California Elections : Local-Option D.A. Elections on the Line : Prop. 59 Would Eliminate Never-Used Appointment Avenue

Proposition 59 on the Nov. 4 ballot may seem like overkill. It would require district attorneys to be elected to office--as they already are under existing state law.

But that state law also has a local-option feature. Counties are at liberty to put the matter up for election and, if voters approve, direct that their district attorneys be appointed by the county Board of Supervisors.

Proposition 59, a proposed amendment to the state Constitution, would eliminate that never-exercised option. Its backers, including the California District Attorneys Assn., want to guarantee that voters will continue to have the right to elect chief prosecutors.

No Appointment Efforts

Association President Cecil Hicks, Orange County’s district attorney for 20 years, said he knows of no efforts to appoint district attorneys in any of California’s 58 counties, adding that he hopes there are none.

However, he added, a district attorney can initiate prosecutions “from time to time” that could make him “feel somewhat threatened that the Board of Supervisors would seek to make the position an appointive one.

“A few years ago, I prosecuted members of the Board of Supervisors on charges ranging from bribery to campaign violations to using county employees for campaign purposes. We convicted three board members.”

Hicks insisted that the ballot measure is not “an outgrowth of my experience,” but he noted that those prosecutions “are the kinds of things that can happen” to make a board of supervisors try to get the issue on the local ballot in a push for appointing district attorneys.

Constitutional Changes

When the state Constitution was streamlined a decade ago, county sheriffs and district attorneys were dropped as elected constitutional officers. The California Sheriffs Assn. quickly remedied that, regaining their lost constitutional status through a 1977 ballot measure that passed by a 61% vote.

Hicks’ association wants district attorneys’ status as elected officials also guaranteed by the Constitution and got Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) to successfully guide a constitutional amendment proposal through the Legislature.

“There was no discussion of whether it was appropriate public policy,” Roberti aide Donna Brownsey said. “And there seemed to be no outstanding public policy reason not to have (district attorneys) in the Constitution.”

The County Supervisors Assn. of California opposes the measure because “it would further erode the concept of local control.” Hicks argues, however, that “direct election is the ultimate local control.”

Different Needs

San Jose attorney Gary B. Wesley, author of the ballot argument opposing the measure, feels that district attorneys should be left out of the Constitution because “in small counties, there may be a need for the district attorney to be a good courtroom lawyer. An elected district attorney may not be.

“Voters in some counties may prefer to allow their elected board of supervisors to appoint a qualified attorney to serve as district attorney and remove the appointee if he or she is not tough enough on crime or is otherwise unsatisfactory.”

But Wesley conceded that “I don’t feel that strongly about” the proposition. Asked if any opposition was organizing against the measure, he chuckled and said, “Very often lousy propositions get no organized opposition.”