Although the Board of Supervisors’ divided decision Monday to move forward with its consideration of a $1-per-barrel tax on onshore oil producers didn’t officially place the item on next summer’s ballot, the direction of the conversation and the dynamic among the supervisors suggests the resolution could, indeed, be put before voters in June with implications far and wide.
If the proposal makes it to the ballot and is approved by 66 percent of voters, the revenue would fill county coffers to the tune of more than $3 million a year. And if the tax were enacted, it would make Santa Barbara County the first of California’s 58 counties to impose such a fee. It would even beat the state to the punch as a new statewide measure for the November election was proposed just this week. But the tax’s success or failure in the voting booths — as well as its effects on the months of campaigning leading up to the June election — will also loom large in area politics, with repercussions for an already-heated 2nd District race and an already-strained relationship between North and South County.
The 3-2 vote in favor of the tax split along north-south lines, with 4th and 5th District supervisors Peter Adam and Steve Lavagnino voicing their opposition early and then remaining largely silent for the remainder of the meeting. Adam, who called the county “famous for being business-unfriendly” and the proposed tax a “rush job,” worried about the tax’s effect on oil-industry employees. Lavagnino said that he didn’t like the idea of hurting one of his district’s two main job fields — oil and agriculture — and that he therefore didn’t want to go over the proposed tax’s details, as doing so would be akin to “choosing options on a new car you don’t want to buy in the first place.”