Meet the Candidate: Bearman says he’ll be ‘prescription for change’

Santa Barbara County Supervisor

3rd District

Four-year term

Name: Dr. David Bearman

Age: 67

Political party: Democrat

Years in 3rd District: 38

Elected office: Goleta West Sanitary District, Goleta Water Board, Isla Vista Community Council

Work: private physician, expert witness, author

Family: married, two children

Web site: www.davidbearman4supervisor.com

By Chuck Schultz/Senior Staff Writer

A physician and former medical administrator, Dr. David Bearman bills himself as “a prescription for change” in the race to decide who will be Santa Barbara County’s next 3rd District supervisor.

He is arguably the most liberal of five candidates in a group that includes only one Republican. He strongly criticizes drug-enforcement policies, touts biodiesel fuel produced from hemp or other grasses as a way to make local farming more profitable, and opposes widening Highway 101 between Santa Barbara and Carpinteria.

The hundreds of millions of dollars it would take to widen the freeway could be better spent on alternative transportation, he said, including creation of commuter-rail service between Oxnard and Goleta.

If humor translated directly into votes, Bearman would win handily. He has been the most amusing of the group at candidate forums, once playfully apologizing for “shamelessly hawking” his new book while holding up a copy of the self-published tome: “Demons, Discrimination and Dollars: A Brief History of the Origins of American Drug Policy.”

Bearman, 67, of Goleta was the founder of the Isla Vista Health Clinic and is a former medical director of Santa Barbara Regional Health Authority. He also has held numerous other medical positions, for various agencies, during his 38 years in Santa Barbara County.

He has served on the Goleta water board, the Goleta West Sanitary District board, and the Isla Vista Community Council.

He wants to make the Board of Supervisors less pro-development, “protect our environment, support our work force and improve access to health care,” according to his campaign Web site.

Specifically, Bearman contends that the board majority, including Firestone, has “allowed way too much development in the ag areas.” Agricultural zoning shouldn’t be changed except for “compelling reasons,” he said, and not just to “make an obscene profit.”

Bearman is also adamant about not allowing development on the Gaviota coast, and thinks the supervisors “have not been aggressive enough in working with Naples (landowners) on transfer of development rights.”

A proposed ordinance that could result in transferring some development rights for that property west of Goleta to other South Coast sites is being reviewed by the county Planning Commission.

Bearman thinks it would be a waste of money to add another lane in each direction to Highway 101 between Santa Barbara and Carpinteria.

“By the time it’s widened, it will already be inadequate,” he said. “For the board not to support mass transit (instead) would be foolish. Putting money into freeways is just promoting our reliance on fossil fuel.”

He repeatedly espouses biodiesel — an alternative fuel he said can be produced from crops such as hemp or other grasses — as a way of reducing dependence on oil while also pumping more cash into local agriculture. That would require construction of a biodiesel production plant somewhere within the county, which he says he would support.

Bearman even sees that as a way of helping preserve the Gaviota coast. “You could take that land and plant other grasses there usable for biodiesel …without much changing its appearance,” he said.

He also favors setting up some kind of county subsidy to help uninsured workers get health insurance.

“We need to respond to the middle class, who is being priced out of the health insurance market,” he said.

Money for such a program would come from premiums paid by insured people, county funding and probably “a tax of some sort that is supported by businesses and the community at large,” Bearman added.

Despite the county’s projected multimillion dollar deficit for 2008-09, he urges spending more on helping people with substance-abuse and mental health problems. He applauds a blue-ribbon committee’s recent recommendations to spend $5.8 million more annually on various treatment, prevention and recovery programs for those people, who constitute a large percentage of County Jail inmates.

While agreeing with other candidates that the county may need to trim its management staff and cut the top executive’s salary to save money, Bearman doesn’t advocate any large-scale spending cuts.

“I suspect there are some departments where cuts could be made without adversely affecting the public,” he said, but not ones that provide health and mental health services.

“As a last option, we need to look at raising taxes,” he added. “There needs to be reality here. Too many politicians promise everybody everything and say they’re going to do it with less money.”

Chuck Schultz can be reached at 925-2691, Ext. 2241, or cschultz@syvnews.com.