L.A. County’s supervisors: Just how much security do they need?

By now I expect you’ve seen The Times’ stories about L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas’ garage-office conversion.

The county’s five supervisors, as the stories detailed, are all entitled to home security systems provided by the county, including secure high-speed Internet.

At Ridley-Thomas’ house, some of the remodeling was paid for by the county, as part of that necessary security, the county said; Ridley Thomas said he reimbursed the county for anything else. The Times’ stories questioned how much of the work was necessary to fulfill the county’s security obligations.

If you like the nuts and bolts of construction projects — and I mean that literally — here’s your lucky link.

But maybe you’re one of those readers wondering just how much security do the supervisors need?

I mean, who among ordinary voters — ordinary residents — could name all five members of the Board of Supervisors? Who could name one supervisor? If I stood on Sunset or Ventura Boulevard and paid $5 to anyone who could single out a supervisor from a photo array, I would go home with just about as much money as I came with.

More than 20 years ago, some of the supes made themselves look ridiculous by riding to work in chauffeur-driven bulletproof cars. In their public meeting room, their chairs were fitted out with bulletproof backs; even their desk blotters were bulletproof.

“If bullets start flying around the board room,” said then-Supervisor Deane Dana, “we can pull up that and protect ourselves.” (His armored car cost $74,000. The then-mayor, Tom Bradley, had a regular car that cost less than half that.)

Back then, incoming Supervisor Gloria Molina, who had served safely in both Sacramento and on the L.A. City Council without James Bond office equipment, said she thought it was “almost comical.” In a hail of bullets, she said, “I’m not going to sit here and put up my desk blotter.”

I asked our Sacramento sachems, George Skelton and Patrick McGreevy, about the security measures for state legislators. McGreevy said they don’t have home security systems or bodyguards; Skelton pointed out that the Assembly speaker and the state Senate president pro tem — two of the Capitol’s Big Four — do have law enforcement officers as drivers.

Members of Congress are protected under the Capitol dome, but they’re pretty much on their own at home, and when they’re out and about. The shooting of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords prompted a lot of members to rethink their own security, but the government offers them limited protection, which is why some resorted to carrying guns themselves.

The county deals with physical and mental health policy, with welfare and jails — life-and-death issues — and passions can run high, which is why the board’s meeting room, like City Hall and the Capitol, has security checks and armed deputies on hand.

In 1991, when The Times questioned the need for an armored car and bulletproof desk blotters, Supervisor Dana wrote a dudgeon-filled letter to the editor citing the threats he’d gotten, the “militant special interest groups” out there, arguing that supervisors’ jobs expose them to “the wild-eyed few.” An aide to one supervisor dropped the name of Harvey Milk, the San Francisco supervisor who was murdered in 1978 in his office, as was Mayor George Moscone. But they were killed not by the “wild-eyed few” but by a disgruntled fellow supervisor.

The five people entitled to home security systems sit on a powerful board, but they don’t exactly make the nightly news every evening. Not many people even know what they look like — except, of course, the people who make a point to. They may incur someone’s wrath, but every public official in the nation has rubbed someone the wrong way.

Perhaps the county is still freaked out by what happened more than 60 years ago, when Supervisor Raymond Darby cast the only vote in favor of a zoning change requested by a Palmdale developer, and then added, “All you want to do is sell this land to a lot of suckers.” Afterward, the supervisor walked to the railing separating the board from the audience to speak to the riled developer, who cold-cocked him. Darby died of a brain hemorrhage nearly three hours later. (A year later, Puerto Rican nationalists shot up a session of Congress, wounding five lawmakers.)

Do the supervisors need some security? Yes. Does it look right that they get more security than, say, a member of Congress? No.

Now, whose job is it to remedy that?

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Follow Patt Morrison on Twitter @pattmlatimes