Santa Barbara County’s Emergency Management Chief Abruptly Resigns

Kelly Hubbard, director of Santa Barbara County’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM), abruptly resigned this week after the Board of Supervisors rejected a series of Grand Jury recommendations to give the department more authority and double its staffing.  

Hubbard’s resignation on Thursday was effective immediately, a county spokesperson said. Stacy Silva, OEM’s associate director, has been appointed interim director until a permanent replacement is found. Hubbard could not be reached for comment, and the county declined to provide additional details about her departure.

Hubbard took the helm of OEM in 2019 after serving 14 years as emergency manager for the Municipal Water District of Orange County. She succeeded director Rob Lewin, who quietly retired amid public criticism over the problematic warnings and evacuations of the 1/9 Debris Flow.

Throughout her tenure, Hubbard, a survivor of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting, saw Santa Barbara County through the COVID-19 pandemic as well as several large fires, cyberattacks, and severe winter storms. She also helped guide the expansion of the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) on Cathedral Oaks Road that is activated during regional disasters.

In its June report, titled “Is the County Neglecting Emergency Preparedness?”, the Grand Jury argued the OEM itself is severely understaffed and underfunded despite Santa Barbara ranking in the top 1 percent nationally for disaster risk. The OEM is currently manned by six employees (down from seven after recent budget cuts). The report compared that figure to similarly-sized counties like Sonoma, which expanded its emergency department from four to 16 employees after the deadly Tubbs Fire, and Monterey, which boasts 10 positions.

The Grand Jury also contended that OEM’s recent placement within the County Fire Department left it operationally hobbled. It said the arrangement has limited the director’s authority to coordinate staff across other agencies and contributed to a shortage of properly-trained county employees to fill the EOC amid prolonged disasters.

Among other recommendations, the Grand Jury said the OEM should immediately expand its ranks to 12 full-time employees. It also suggested removing the department from County Fire and returning it to a direct-report relationship with the County Executive Office. The report’s main thrust was that Santa Barbara has repeatedly demonstrated how vulnerable it is to wildfires, debris flows, floods, earthquakes, oil spills, and other crises, but county leaders have allowed the agency responsible for coordinating preparation and response to shrink rather than grow.

As full-throated as the Grand Jury’s critiques were, the county’s pushback was just as forceful. During an August 25 hearing on the report, County Fire Chief Garrett Huff disputed its premise outright. “Is the county neglecting emergency preparedness?” he said to the Board of Supervisors. “I feel the answer to that is no.”

Huff said moving OEM under the Fire Department in 2023 may have changed its day-to-day management but not its mission or authority. The OEM remains responsible for disaster mitigation, alerts, recovery, and public education, Huff said, as well as coordinating with cities, special districts, schools, and nonprofits. He argued the current arrangement actually gives the small OEM office access to a much larger pool of resources, including more than 300 Fire Department personnel and divisions specializing in logistics and communications.

Huff acknowledged that OEM staffing remains a less settled question. “We’re not saying that the staffing level right now is necessarily the right level,” he told supervisors. But, he claimed, the Grand Jury had not performed the necessary analysis to demonstrate that 12 employees was the correct number. The county instead plans to hire an independent consultant to examine OEM’s responsibilities, staffing assignments, service expectations, and long-term needs before deciding whether additional positions are warranted, he said. 

The supervisors themselves were explicit in rejecting many of the Grand Jury’s findings. Supervisor Laura Capps said the report left out important elements of the county’s overall emergency-response system, and said while she supported the civil body’s role in scrutinizing county government, the suggestion of neglect “does not at all comport with what we see every day and what we fund.”

Supervisor Joan Hartmann pointed to Santa Barbara’s repeated real-world tests as evidence of the system’s effectiveness. “The proof is in the pudding,” she said. “We’re always getting tested here with emergency response, and I think I’d stack our team up against anybody.” Board Chair Bob Nelson called the merging of OEM under County Fire “a natural fit.”

On oil-spill preparedness, the supervisors backed Huff’s decision to leave technical and operational responsibilities with the Fire Department rather than move them back to OEM. They accepted his argument that the previous arrangement duplicated inspections, training, and other efforts.

The supervisors were somewhat more receptive to the Grand Jury’s concerns about volunteers. Hartmann said the existing network of volunteer groups can look like “a morass” to outsiders and she supported doing more to identify and formalize those relationships. But she stopped short of endorsing the Grand Jury’s call for a new centralized program under OEM.

The board voted 5-0 to reject the report’s main recommendations outright while agreeing to further study staffing and volunteer coordination. Hubbard was present in the room during the discussions but was not addressed by the supervisors and did not speak. Nine days later, she tendered her resignation.