2 Measures Would Shift the Power of County Operation : Reform: One would expand the Board of Supervisors from five members to nine. The other would create the office of an elected chief executive.
In 1885, Los Angeles County supervisors presided over 70,000 people. The county’s population was smaller than that of Omaha, Neb. The county board was responsible for, among other things, preventing dogs from injuring sheep. And it had five members.
Today, the supervisors oversee a $13-billion budget and 8.9 million people--larger than the population of most states. Their actions affect anyone who ends up in court, calls the Sheriff’s Department, visits the beach, applies for welfare or fills up from county-inspected gas pumps.
Yet the board has remained at five members--even as other bodies have grown, including the Los Angeles City Council, which has increased from nine members in 1925 to 15 today.
But the political structure of county government will undergo a major reform if voters approve two measures on the Nov. 3 ballot. Proposition B calls for an elected county executive. Proposition C proposes that the board be expanded to nine members and that new boundaries be established for the nine districts.
The executive--in essence, a county mayor--can be approved, even if voters reject the enlarged board. The reverse, however, is not true. Voters cannot create a nine-member board without an elected executive.
“You cannot expand to nine and have no one in charge,†said Judy Borash, a former president of the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles County. The league supports the reforms, as do Common Cause, the county Bar Assn. and Supervisors Ed Edelman, Kenneth Hahn and Gloria Molina.
The reforms would further shake up the governing board of the nation’s most populous county, a previously all-white, all-male enclave that was joined by its first Latino, Gloria Molina, in 1991. An African-American supervisor will be elected Nov. 3 in the 2nd District race between Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Diane Watson. And women could become the majority on the powerful board if Gordana Swanson defeats Supervisor Deane Dana in the 4th District election.
The reforms have been proposed for decades as a way to increase accountability. Extra chairs sit unoccupied in the board hearing room because the builders of the County Hall of Administration in 1961 expected the body to expand as the population grew.
Proponents face a tough job--selling the measures to cost-wary voters in the midst of a recession. Similar proposals have been rejected in the past for fear they would add an unnecessary layer to the county bureaucracy.
The last proposal to add supervisors was rejected by 65% of the voters in 1976. A 1978 proposal to create an elected executive was defeated by a narrower margin--53% to 47%.
“It won’t cost any more,†said Borash. The measures specify that the budgets for the executive and nine-member board shall not exceed the present budgets of the county’s chief administrative officer and the five-member board except for adjustments for inflation and population changes. They also say: “On the day that the first county executive assumes office, the professional staff of each supervisor shall be reduced.â€
Despite these assurances, both measures are opposed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. and Supervisors Mike Antonovich and Deane Dana.
“We just suspect it’s going to cost a lot more money in the long run,†said Joel Fox, president of the Jarvis group. “You would think that each new supervisor has to have his own offices.â€
Supporters of the measures say the political structure established in the 19th Century is ill-suited to guide complex county government into the 21st Century.
The five-member board was established in 1852. It was expanded to seven members during a three-year period in the early 1880s. But it has remained at five members since 1885. That was the year the Santa Fe Railroad arrived to compete with the Southern Pacific Railroad, setting off a land boom.
According to handwritten minutes of supervisors’ meetings from then, the business of the day included a grand jury report complaining that “bills for tobacco and liquor are excessive and not proper charges for a county hospital.â€
Opponents of the proposed reforms note that in 1885, Los Angeles was the only city in the county. Today, the county has 88 cities, each with its own mayor and city council to take over duties previously performed by the supervisors.
Under Proposition B, the executive would be elected in 1994 by all county voters.
The executive would be one of the most powerful government officials in the state because of the county’s population and budget. Taking over the staff of the county’s appointed chief administrative officer, the executive would prepare the budget, hire and fire top bureaucrats and hold veto power over board actions. The measure also would create an office of legislative auditor to act as a watchdog over the executive branch.
Proponents believe their chances of winning approval of the reforms have been bolstered by disclosures that Chief Administrative Officer Richard B. Dixon approved spending millions of dollars for pension increases, office remodeling and other expenses without seeking a vote of the board in public session.
