Government by Five Soloists

One reason the Los Angeles County supervisors aren’t accomplishing much these days is that they can’t stand each other.

You sense the unfriendly atmosphere even before you enter the supervisorial meeting room on the third floor of the Hall of Administration.

It’s not just the metal detector visitors must pass through. Nor is it the glass barrier and locked door recently added to the waist-high wooden barrier separating the public from the supervisors. These are perilous times and only the irresponsible would criticize a public official for taking precautions.

The sour atmosphere emanates from the supervisors themselves. As soon as the meeting starts, it’s clear these five are not friends.

The supervisors, seated on a raised dais, seldom talk to each other. They give speeches to the audience, which is usually small. Bureaucrats sit on the right side of the room, lobbyists on the left. Both groups have heard the speeches many times before. The vast center section is empty, unless people have come for an organized protest.

Up on the dais, the atmosphere is tense. Although the public may imagine some kind of ideological unity, the three conservative members of the board--Mike Antonovich, Deane Dana and Pete Schabarum--have not formed any kind of a permanent bloc.

Schabarum does not like Antonovich. When Antonovich is making one of his speeches to the empty chamber on a pet cause--health foods and the government of Taiwan are among his favorites--Schabarum visibly cringes. Once, during an Antonovich speech, he eased over to a reporter and made a slighting remark about Antonovich’s intelligence. But Antonovich is so single-minded about his notions that he is insensitive to Schabarum’s anger. Antonovich’s insensitivity makes Schabarum even madder.

Few are fond of Schabarum. That is because he visibly and regularly sneers at his colleagues and county department heads during the meetings. Schabarum and Antonovich act as if they don’t respect Dana, as if he were some sort of wimp or a closet moderate because he occasionally tries to compromise with county bureaucrats. Dana, whose first impulse is to get along with everybody, now frequently disagrees with Antonovich and Schabarum on public health issues.

All three act contemptuous of the two liberals, Kenny Hahn and Ed Edelman, rolling their eyes upward or making condescending remarks at their speeches. Hahn, an old FDR man, hates the conservatives as much as Roosevelt hated Dewey. The conservatives return the feeling, always refusing to elect him chairman, an honor that is supposed to be rotated yearly.

Edelman is the liberal Dana, wanting to be a friend to the world. That has not worked. For several years, Schabarum and Edelman maintained a thin bond of civility by playing tennis, but Edelman said they rarely play now.

Hahn and Edelman have never talked much, even before Hahn was disabled by a stroke. Hahn has a brilliant ability to get his name in the papers or on the news. He listens to KNX or KFWB on his way to work, alert to a news event that will provide an opportunity for a Hahn press release.

Edelman, who complains he is ignored by the press, is jealous of this Hahn talent. Hahn, meanwhile, thinks Edelman is too cautious, too reluctant to join him in fights for lost liberal causes.

What is the harm in all this? Actors and actresses have played great romantic scenes while hating each other. You may dislike the person at the next desk or in the adjoining office, but you all pull together for the old company.

It’s no different in government, especially local government where reductions in tax revenue, beginning with Proposition 13 in 1978, have forced elected officials to be creative. To do that, people must work together, exchange ideas and compromise.

That’s especially true of the supervisors, who pass laws and control departments. But these supervisors don’t supervise because they are isolated from each other and wrapped up in their own rhetoric.

AIDS policy is an illustration. The supervisors are ambivalent about the disease. Fundamentalist Christian Hahn and political conservatives Schabarum and Antonovich tend to cast the disease in moral terms and see AIDS as rough justice. Dana is pragmatic. Edelman is the biggest supporter of AIDS victims.

Even though the supervisors disagree on the issue, normal legislative debate might produce compromise solutions. But their AIDS deliberations have been marked more by speeches than an exchange of ideas. Meanwhile, tax-supported AIDS hospitalization costs are twice as high in Los Angeles County as in San Francisco because of supervisorial failure to set up enough outpatient clinics and hospices. San Francisco has had such facilities for years.

Someone ought to tell the supervisors they weren’t engaged as soloists. They’re supposed to be playing in an ensemble.