There’s a particular kind of political damage that doesn’t show up all at once. It accumulates lawsuit by lawsuit, settlement by settlement, depleted reserve by depleted reserve. Until one day a city looks up wondering how it got there. Santa Barbara is there and the path leads directly through Kristen Sneddon.
Consider what has happened on her watch.
In 2020, she pushed through a relocation assistance policy over the explicit warnings of the city attorney. A lawsuit followed. Years of litigation followed. Then came the settlement, a quiet, humiliating retreat to exactly the terms experts had recommended. At least $25,000 gone.
In 2021, she publicly challenged a city employee’s faith from the council dais, a moment so legally reckless it triggered an HR investigation, a discrimination claim, and a retirement settlement that reportedly approached $500,000.
Over a million dollars flowed to State Street planning consultants she championed. The first firm was terminated and a second had to be brought into salvage what remained, and she has just approved another $92,773.
And still she presses forward.
The rent stabilization ordinance she co-authored has been called one of the most restrictive in California. The council recently spent $100,000 and funded $400,000 more, taken from a fund meant for the city’s most vulnerable people and now being spent on lawyers. And the floodgate of lawsuits are just waiting for the ordinance to pass so the relevant legal scrutiny can begin.
The contingency reserves gone. Emergency funds tapped.
At a June 2026 council meeting, Sneddon expressed surprise at the failing budget. Local reporters described Sneddon’s shock as “jaw-dropping.” But Sneddon, responsible for spending it, seemed not to notice at all until it was nearly too late.
To Kristen Sneddon, it appears, other people’s money is just suppose to be there to fund the latest brilliant idea or trend.
Santa Barbara cannot afford four more years of that arrangement.
Kristen Sneddon responded: While much of this letter is opinion, the writer’s claim that I challenged an employee’s faith publicly from the dais factually never occurred, and if it had, it would have been wholly inappropriate. I have not been named in any such settlement. The writer would not be able to find such a moment in any recording, because it did not happen, and this a very damaging false claim.
