supervisors therefore the general tax on oil production was not put on the ballot. The oil production tax could be reconsidered, after further analysis, of the date of the reports publication date. Sincerely, COS Salud Carbajal, Chair Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors CC: Ted Sten, Foreman, 2013-14 Santa Barbara Civil Grand Jury
F2
The County of Santa Barbara is facing estimated budget gaps of $5 million in Fiscal Year 2013-14 and $13.7 million in Fiscal Year 2014-2015. The Board partially disagrees with the finding. The $5 million Fiscal Year 2013-2014 budget gap was eliminated when the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors adopted a balanced budget on June 14, 2013
No recommendations for this finding
F3
Once the proposed North County Jail opens, its operating cost is projected to deplete the Santa Barbara County General Fund by $17.3 million annually. The Board agrees with the finding.
No recommendations for this finding
F4
An oil production tax could generate essential new and ongoing revenue for the County. The Board agrees with the finding.
No recommendations for this finding
* This report's PDF did not contain easily extractable text and required Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for analysis. There may be minor errors in the extracted findings and recommendations due to OCR limitations with scanned documents.