Spending by Supervisors

Your Sept. 26 front-page article (followed by an editorial the next day) inaccurately described the budget allocated to the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors and also contained a misleading comparison between the budgets of city and county executives. In fact, Mayor Tom Bradley and the Los Angeles City Council, who represent 3.5 million people, spend $1 million more each year to do their jobs than the supervisors, who represent nearly 10 million residents.

Your paper manipulated these facts by failing to mention that the Board of Supervisors is both the executive and legislative branch of county government. To form a fair comparison, you had to combine the budgets of Bradley and the council, which are nearly $1 million higher than county board expenses.

When you referred to staff sizes, you noted that Supervisor Gloria Molina had fewer aides than serve on my staff. But The Times failed to mention that my staff has been serving nearly a half-million more constituents, and 600,000 more voters, than reside in her district; furthermore, her district covers only 180 square miles, compared with the Fifth District’s 2,873 square miles.

One other fact that was not clearly spelled out: One-third of the board’s budget is discretionary funds. Your reporter called this an equally divided pot for “pet projects.” That may be correct, depending on how you define “pet projects.”

The pet projects which I have funded include $250,000 to help preserve the county’s mental health system, earthquake education for schoolchildren, a domestic violence program to protect abused women and children, programs to help educate and rehabilitate juvenile offenders, the Good Shepherd Center for Homeless Women, graffiti removal, Operation Gangwatch, a sheriff’s school liaison deputy, after-school sports programs, the Alhambra Child Care Center, the Music Center, and Parks and Recreation projects throughout the district.

MICHAEL D. ANTONOVICH, Supervisor, Fifth District