SUPERVISORS MOUSETRAP TAXPAYERS IN 'TRAIN'ING DAY SCHEME!

Santa Barbara County Supervisors, in their infinite wisdom and boundless enthusiasm for paperwork, are poised to rubber-stamp an exciting new Memorandum of Understanding with the California Department of Public Health. This 'MOU' provides our local health department with 'Secondary Administrative and Course Provider access' to something called the 'TRAIN Learning Management System.' What is it? Nobody knows! But rest assured, dear taxpayer, it involves 'governmental fiscal activities' and isn't a 'project' according to CEQA, so your money will magically disappear without a trace of environmental impact. It's the fiscal equivalent of a tree falling in a forest where no one, especially auditors, is around to hear it.

Now, any sensible person (read: anyone who doesn't work for the county) might ask: what exactly are these 'courses'? Is this where public health officials learn exciting new ways to tell us what we can and cannot do? Are they brushing up on their 'emergency response' to a paper cut? The agenda from the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, in its usual impenetrable prose, offers no clarity. Just sign here, citizen, and trust the process, because clearly our Supervisors are too busy to read the fine print — or too eager to sign on the dotted line for whatever the state dangles in front of them.

And behold, the Director of County Health (or 'designee,' because why name names?) gets to 'modify or terminate' this golden ticket to administrative access whenever they please, with a nod from County Counsel. It's almost as if they've crafted a perpetual motion machine of bureaucratic self-sustenance, where public health dollars train themselves in mysterious ways, yielding zero tangible benefit but endless opportunities for 'professional development.' Prepare for a future where county employees are 'certified' in 'synergy facilitation for cross-departmental stakeholder engagement' using our hard-earned cash.