CHIEF'S 'EXECUTIVE FUNCTION' FAILS? MORE LIKE COUNTY'S EXECUTIVE BRAIN DEAD!

Oh, bless their hearts. The Santa Barbara Independent is wringing its hands over the county's supposed 'executive function' deficit, which sounds less like a governance problem and more like a term paper title one might expect from a 'studies' major at some expensive, underperforming private university. While they ponder which flavor of progressive-speak best describes bureaucratic sluggishness, the real story, as always, is that our perpetually-in-power establishment has perfected the art of making 'executive function' sound like a complex, unavoidable malady, rather than a symptom of decades of unchecked growth, bloated budgets, and an utter lack of accountability.

Indeed, when every problem is a 'systemic issue' requiring more committees, more consultants, and certainly more taxpayer dollars, it's no wonder our county offices resemble a permanent slow-motion re-enactment of 'Office Space.' Perhaps the 'executive function' is simply working as intended: ensuring an ever-expanding class of administrators earns generous pensions while achieving as little measurable progress as humanly possible. Maybe it's not a bug, but a feature designed to keep the gravy train chugging through the Montecito hills.

The Independent, in its earnest attempt to catalog the dysfunction, misses the obvious: When you elect the same people, with the same ideologies, promising the same 'solutions' that involve more government, you get precisely the executive function—or lack thereof—that you deserve. Perhaps a true 'executive function' would involve trimming the fat, cutting regulations, and letting the actual executive (the taxpayer) breathe for once. But that, of course, would require a level of common sense that has long been outsourced from our local political discourse.

Perhaps if our local leaders focused less on virtue signaling and more on actually, you know, governing efficiently, they wouldn't need a newspaper to tell them their 'executive function' is on the fritz. The good news? President Trump's second term promises a federal mandate for efficiency and accountability, which might just force some overdue Spring cleaning, even in our perpetually 'enlightened' corner of California.