Supervisors Agree to Put Expansion of Board From 5 to 9 Before Voters

Bowing to pressure from Sacramento lawmakers, Los Angeles County supervisors directed staff lawyers to prepare an initiative asking voters to expand the board from five to nine and allow the election of a county executive.

The supervisors’ reluctant acceptance of the two proposals was spurred by efforts of legislators--some of whom have often clashed with supervisors--to place the expansion issue before voters statewide, rather than only in Los Angeles County, for the 2001 election.

If either proposition is approved by voters, it would radically restructure political power in Los Angeles County, either by creating a new elected position representing more constituents than the mayor of Los Angeles and most U.S. senators, or by expanding the county’s Board of Supervisors for the first time since the county’s founding in 1850--or both.

Expanding the board is an old issue among local governmental reform advocates, who say supervisors who represent nearly 2 million people each cannot do an adequate job.

Expansion has gained new life because of a push by state Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), who has campaigned for nine months to get the supervisors to place the issue before county voters. Polanco and his allies in the Latino legislative caucus have sparred with the board majority over its decision to rebuild a smaller County-USC Medical Center and the support of some for an initiative prohibiting sales-tax money from being used to extend the subway to the predominantly Latino Eastside.

With the backing of many community groups that have long fought for board expansion, Polanco has even introduced a constitutional amendment in Sacramento to place the issue before the electorate statewide, although he pledged to withdraw it if the supervisors acted.

As Polanco’s amendment picked up bipartisan support among legislators who, like the senator, will soon be forced from office by term limits and looking for new jobs, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky quietly placed the issue on the board’s Tuesday agenda.

A three-member majority voted to draft the ballot language, saying they had to move fast to prevent the issue from being placed before state voters first. But one advocate of board expansion worried that the push may end up placing a cumbersome and unwinnable issue on the ballot.

Supervisor Gloria Molina, who authored the last initiative to expand the board, said a new one must be carefully drafted “instead of just throwing it out there and maybe hoping it won’t pass.” But she noted that voters are wary of increasing the number of politicians.

Polanco, who has spoken to supervisors in recent weeks, hailed the move as “a step in the right direction. . . . I’m delighted they were able to come to a decision on this.”

Yaroslavsky has been studiously silent on the issue for the past year, as Latino leaders and others implored him to put it on the agenda. This week he said he supports letting voters decide whether to expand the board.

Saying he would have eventually put the matter before voters anyway, Yaroslavsky said he moved on the matter now because “I don’t think we want the people of Sacramento County or San Diego County or Stanislaus County” to decide Los Angeles’ government structure.

He noted that he has long favored an elected executive officer--an element not included in Polanco’s proposal--to divide power appropriately within the county. Currently, the board acts as both an executive and legislative branch.

“While I think we do as good a job and as credible a job as possible,” Yaroslavsky said, “it’s not a system that works best in our democratic society.”

Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke said she favors placing the issue before the voters. “We should put it on the ballot,” she said. “It’s a good idea. I’ve always supported it.”

Supervisor Don Knabe said he backs putting the expansion before the voters although he does not believe expanding and adding an executive will improve services.

“What I’m opposed to,” Knabe said, “is for the Legislature to think 57 other counties can decide on the nation’s largest county’s form of government.”

Supervisor Mike Antonovich was the sole supervisor to say the issue should not be put before voters. Noting it had been soundly rejected before, he said: “I would rather take the hundreds of thousands of dollars of money to put this on the ballot and use it to hire another [deputy] sheriff to protect the public.”

In a news conference outside the board chambers Tuesday morning, Alan Clayton of the county Chicano Employees Assn., who has been lobbying vigorously for the issue to be placed on the ballot, said he did not support the executive position but did not believe it would sink the effort.

Clayton and other backers acknowledged that voters have a long track record of shooting down efforts to expand elected positions, but he said this issue would be different because a wide reach of interests support board expansion.

“I think there’s a really good possibility to get a coalition of regional representatives together . . . to support this,” he said.

Asked why he believed supervisors were moving on the issue now after nine months of silence, Clayton said: “They saw we had bipartisan support in Sacramento.”

Julie Matsumoto of the Southern California Asian/Pacific Islander health caucus praised the effort to expand the board, which experts believe could lead to the election of Los Angeles’ first Asian American supervisor.

“It is unconscionable that, in a county with the largest Asian/Pacific Islander population [in the country], we have no voice in county government,” Matsumoto said.

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Kid-Friendly Cities

A report released Tuesday by Zero Population Growth rated American cities for 14 “quality of life” indicators such as economics, education, environment and health. Major cities were ranked separately from suburbs.

RANKING OF MAJOR CITIES

RANKING OF SOUTHLAND SUBURBS

*Source: Zero Population Growth