Molina: Ethics and Relating to Her Colleagues

Gloria Molina’s refusal to support expansion of the Board of Supervisors tells much about her and her relations with her fellow supes.

Her decision last week came as quite a surprise. When Molina ran for supervisor last year, she promised to support expansion of the board. It now consists of just five lawmakers, who represent more than 8.8 million people.

The League of Women Voters has long advocated board expansion, along with an elected county executive, or mayor. So has the Los Angeles County Bar Assn.

They contend that L.A. County has become too big to be run by a five-member board set up when L.A. was a sparsely populated frontier town.

More supervisors would improve public access to the lawmakers. An elected mayor would provide checks and balances to prevent the generous pension deals, expensive remodelings and other excesses we see in today’s county government.

When Molina was elected to the board, reformers figured she’d be part of a board majority that would put the measure on the ballot. But last week when Molina declined to support the plan, she didn’t even stick around for the vote. Instead, she left early to catch a plane for Washington, where she was making a speech and testifying before a Senate committee. With her absent and lacking support from either of her two fellow Democrats, the proposal was short of the majority it needed to be placed on the June ballot.

Given the poor relations between Molina and other board members, the result was inevitable. I could see that on Wednesday when I visited her office to discuss the action.

She sat straight up behind her desk, a short woman with a big sharp voice, a professional outsider, a politician who wins by blasting the Establishment.

At board meetings, Molina snaps out questions to bureaucrats and argues with her colleagues with the certainty born of knowing she is on the politically and morally correct path. When I pointed this out to her, she replied: “Well, let me tell you, that all of us as politicians, if we don’t believe that what we promote and what we put forth is right, then I don’t know what we’re doing here. If we’re just going to sit around and compromise ourselves into nothingness, then that’s their (her colleagues’) problem.”

When she speaks at board meetings these days, the other supervisors gaze upward toward the ceiling looking disgusted. “My colleagues don’t even want me physically here,” Molina said. “But here I am.”

Even with these shaky relations, you’d figure that Molina would be supported by her fellow Democrats, Ed Edelman and Kenny Hahn, both of whom favored a bigger board and elected county executive.

But once in office, Molina began tinkering with the proposal. She concluded that today’s anti-government voters would never support a plan creating more elective offices unless they were promised something substantial in return.

Her solution was a county ethics law, like the one approved last year for the city. Lobbyists would register. Campaign contributions would be limited. Gifts and honorariums would be banned. An ethics commission would supervise enforcement.

Voters would never approve board expansion without ethics rules, she said. “I thought this was the helium balloon to get this to fly.”

So Molina met with ethics experts, campaign reformers and assorted other good government types, wrote her proposal and sent it over to Hahn and Edelman.

They quickly rejected it.

It might have come out differently if Molina had been a more clever--and more sensitive--politician.

Take her approach to Edelman. He has been promoting the idea of an elected county mayor since he became a supervisor 17 years ago. He thinks of himself as the Father of County Reform.

Why didn’t Molina visit Edelman months ago, praise his years of efforts and make her ethics proposal HIS ethics proposal?

Kenny Hahn would have been tougher. Molina has been merciless in public arguments with him. Hahn’s stroke has slowed his repartee, but his mind remains sharp, capable of remembering a slight.

Furthermore, a more sensitive Molina never would have brought up the subject of an ethics commission. It was the L.A. City Ethics Commission that ordered a raid of the office of Hahn’s son, L.A. City Atty. Jim Hahn, while investigating two employees.

Never mention the words “ethics commission” to a Hahn.

The story isn’t over. The supes still have time to put a reform plan on the November ballot.

But Molina, Edelman and Hahn will have to learn to live together. The men will have to accept the tough, stubborn woman. And she’ll have to learn that she’s not betraying her principles by treating the old guys with a little respect.