County Plans Measure on Lifting Job Protections

Los Angeles County voters will be asked in March to decide whether high-level county managers should be exempt from Civil Service protection.

The ballot initiative to amend the county charter was authored by Supervisor Don Knabe and would apply to 65 positions in county government with salaries of $88,000 to $131,000. It was approved unanimously Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors.

In 1986, voters removed the heads of the county’s more than 30 departments from Civil Service protection, making them at-will employees of the board. The current initiative would make the chief deputies and deputies to those department heads at-will employees who could be hired and fired by the department head.

“These positions are normally very high-salaried positions, and if we’re going to hold the department managers accountable, they ought to be able to hold the senior management accountable,” Knabe said.

Currently, those managers’ jobs are protected by Civil Service laws that have kept them in place and sometimes stymied department heads or supervisors from changing the operation of certain agencies.

An effort to remove Civil Service protection for managers under the level of department head failed at the polls in 1996, but the current initiative is narrower and Knabe said he believes voters were confused by the prior, more complex measure.

The initiative would only remove the Civil Service protection of incoming managers. Current senior managers would retain the protections under which they were hired.