Supervisors OK Ballot Proposal for Bigger Panel : Government: A measure to create an elected county executive also will go before voters. Molina fails in effort to have ethics reform plan included in the package.

Measures that would create an elected Los Angeles County executive and expand the Board of Supervisors to as many as nine members were approved Tuesday for placement on the November ballot.

In a 3-2 vote, the supervisors approved the proposed charter amendment, which would separate county government into executive and legislative branches for the first time.

The vote came after an angry exchange between liberal Supervisors Gloria Molina and Ed Edelman, who tangled over Molina’s proposal for ethics reform.

Molina argued unsuccessfully that board expansion should be linked to such reforms as registration of lobbyists and a limit on honorariums for county officials. Such reforms, Molina said, would entice voters to approve board expansion, which has been defeated several times before, most recently in 1976.

Edelman, however, was not swayed by Molina’s arguments. He blocked her motion to link approval of the ballot measures to public hearings on ethics reform. Although her linkage motion failed, Molina voted nonetheless to place the expansion measure on the November ballot.

“I want to put (board expansion) on the ballot, but I want the voters of this county to support it,” Molina said. “I was hopeful that I was going to be able to get the support of the supervisors for ethics reform. . . . I’m having a hell of a time convincing two other colleagues of this. I’ve never seen such stubbornness.”

Edelman countered that Molina’s ethics proposal was too closely modeled on a package recently adopted in the city of Los Angeles. The city ethics law, Edelman said, is unnecessarily complex and unwieldy.

“You can ask for hearings (on ethics reform) any time you want,” Edelman told Molina. “But I don’t think we should link” ethics reform to board expansion. “I want to separate the two.”

When the supervisors last discussed board expansion in February, Molina said she would not vote for the proposal unless it was linked to ethics reform.

No other supervisors supported the move then and Molina left the meeting to testify at a congressional hearing in Washington. Without her vote, the measure to place board expansion on the June ballot was defeated.

In agreeing to support board expansion Tuesday, Molina said she would continue to press for a separate measure calling for public hearings on ethics reform.

Supervisors approved three separate ballot measures. One would amend the County Charter to expand the board to seven members, while a second measure would create a nine-member board.

A third ballot measure approved by the board would create an elected county executive. Under a motion by Edelman, board expansion will be linked to voter approval of the county executive.

Proponents of board expansion say it will make county government more responsive. Each supervisor now represents about 1.8 million people.

Conservative supervisors Michael Antonovich and Deane Dana argued against board expansion, saying it would be a costly measure that would create more high-paid county bureaucrats.

Antonovich went further, saying the proposed boundaries of supervisorial districts under the seven- and nine-member plans would split cities in half. The redistricting proposals, he said, amounted to “blatant gerrymandering.”

Dana joined Antonovich in an unsuccessful attempt to postpone the vote.

“Why are we in a rush to divide the county in fiefdoms?” Antonovich asked.

Under terms of a federal court ruling in a 1990 Latino voting-rights lawsuit, the ballot measures approved by the board Tuesday will be reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice. If the federal government finds that the measures discriminate against minority voters, they will not be placed on the ballot.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a plaintiff in the suit, has said it would oppose expanding the board to seven members because that plan would erode the political power Latinos gained in the federal court ruling by leaving the county with only one district with a Latino majority.

However, the group has raised no objections to enlarging the board to nine members, which the group believes could lead to a second Latino supervisor.