Kevin E. Ready, Sr., longtime senior attorney for Santa Barbara County is retiring from service after 26 years.
As senior deputy county counsel, Ready has been working as in-house legal advisor to Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown as well as providing legal services to the County Public Works and General Services Department and County Clerk-Recorder-Assessor Joe Holland.
The County Board of Supervisors will be acknowledging Ready’s service to the County at the regular board meeting Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2016.
Over the past 26 years, Ready has dealt with a wide variety of legal issues for the county and other public agencies, providing both legal advice and handling litigation.
Ready views as a highlight of his work the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments’s Measure A voter-enacted transportation sales tax program.
Measure A will provide over a billion dollars in local transportation funding for both the County and cities within the county. Ready both drafted the original Measure A ordinance and defended it against several legal challenges on elections law and environmental issues.
Ready also served as both legal counsel for and executive director of the Beach Erosion Authority for Clean Oceans and Nourishment for Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties.
Prior to Ready’s service to the county, he served as a commissioned officer in both the U.S. Navy and Army and as an Arabic and Russian language interpreter for U.S. military intelligence.
He was decorated by the military for service during the Iranian hostage crisis, the Vietnam refugee boat lift and intelligence operations during the Yom Kippur War.
Besides his legal duties for the county, Ready twice ran for election as superior court judge and was a major party candidate locally for U.S. Congress in the 1994 general election.
He has also written several published books and served as translator and editor of a modern translation of the Koran into English.
Ready makes his home in the Santa Ynez Valley with his wife, Olga, and family. Olga is an engineer for the Santa Barbara County Flood Control District.
Following retirement, Ready will assume duties as publisher and editor in chief of Saint Gaudens Press, a publisher of general interest books and e-books, with offices in Solvang and Wichita, Kan.