Political patronage is defined as the practice of dispensing government resources as a reward for political and electoral support.
State resources can include lucrative public sector contracts or a prestigious role in the civil service. In other words, politicians buy off people who can cause them trouble, while they pay off those who can do them favors!
Whereas there has always been a Democratic/progressive political machine firmly in control of local politics, the control was for the most part ideological, with a specific emphasis on anti-growth measures that relied on and served overwrought environmental concerns. Having said that, I have observed several examples of political patronage.
The most routine and obvious, which goes on to this day, has to do with campaign managers getting cushy government jobs as a reward for serving the political interests of the elected they work for, rather than the general interests of the public.
Another longstanding tradition of patronage arises in the case of public unions, such as the Service Employees International Union, which represents most Santa Barbara County employees. They have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars per election cycle to county supervisor races. In return, the cost of salaries and benefits, including retirement costs, continue to skyrocket.
It is a very comfortable relationship among mutual backscratchers: “Keep me elected and I will keep you gainfully employed.” For instance, during the COVID-19 shutdown, we believe not one single county employee was laid off. They were seen as “essential workers.”
Recently, instances of political patronage have skyrocketed.
The biggest example is what is called Project Labor Agreements or Community Workforce Agreements.
It is no secret that nearly 100% of union campaign contributions go to Democrats, and democrats are in control of most unions. The county of Santa Barbara and the cities of Goleta and Santa Barbara are creating a scheme by which union contractors alone will be able to secure lucrative government construction contracts, thereby eliminating 85% of the local workforce (that is non-union), from working on taxpayer-funded projects that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars in total.
Now, in addition, your county supervisors have handed out $250,000 in patronage monies to several nonprofits, including $100,000 to an adjunct organization of the Black Lives Matter movement known as Healing Justice Santa Barbara. The vote was unanimous.
I suggested instead, to no avail, that the supervisors should personally sponsor a private fundraiser for these organizations to raise money from the community rather than using taxpayer dollars.
Meanwhile, not to be outdone with respect to one of the worst forms of patronage, the city of Santa Barbara wants to appoint activists and former jail birds to a police commission oversight committee! This is happening even though the Santa Barbara Police Department has a fine record of professional conduct. Over the past five years, the only complaints they have received have had to do with bad attitudes rather than misconduct. Force of any kind has been scarcely ever deployed. In fact, only 2.5% of all arrests and only one-tenth of one percent of stops involved the use of any type of force.
Moreover, in the past 10 years, there have been but three associated fatalities, and one of those was the result of a shootout between the SWAT team and a suspect who fired upon police first. Of course, any time there is a police-involved shooting, the county district attorney, an independently elected official, investigates.
It is hard enough to recruit and retain police officers. aving a police commission composed of jail birds and activists, whose primary interest will be to harangue and harass our officers, will only exacerbate this trend. This commission is a solution in search of a problem.
Andy Caldwell is the COLAB executive director and host of “The Andy Caldwell Show,” airing 3 to 5 p.m. weekdays on KZSB AM 1290, the News-Press radio station.
