SUPERVISORS' ROAD TO RICHES: MORE PAVING, MORE PAYOUTS, ZERO QUESTIONS

It appears the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, in their infinite wisdom and bottomless public purse, has decided our roads weren't quite rehabilitated enough. Or perhaps, the initial rehabilitation just wasn't rehabilitating *their* campaign coffers quite enough. This week, an agenda item sailed through, approving a 'First Amendment' to a paving contract that somehow requires an extra $315,000 for what was already approved. Don't worry, taxpayers, it's all for your benefit, they insist, even if the benefit seems to accrue more directly to 'Souza Engineering Contracting, Inc.' and whatever nebulous 'supplemental work' they've conjured up.

The real genius here, of course, is how these fiscal magicians manage to declare this multi-million-dollar endeavor 'exempt from the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act.' Apparently, pouring more asphalt and spending more public funds on 'existing streets' is so utterly benign it requires no environmental scrutiny whatsoever. One wonders if the environmentalists, so quick to chain themselves to a redwood over a bicycle path, suddenly become blind when a politically connected contractor is involved.

But let's be fair to our hard-working supervisors. It's not easy managing a county where the cost of a pothole repair inflates faster than the price of a beachfront bungalow. And who can fault them for trusting their 'Director of Public Works' to approve nearly half a million in 'change orders' and 'supplemental work items' without bothering the Board? It’s almost as if they've found a magic money tree that only blossoms when 'pavement rehabilitation' is whispered into its roots. The Whipping Post suspects that this particular money tree has very deep pockets indeed, and they're not yours. It's just business as usual in this county, where transparency is optional and your tax dollars are merely suggestions for future expenditures.