Santa Barbara County Supervisors have decided not to raise their salaries this year, despite the fact they were due under a formula developed by a citizens committee which examined the issue. A report by the committee in 2015 called for salary hikes to be tied to the consumer price index for the Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County areas. If supervisors had followed the plan this year, they would have given themselves a one percent pay hike. It would have been a slightly more than $800 dollar annual increase for the board members, and about $1700 for the board chair. But, board members felt the hike was unnecessary at this time, noting that people on Social Security haven’t received increases for two years. Supervisors currently make just over $85,000 a year. Last fiscal year, they gave themselves a 1.4% cost of living increase.
Lance Orozco has been News Director of KCLU since 2001, providing award-winning coverage of some of the biggest news events in the region, including the Thomas and Woolsey brush fires, the deadly Montecito debris flow, the Borderline Bar and Grill attack, and Ronald Reagan's funeral.