••• “Sable Offshore Corp. has successfully petitioned federal authorities to assume regulatory authority over its Santa Barbara County oil and gas pipelines, another move in the company’s attempts to restart production. […] The Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration decided on Wednesday that two Santa Barbara County pipelines operated by Sable are interstate pipelines, removing them from state authority.” —Noozhawk (and subsequently, “Sable Offshore Corp. says it has received permission to restart pipelines connected to the Santa Ynez Unit, a week after it successfully petitioned to have oversight of the lines transferred to federal authority.” —Noozhawk)
••• “Most areas of Santa Barbara County got a heavy dousing from an atmospheric-river storm that hit the region Tuesday overnight into Wednesday, but no major flooding or related problems have been reported,” reports Noozhawk. With one exception: Santa Barbara Airport is closed due to runway flooding (updates here).
••• From Noozhawk: “The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office has spent $5.3 million on overtime staffing in the first three months of the fiscal year, according to the County Executive Office. That’s about half of the annual overtime budget, and if the spending continues at that rate, the office could go over budget by $9 million.” From the report by the Auditor-Controller’s Office: “A recurring pattern was identified in which sheriff employees used leave balances (vacation, sick or other leave) to complete ‘time worked’ hours requirements associated with their standard FLSA work period while simultaneously coding overtime hours in the same period. This practice seems to effectively increase total overtime hours and was identified in 6,913, or 35.7%, of all timesheets, resulting in an estimated $5.9 million in FY 2024-25 overtime costs.”…