Many Thanks, Sort of, for Pete Schabarum : Supervisors: Maybe the current brouhaha will at least spark enough interest in this amorphous body to make it responsive to the people.

About six months ago in the New Yorker magazine, author and former Los Angeles resident Joan Didion pointed out that there seemed to be only 200 to 300 people who had a clue about how things work here, and about who makes the decisions on how we collectively live.

A Marxist friend of mine tells me that this is by design, and is exactly the way the local powers-that-be want it. Keeping things low-key, amorphous and somewhat unfathomable has always been not just their style, but their game plan, he says. With us all cooled out, “they” are then free to go ahead and do what they wish. I’m not sure who “they” are, nor am I sure he is either, but high up on the list must surely be the five-member Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Just who are these guys? And what is it exactly that they do? One wonders if even Didion’s anointed few hundred know.

Thank God, then, that Pete Schabarum came along several weeks ago, adroitly announcing his retirement from the board and screwing every potential candidate in sight except his buddy and desired successor, Superior Court Judge Gregory O’Brien Jr. And thank God, as well, that the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) is suing the board over the fact that there is no Latino board member. At least they’ve caused some of us to start asking a few questions.

Like, for example, how it is possible for just five men to preside over a $9.6-billion budget, make informed policy and provide mass transit, medical, mental-health and hospital care (the kind of services that must be tailored to community needs), as well as jails and courts to 8.6 million diverse Angelenos? And while doing all that, how can they also adequately serve as both mayor and city council to the 1 million county residents living in unincorporated areas for whom they must supply all municipal services from police to trash pickup? True, how a good deal of that money is spent is mandated by the state and federal governments. But the supervisors enjoy considerable flexibility on who gets what, and which issues are deemed important.

And how is it possible for each of those five supervisors to effectively represent 1.8 million citizens (three times as many as a member of Congress represents) and to serve them in districts that stretch--as one does--from the Ventura line to Orange County; or contains, as does another, communities as distinct and geographically distant as Bel-Air, East Los Angeles and parts of the San Fernando Valley?

And how, given the vast size of each district and the anonymity of the supervisors, can anyone ever hope to challenge an incumbent? People don’t have strong feelings about the supervisors because they get so little media coverage. Moreover, it’s physically impossible to walk such huge districts. So a candidate must rely on mass mailings and paid media advertising. And what that means is big-money donations. “The Hispanic community can’t compete in districts so large,” says Richard Fajardo, the lead counsel in MALDEF’s suit against the board. Supervisor Mike Antonovich spent $1.4 million in his 1988 election, including a runoff race. The most that City Council member Richard Alatorre ever raised was $365,000; Esteban Torres raised about $325,000 for his congressional seat. “Anyone can file,” as a county official told me, “but you’re not gonna be even a joke of a contender unless you can raise big bucks.”

Is it any wonder, then, that the board is accused of over-favoring developers and other moneyed interests when they make their decisions? Given the need to raise that kind of money, it would be hard not to.

And given the lack of press and public scrutiny, is it any wonder that decisions whirl by in a matter of seconds at board meetings? The usual 3-to-2 votes split along practical as well as ideological lines that favor the rich and powerful, with more money for jails and less for already-emaciated health-and-welfare programs. (Unlike city, state or federal government, the county has no elected executive like a president, governor or mayor to counterbalance the board’s legislative function.)

It’s true, of course, as former County Supervisor Baxter Ward told me, that small isn’t necessarily better. Having 15 little fiefdoms carved out, as in the Los Angeles City Council, where everybody has to get something and every bill that comes out is a watered-down compromise is not an ideal form of government.

But at least a council member represents a manageable and relatively homogeneous constituency. Voters can organize on a grass-roots level to remove, say, a Peggy Stevenson, from the council when she forgets that it is the people and not the developers who elected her.

If the board had at least that level of accountability, perhaps we wouldn’t have been subjected, as we were last week, to the specter of Pete Schabarum announcing at the last possible minute his retirement from an office he could have held forever, while simultaneously displaying his absolute contempt for the process of government.

And perhaps, too--assuming that the lawsuit currently being decided in federal court goes MALDEF’s way--a Latino district will be created and the voices of more than 2.5 million Latinos will finally be heard on a County Board of Supervisors on which they have never sat. And out of that same suit could even come an expanded nine-member board, one in which five aging, anonymous white men will no longer continue to rule vast districts that nobody feels a part of.