“This is going to bring accountability into county government and stop some of the costs that have been incurred as a result of the failure of the system to have checks and balances,†Edelman said.
Supporters say that an elected county executive is as critically needed today as in 1974 when a county commission said in a report: “There are few or no instances of an army being commanded by five generals . . . or a corporation being directed by five presidents--and for good reason. Shared accountability almost always results in finger-pointing and avoidance of accountability.â€
No California county has an elected executive, although San Francisco, the state’s only combined city-county government, has a mayor. County executives are more common on the East Coast.
Proposition C would provide for the election of four more supervisors at the same time the county executive is elected.
A map of the new, smaller district boundaries that will take effect if the measure is approved appears in the voter pamphlet.
Supporters say that enlarging the board would increase representation by reducing a supervisor’s constituency, now about 1.8 million residents--larger than the population of a dozen states. The proposed nine-district map reduces the population of each supervisorial district to 980,000.
Supporters say that Proposition C also would create a board that would more closely mirror the ethnic diversity of the nation’s most populous county, which is 38% Latino, 11% African-American and 10% Asian.
Under the proposed nine-district map, one of the four additional supervisors is likely to be Latino. The map creates two districts with Latino-majority populations. Under the proposed map, Molina’s new 1st District would continue to include her Eastside base while adding an area that she has never represented--the east San Fernando Valley. A new 7th District, without an incumbent, would be created. It would extend from Huntington Park and South Gate through heavily Latino neighborhoods in the San Gabriel Valley.
Supervisors had planned to offer voters the option of expanding the board to seven or nine members, but withdraw the seven-member proposal after the Justice Department and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund objected, saying it would diminish the power of minority voters.
The Justice Department and MALDEF have no objections to enlarging the board to nine members, but MALDEF and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund oppose linking expansion to creation of a county executive.
The civil rights groups contend that the executive would diminish the power of minority members on the Board of Supervisors.
“Just as the Board of Supervisors begins to change gender and race, you have a transfer of power†to a proposed office of county executive, said Constance Rice, Western regional counsel of the NAACP fund. She also contended that no minority groups have a “shot in an at-large election of electing someone they choose.â€
Edelman responded that “ethnic politics†cannot always be the primary consideration. “Government also has to run efficiently,†he said. Both measures are supported by supervisorial candidates Burke and Watson.
The Los Angeles Taxpayers Assn. opposes board expansion, but has taken no position on an elected executive.
“It will really depend upon who is elected,†said Jay Curtis, president of the Los Angeles Taxpayers Assn. “The current structure could work to the taxpayers’ advantage if the elected officials who were there were more responsible.â€
Proposed New Districts
New Los Angeles County supervisorial district boundaries will be used to elect four additional supervisors in 1994 if voters approve Proposition C on the Nov. 3 ballot. The measure would enlarge the board from five to nine members. But it will not take effect unless voters also pass Proposition B, which would provide for election of a county executive in 1994.
Demographics
District Incumbent Democrat Republican Anglo Latino Black Number 1 Gloria Molina 67.2% 21.7% 10.99% 75.83% 3.70% 2 Kenneth Hahn 80.9% 11.5% 11.48% 40.63% 43.74% 3 Ed Edelman 58.4% 29.9% 60.09% 23.73% 4.05% 4 Deane Dana 43.0% 46.8% 66.85% 19.61% 3.42% 5 Mike Antonovich 40.3% 49.6% 62.57% 21.39% 7.10% 6 none 63.6% 26.5% 26.43% 35.42% 23.0% 7 none 64.2% 26.6% 17.31% 72.58% 1.53% 8 none 43.9% 45.7% 44.99% 29.70% 5.15% 9 none 47.6% 41.9% 66.44% 21.68% 3.30%
District Asian Number 1 9.69% 2 3.96% 3 12.37% 4 9.89% 5 8.63% 6 15.19% 7 8.57% 8 20.27% 9 8.34%
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