Saddled with enormous pension obligations and the loan repayments on buildings like the district attorney's office and the Betteravia Government Center, Santa Barbara County is about $194 million in debt.
That's not unusual for a county this size, and it wouldn't normally get much notice. But with a movement afoot to split the county in half, a panel of five men and women are wrestling with a critical issue: If the county splits in two, what happens to that debt?
Answering that weighty question falls to the Mission County Formation Review Commission, the group responsible for the solution.
As it determines whether the proposed Mission County can be fiscally viable, the commission must also determine a "fair, just and equitable" distribution of debt between north and south.
Posted by gandlwoods at November 14, 2004 06:46 AM