For County’s Mayor, It’s Out With Old, In With New

When Mike Antonovich heads to Cairo and Casablanca next week, it will be his first overseas trip in his new role as mayor of Los Angeles County.

But first things first.

The business cards can’t read “chairman of the Board of Supervisors.” They’ve got to say “mayor.”

The title etched on his office door can’t reflect the past, it’s got to reflect the present.

The county’s World Wide Web site can’t be wrong. It’s got to carry the right information. The proclamations can’t bear the signature of the chairman. They’ve got to carry hizzoner’s new moniker.

All this for less than 30 days.

For Antonovich’s term as mayor ends Dec. 2, when he once again reverts to merely being supervisor, 5th District.

It was just last Tuesday that his colleagues, by a 3-2 vote, agreed with him that mayor more closely befits his post than chairman of the board.

No one, including Antonovich, has a price tag for all these changes, but it’s not without cost:

His stationery is being reprinted. His title--on Hall of Administration building directories--is being changed. And county contracts are being altered.

Some changes are free, of course. The mail can’t be signed the old way, it’s got to herald the new.

When Antonovich last week sent letters (also not at government expense) to newspaper editors promoting the Republican ticket of Bob Dole and Jack Kemp, they were signed by the county mayor.

County memos--that staple of bureaucratic communication--no longer address him as chairman, but carry the mayoral designation.

Then there’s that 13-day trip to Cairo and Casablanca.

When he leaves, Antonovich will be taking with him new business cards bearing the title of mayor. “We’re replenishing the cards that we have,” he said. “We are basically out of cards now.”

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Why the new title?

“People don’t understand the responsibilities” of the Board of Supervisors, Antonovich said, but better understand the role of a mayor. “It makes a difference when you represent the 10 million people here.”

“In a lot of languages, like Chinese, they don’t have a character for supervisor. They do for mayor.”

His first stop will be a regional economic conference on the Middle East and North Africa hosted by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. While there, Antonovich said, he will be “trying to bring about job development in Los Angeles County.”

Then it’s on to Casablanca, Morocco, for a conference on “Decision Making in Municipal Affairs,” sponsored by the Arab Urban Development Institute of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Antonovich will be a keynote speaker on “Managing and Renewing the Urban Area.”

He said the trip is being paid for by the King Adulaziz Al-Saud Foundation for Islamic Studies and Humanitarian Science. Accompanying him will be the county’s directors of public works and regional planning, who will speak on managing solid waste and monitoring development.

Travel abroad is hardly foreign to Antonovich. He took a 23-day trip to China last fall to secure ancient mummies for an exhibit at the county’s Natural History Museum.

But his sojourn to the Middle East and North Africa will probably mark the end of Los Angeles County’s mayoral trappings, at least for a while.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky takes over the top post--whatever it is called--next month. And a spokesman said Yaroslavsky has instructed the county’s executive and protocol offices that “he doesn’t intend to use the term, mayor when he becomes the chairman of the board.”