Supervisors Disband Pornography Panel

The Los Angeles County Commission on Obscenity and Pornography--which had no staff, no budget and no regular meeting schedule--was disbanded Tuesday after 37 years by the county Board of Supervisors.

The 15-member commission was established in 1964, though in recent months its roster had dwindled to six. It had met only once since 1995, according to a Feb. 9 letter to supervisors from Richard A. Popper, chairman of the county Audit Committee.

“The commission appears to have no focus or sense of mission and has accomplished little over the past several years,” Popper wrote in recommending it be disbanded.

Supervisors Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, Gloria Molina and Zev Yaroslavsky voted to disband it. Supervisors Michael D. Antonovich, a longtime supporter of the commission, and Don Knabe opposed the move..

Commission member Michael B. Bennett said he welcomed the board’s vote.

“It’s a wasted commission. We don’t need it,” said Bennett, an administrator with the Los Angeles Unified School District who lives in Sherman Oaks.

The commission had not met once during his three years as a member, he added.

Over the years, the commission had sought to rally public support for stricter pornography laws and help county officials “in their campaign against the publication and distribution” of porn, according to its charter.

But because of constitutional guarantees of free expression, the commission in practice had focused on child pornography--which is illegal--and in efforts to keep pornography from falling into the hands of children.

Among other things, the commission helped prepare a pamphlet aimed at building awareness of child pornography. The panel’s slow demise began in the early 1990s, when the budget-strapped Board of Supervisors took away the commission’s funding.