SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif. – The team of four county Sheriff’s deputies and a sergeant that busted dozens of illegal pot operations and confiscated tens of millions of dollars’ worth of marijuana, beginning in 2018, has been broken up.
The move was made official on Tuesday at a county Board of Supervisors hearing on the budget for the coming fiscal year.
Cannabis tax revenues have dropped from a high of $15.7 million in 2020-21 to $5.4 million in 2024-25.
A glut on the market, much of it illegal pot, continues to depress prices; and the board was looking for ways to save money.
The $2 million cost of the enforcement team, including a $19,185 monthly lease for office and warehouse space in Santa Maria, has been the largest single line item in the county’s year-to-year cannabis budget. And during the early years of legal cannabis, there were plenty of illegal “grows” to raid.
In its first nine months of operation, back in 2018-19, the cannabis enforcement team confiscated marijuana plants valued at $106 million and dried marijuana valued at $15 million, records show. As the years went by, the team continued to seize substantial amounts of illegal cannabis, though at a slower rate.
“Progress has been achieved in this field,” Sheriff Bill Brown told the board on Tuesday. “Our county has significantly reduced the black market presence and discouraged illegal operators … This is not the time to let our guard down.”
In recent years, though, the enforcement work had largely shifted to the time-consuming investigation of illegal sales of pot; and the supervisors decided they had other priorities.
Earlier this month, the board cut one deputy from the cannabis team, leaving $1.5 million in the budget for it. On Tuesday, the board shifted two of the team’s remaining deputies to the Sheriff’s narcotics enforcement team — one for the North County and one for the South Coast, as specialists in cannabis.
The board also cut the sergeant’s position from the cannabis team.
The supervisors then decided that the position of the last remaining cannabis team deputy would become that of a “felony warrant” detective.
He or she will track down people who have been charged with felonies but who have failed to show up in court and are now in hiding, with warrants out for their arrest.
Supervisor Steve Lavagnino of Santa Maria had brought up this longstanding problem at the June 4 budget hearing.
Brown told the board that his department was holding nearly 10,000 “unserved warrants”, including warrants for about 2,000 felonies and 8,000 misdemeanors, some for crimes that were committed decades ago. About 1,300 people have multiple warrants for their arrest, Brown said.
The designated “warrant detective”, he said, would create a “most wanted” list and, in coordination with other departments, begin to focus on bringing those people to justice who pose the greatest risk to public safety.
The cost, designated as a one-time expense, will be $302,000 for this fiscal year, ending June 30, 2026.
In a testy exchange on Tuesday, Board Chair Laura Capps questioned Brown about the expensive Santa Maria lease for the cannabis enforcement team, which she noted has cost the county $1.2 million since 2019.
"That is news to me," said Capps, who had asked the Sheriff for more information on the lease in advance of the hearing. "It’s an alarming eye-popping number that shows me I’m not sure we’re using these funds efficiently."
In preparation for Tuesday’s hearing, Brown proposed moving the team after six months out of the Santa Maria warehouse and into a smaller space, for half the rent.
Capps said, “I’m all for enforcement, but I don’t know what could justify a lease of $20,000 a month, and now you’re willing to shift it away because the scrutiny has occurred.”
Brown said, “That is absolutely not the case.” He explained that in addition to the cannabis enforcement team, the narcotics team was housed at the Santa Maria building because an existing Sheriff’s office in the South County was “falling apart” and was “almost uninhabitable.” And Lavagnino pointed out that the Santa Maria building had been used to store confiscated marijuana from past raids.
Brown said he was proposing to downsize the Santa Maria lease because the South County building (the former food bank on Hollister Road) is being refurbished and will be available for use during this fiscal year.
“There’s nothing surreptitious about this,” Brown said.
For now, the Santa Maria lease remains in the cannabis budget for the narcotics team, for $239,000.
With some of the funding freed up from cannabis enforcement, the board funded a half-time Sheriff’s deputy position for cannabis business licensing, if needed; and it restored $70,000 out of $90,000 that had been previously cut from the budget for tax audits of cannabis growers.
Finally, the board allocated $240,000 in cannabis revenues to the Immigrant Legal Defense Center, a non-profit group with offices in Santa Barbara and Santa Maria.
The funds will pay for two therapists to work with family members who are suffering from the consequences of deportations.
There are presently 65 people on a wait list for mental health services at the center, including children.
Melinda Burns is an investigative journalist with 40 years of experience covering immigration, water, science and the environment. As a community service, she offers her reports to multiple publications in Santa Barbara County, at the same time, for free.
County Sheriff’s Cannabis Enforcement Team Is Disbanded: Shrinking revenues, fewer raids lead supervisors to shift funds elsewhere News Channel 3-12.
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