Santa Barbara County Issuing Safety-Net Layoffs This Week

The Santa Barbara County supervisors got a grim preview of the sound the social safety net makes when it’s ripped this Tuesday morning as a room full of county social workers and public health workers, many with more than 20 years’ experience, pleaded for a reprieve of the layoff notices going out in the mail the following day. 

In all, 84 notices are going out. Of those, 47 will go to County Public Health workers, 31 to County Social Services employees, five to the Sheriff’s Office, and one to the County Fire Department. All 84 are represented by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 620. Unless a change in plans is negotiated, the layoffs are scheduled to go into effect June 30. 

Also scheduled that day is the shutdown of two county-owned-and-operated pharmacies — with adjoining laboratories — one in Santa Barbara and one in Santa Maria. The county’s third pharmacy — in Lompoc — will remain open, the thinking being there are fewer pharmacies in Lompoc to pick up the slack. 

This is the first round of cuts to be made in part because of structural spending imbalances in the affected departments, but more because of federal budget cuts under Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Budget Bill” and also cuts approved by the state legislature. The pharmacies in question target low-income populations, filling prescriptions at rates far cheaper than what’s available in traditional pharmacies. They also provide medical advice about the medications to the county clients. 

County officials say the medications can be delivered from the Lompoc pharmacy to patients using the Carpinteria and Franklin Health Centers. 

Speakers talked about the hardship the layoffs would impose on themselves and their families; they talked even more about the hardships to be imposed on the community at large, noting that pharmacies slated for closure serve disproportionately poor and minority populations. 

If these clients can’t get their prescriptions filled at the same bargain-basement prices, the supervisors were told, many will simply go without until their ailments and conditions balloon out of control. That, predicted more than one speaker, will have an adverse impact on local emergency rooms.  

Two speakers cited a study reporting that county farmworkers experienced ill health at three times the rate of the county residents at large but only visited a doctor half as frequently. About half the people laid off in Social Services are administrative staff whose job it is to keep people enrolled in the county’s food stamp program. 

The White House has tightened up the eligibility requirements, now requiring recipients go through the hoops of the application process twice a year instead of once. 

Some speakers pointedly noted how no one from the executive teams of the affected departments would be receiving layoff notices. Others noted that the millions of cost overruns the Sheriff’s Office incurred in overtime would alleviate the need for layoffs and cuts. Or that some of the $50 million down payment the supervisors set aside for the new North County jail might do the same. 

Speaking of the layoffs, SEIU Executive Director Laura Robinson stated, “They are not inevitable; they are a choice. You have choices.” For example, Robinson said, the county could furlough workers rather than laying them off. It could negotiate voluntary separation deals with workers approaching retirement age. 

After the meeting, Robinson noted that the county initially proposed laying off 373 employees, and expressed gratification that so many positions had been restored. 

“It’s my job to protect these people; it’s hard not to be able to protect them all,” she said. 

For the time being, Robinson — union chief since 2024 — is taking her case to the Board of Supervisors and negotiating what can be negotiated with the county’s HR Department. 

“This is not the worst of it,” she said. “It gets worse next year.”