Probation Chief Tanja Heitman is leaving the department for a new position in the Santa Barbara County Executive Office, where she’ll oversee the public safety and health and human services departments.

Her new position includes responsibilities held by former assistant CEO Barney Melekian, a former undersheriff and police chief who had oversight of the public safety departments, and retiring assistant CEO Terri Nisich, who oversees social services and health services-related department.  

Heitman is uniquely qualified for the job overseeing public safety and safety net services, County Executive Officer Mona Miyasato said.

“She has the right experience, approach and skills to move the ball on integration of services for clients and focusing on data and outcomes,” she said.

The county Board of Supervisors recently increased the County Executive Officer’s authority as a sign of confidence in Miyasato’s leadership.

She can remove appointed department heads without board approval and assign assistant CEOs to directly supervise department directors.

Miyasato is restructuring the office and adding mid-level manager positions, which the Board of Supervisors approved at its Jan. 24 meeting.

The net cost increase to the office from reorganizing is $600,000 a year, which will be absorbed this year from retirements and vacant positions, but will need to be added to the budget for future years, according to the staff report.

“I knew I needed to reorganize my office to ensure we stayed ahead of changes coming our way – retirements, new priorities and people entering the organization, increasingly complex and cross-departmental challenges, and state legislative changes and initiatives,” Miyasato told Noozhawk.

“But I also wanted to shape the office to address retention and ensure we made progress on the board’s highest priorities.”

“Increasingly, the wicked problems we face – where there is no one answer or solution – involve criminal justice, health and human services and data. Departments involved in these areas work well together, in structured and ad hoc ways, but I wanted to go one step further and have an ACEO right at the intersection of these issues.”

The current assistant CEOs (ACEOs) include Nancy Anderson, who oversees budget and finance departments; Jeff Frapwell, who oversees facilities and technology departments such as general services, planning and information technology; and Nisich, who oversees health and social services departments and is retiring in March.

Miyasato currently oversees the human resources and public safety departments.

The reorganization would change that, as seen in the organizational chart below.

Anderson will become chief ACEO, and the county is recruiting for a budget director and deputy CEO in that division.

The county also will hire a new ACEO and principal analyst overseeing municipal services departments, Miyasato said.

Nisich is retiring after 15 years as an ACEO, and Frapwell will be “winding down his time with the county over the next several months but continuing on special projects,” she added.

Tanja Heitman Joining County Executive Office

Heitman has been at the Probation Department since 1990 and was appointed as Chief Probation Officer in 2017.

She has overseen probation’s role in realignment and juvenile-justice reforms, expanding the pre-trial supervision program, and taking over supervision for the alternative sentencing program.

Heitman said she was feeling ready to leave the Probation Department in the hands of new leadership, but didn’t want to retire yet, or leave Santa Barbara County.

“Mona approached me with the opportunity, and it was a win-win for me. It’s what I think of as a bridge,” Heitman said.

“I won’t be chief probation officer, but I still have the opportunity to be very much involved with what’s happening in criminal justice.”

Integrating health and social services more with the criminal justice system will be a focus of her new job, she said.

“I really deeply believe that’s the road to us being more successful, more effective, and I think that’s a value that I’ve put out there for a long enough time that people understand it,” she said.

Her experience chairing the Criminal Justice Data Committee has also helped prepare her for the role, she said.

“I hope to bring that lens to the County Executive Office to really begin leaning in to how do we integrate data better, use data in more meaningful ways to understand what’s happening in departments and how departments can assist each other,” she said.

Reflecting on her career with the Probation Department, Heitman is proudest of reforming the juvenile-justice system and expanding the pretrial supervision program for adults.

It was a “deep data dive” that revealed the high number of juvenile offenders incarcerated for low-level offenses, and the department responded by changing policies and reducing the impacts of the system on local youth, she said.

“For whatever reason, our numbers were trending in the wrong direction, and it was not because our youth in Santa Barbara County were any more of a concern than the rest of the state,” she said.

The pretrial supervision program oversees people released from jail custody and supervised while going through the court process.

“Pretrial has really in my view transformed everybody’s thinking about the jail population and the possibility of diverting individuals,” Heitman said.

“In early discussions, high-level stakeholders told me this is not going to be fruitful, not enough people can be diverted out of the jail, the people in jail need to be in jail.

“I really felt strongly that we needed to explore that with a new perspective and not just assume that that’s the way it always was, that’s the way it had to be.

“So many people are successfully out on pre-trial release that if not for the program, they’d be sitting in jail and they’d be losing their jobs and lose housing and lose the ability to care for their children,” Heitman said.

Chief probation officers are appointed by the Superior Court, and courts Executive Officer Darrel Parker said the presiding judge is conferring with the Courts Executive Committee on the next steps for the recruitment of Heitman’s replacement.