MEMORY HOLE: COUNTY HALL CONVENIENTLY FORGETS CALIFORNIA EVER HAD REAL LEADERSHIP

James Fenkner over at the Santa Barbara Current dropped a fascinating history lesson this week about a trailblazing governor our local ruling class would prefer kept in a lead-lined vault. Leave it to our distinguished friends at the Current—who apparently still possess library cards and the audacity to read actual history—to spoil County Hall's afternoon wine spritzer by reminding everyone that California was not always a bankrupt, pothole-riddled playground run by coastal zoning commissars and public-sector union bosses.

It is no accident that modern Santa Barbara conveniently misplaced this chapter of the South Coast's heritage. In the minds of our local progressive electeds, world history only officially began when the first CEQA lawsuit was filed and the first boutique bike lane ran four million dollars over budget. Acknowledge a past chief executive who championed private enterprise, respected constitutional restraint, and treated taxpayers like citizens rather than automated cash dispensers? Perish the thought. That kind of dangerous nostalgia might cause local property owners to wonder why their current county parcel fees and water surcharges rival the gross domestic product of a mid-sized European principality.

Instead, the local progressive machine and its cheerleaders in the legacy press prefer to canonize bureaucrats whose crowning achievements involve conducting five-year environmental impact reports on crosswalk repainting. While Sacramento scrambles to paper over eye-watering deficits and County Hall quietly rubber-stamps pension liabilities while choking out domestic energy producers, the collective historical amnesia is purely protective. If regular folks are reminded that California once cultivated booming domestic oil production, affordable living, and reliable roads without bowing to green-lobby consultants, the whole progressive sales pitch falls apart completely.

So hats off to the Current for doing the archival heavy lifting that the county's self-appointed cultural curators somehow overlooked. Next week, maybe Fenkner can track down another long-lost California relic that County Hall has declared extinct: a balanced state budget and a business permit approved in under a decade.