The race for auditor-controller will come down to two longtime Santa Barbara County employees, one who currently runs the office and another who formerly worked for her.

Betsy Schaffer, the current auditor-controller, is being challenged by Kyle Slattery in the June 2 election for a chance to run the office.

The Auditor-Controller’s Office oversees payroll and provides accounting and financial services for the county.

The office’s duties include internal audits of county departments, processing property taxes in coordination with the Treasurer-Tax Collector’s Office, and providing financial reports to the Board of Supervisors.

Schaffer has been running the office since 2019 after she was elected to the position in the 2018 election. She served as assistant auditor controller under Theodore A. Fallati.

Her career in the office began in 1991, and she has served as a division chief and manager overseeing different operations in the office.

Schaffer is also a certified public accountant, certified public finance officer, and certified fraud examiner. She graduated from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

Schaffer said the role of her office is to support front-line departments like the Fire Department, Sheriff’s Office, social services, and other sectors that the public deals with directly.

“A lot of people don’t know what the auditor-controller does, but if we’re not there, then people would suffer,” Schaffer said. “Literally, we keep the bills paid.”

If re-elected to the position, Schaffer said she hopes to focus on issues of fraud in the county. She said that close to 5% of an organization’s revenue is lost to fraud, and her goal is to prevent that before it happens.

She said she recently received her certification to be a fraud examiner.

Leading up to the election, Schaffer has faced criticism from most of the Board of Supervisors for her handling of the Workday implementation. Her office was helping set up the county’s new financial-processing program, which would replace the current one.

Four of the five supervisors have endorsed Schaffer’s opponent.

One of the main criticisms of her implementation of the program was the time needed to complete the first phase and the costs incurred due to the delays.

Schaffer told Noozhawk the issue with the project was an aggressive timeline chosen by the county, and her concerns that the program was not ready to go live. She also had concerns that the program could not handle some of the basic functions needed for payroll.

Schaffer said she believes that her years of experience make her a better fit for the role than her opponent, saying she has 20 years more experience that she can rely on.

She also added that her temperament and the skills she has learned make her the best choice, and hopes voters recognize that.  

I feel like I’m very even-keeled about things. I try to find out the whole story…” Schaffer said. “I would just hope that (the voters) would think I’ve been doing a good job.”

Schaffer’s opponent, Slattery, also has a long history working with the county. He spent 12 years in the Auditor-Controller’s Office before moving into his current role as deputy chief of the information Technology Department.

According to Slattery’s website, he has the endorsement of four members of the board —supervisors Joan Hartman, Bob Nelson, Laura Capps, and Steve Lavagnino.

He also has the endorsement of the Santa Barbara County Democratic Party, the Service Employees International Union Local 721, and the Santa Barbara County Firefighters IAFF Local 2046.

Slattery, who was born in Santa Barbara, also graduated from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and worked for a national accounting firm in Los Angeles before earning his CPA license.

Despite his success, Slattery said he had a desire to work in local government.

“There’s just something about the public service at the local level that resonated with me,” Slattery said. “It was working with smart people that really care about their jobs, their communities, and just want to do well.”

He returned to Santa Barbara in 2012 when he took a role as an audit supervisor with the Auditor-Controller’s Office. He served in that role for four years before becoming the office’s division chief.

He also served as Schaffer’s chief deputy controller upon her election.

If elected to the role, Slattery said his main goal is to modernize the office to be more transparent with the public. He said the current system is overly complicated and hard to navigate unless someone knows what they are looking for.

He also expressed a desire for the office to be more proactive with audits instead of just waiting for issues to come up.

Slattery said his final goal is to change the leadership in the office. The main issue he highlighted was the delays in the Workday implementation, which he largely attributed to Schaffer’s office.

He said disagreements with the office and delays in the process led to thousands in extra costs.

“We were in this just state of constant friction and kind of running in place,” Slattery said.

“And as we were running in place, we’re burning hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff time, in implementer fees, and an unused return on investment from the software subscription — which we’ve been paying for.”

Slattery said he believes his skills and ability to work with others make him the best choice to effectively lead the office and its teams. He added that he is excited for the opportunity to lead the division into the future.

“I think there’s a great opportunity here to bring some fresh vision and leadership into a very strong, capable, government function that just needs a refresh,” Slattery said. “It needs a reset.”