SB Local: Supervisors Face Tough Choices on Pipeline, Salaries; Anti-MAGA Emerges

Newsmakers' all-star panel of top local journalists breaks down the brawls over restarting the flow of oil and spiking pay for county officials. Plus: here comes the Trump opposition

Marcel Proust required 1,267,069 words to write his autobiographical, seven-volume novel Remembrance of Things Past, but Nick Welsh needed only half as many to tell the story of Santa Barbara’s most complex and consequential public issue: offshore oil.

On this week’s episode of Newsmakers TV, the Angry Poodle talks about the story behind his epic cover story, Crude Awakening, in the new SB Independent, which sets the stage for next week’s big showdown at the Board of Supervisors over the push by the oil company Sable Offshore Corp. to reopen the pipeline that ruptured in 2015, causing the disastrous Refugio Spill.

The novelistic structure of the piece is, in fact, ideal in breaking down the complex matter, from the history of oil drilling in Santa Barbara and its origin story as the birthplace of the modern environmental movement, to the convoluted litigation and Byzantine burrows of overlapping government jurisdictions that shape the choice that will be before the supervisors next Tuesday.

If you plan to attend, be sure to bring along snacks and a toothbrush for, as Josh Molina explains, a proposal to increase the annual salaries for supervisors by nearly 50 percent, from $115,000 to $170,000 is expected to draw perhaps even more public comment as the emotional oil pipeline vote as well.

Gwyn Lurie joins the gang to weigh in on both weighty matters, and also to dissect the recent mass protests that have appeared on the streets and church halls of Santa Barbara in opposition to the right-wing authoritarian project of Donald Trump, and whether they signal the rise of nascent civil society opposition to the reality TV host presidency and its government-wrecking henchman Elon Musk.

Plus: Andy Caldwell, threat or menace? Compare and contrast.

All this and more, right here, right now, on Newsmakers TV.

Check out Episode 481 via YouTube below, or by clicking through this link. The podcast is available on Soundcloud here, and also on Spotify, Apple and other platforms. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the show every weeknight at 8 p.m. and at 9 a.m on weekends. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program on Monday at 5:30 p.m.

Image: Cover of this week’s Santa Barbara Independent featuring Nick Welsh’s “Crude Awakening” story.