New Government Needed, Not New Face : Latinos Shouldn’t Settle for Tinkering With Archaic County Board

Call me an ingrate, but I am one Chicano who does not appreciate how aggressively the Reagan Administration is prodding the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to redraw its districts to eliminate discrimination against Latino voters.

It’s not that I don’t think the alleged discrimination exists. Quite the contrary. It’s as blatant as ever. In the 138 years since Los Angeles County received its charter from the state of California, no Latino has ever been elected to the board. That is surprising enough when you recall that this region’s principal city was founded by Mexicans. But when you consider that more than a quarter of the county’s 8.4 million residents are Latino, and that we are still one of the fastest-growing segments of the local population, then it becomes downright suspicious. Clearly the political powers-that-be are in no hurry to let a Latino take a seat on their most important governing body.

And it’s certainly not that I like the current Board of Supervisors. It is made up of five white men who are so--pardon the expression--colorless that they even get reelected because potential rivals simply forget to run against them, as happened to Supervisor Pete Schabarum a couple of years ago. The only board member even halfway interesting is Kenneth Hahn, an old-style liberal who represents South Los Angeles, and he has been slowed by age and health problems.

To return to the issue at hand, however, there are three things that trouble me about the federal government’s effort to force Los Angeles County’s five princes to realign their fiefdoms by threatening a lawsuit under the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

First, I suspect that the Justice Department’s zeal in this case is not really based on the fact that the Voting Rights Act prohibits deliberate gerrymandering that excludes minorities from political power. Instead, the rationale behind the threatened lawsuit may be crudely political. An outgoing Republican Administration wants the GOP to hold onto the White House in this fall’s election, and is probably hoping that a civil-rights lawsuit against Los Angeles County will persuade Latino voters here and elsewhere in the Southwest to support Republicans in November. Why else would an Administration that has had six years to come down on Los Angeles County for its obvious discrimination against Latinos wait until a few months before an election to do it? Anyone who thinks me too cynical should know that the Administration point-man in this redistricting case is Assistant Atty. Gen. William Bradford Reynolds, who is not known for his enthusiastic enforcement of civil-rights laws.

A second reason I can’t generate much enthusiasm for this issue is that I fear that a political bloodbath would start as soon as all the ambitious Latino politicos around town realized that there was a new position for them to scramble after. Latino activists in Los Angeles are barely recovering from the infighting that took place in 1986 and ‘87, when a similar Justice Department lawsuit forced the city of Los Angeles to realign its council districts. Eventually Richard Alatorre and Gloria Molina gave up seats in the Legislature to win election to the council, but far too much money and time were spent getting them elected and then electing replacements for them in Sacramento.

Finally, and most important, all this talk about the lack of Latino representation on the county board is a symptom of a larger problem--the fact that Los Angeles County government is not particularly responsive to anybody, because it is unwieldy and outmoded. The supervisors are not only the county’s legislature but also its executive authority. Any good businessman knows that this is no way to run a railroad. There is no central point of executive responsibility. And no checks and balances. In short, no incentive for efficient or responsive government.

This system was adopted in 1912, when Los Angeles was a dusty backwater county with more orange and olive trees than people. (For the record, the county’s population in the 1910 census was 504,131, and more than 60% of those people lived within the city of Los Angeles.) A system in which five supervisors have both legislative and administrative power may be cheap and workable in rural counties, but it makes little sense in a megalopolis of 8.4 million people, sprawling over 85 cities and 285 special taxing districts.

What Los Angeles County really needs is not a Latino on the Board of Supervisors, but a new form of government. And that is not a new idea. For the last 20 years, at least, thoughtful people have been proposing ways to modernize county government here. Just last Tuesday the supervisors voted 3 to 2 against a proposal by Hahn to expand the board to seven members in order to create a Latino district. It was just the latest instance of board incumbents showing little or no interest in changing the current system, which gives them more constituents and money--in a word, power--than most members of Congress and even a few governors.

I suppose that there are some community activists who would like to see a Latino with that kind of clout and influence, but they are shortsighted. Putting a Latino onto a public body that has outlived its usefulness would be a disservice not just to 2.4 million Latinos but to every resident of Los Angeles County as well.