Supervisors Open County Affairs to Wider Scrutiny

Under attack for allegedly violating the law by doing business behind closed doors, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday bowed to pressure and adopted a host of measures that will allow the public far greater ability to monitor the work of elected leadership.

Among the proposals adopted Tuesday were measures to dump the county’s own lawyer, who advised against increased public participation, from further deliberations over public access.

The board also voted to tape-record its private meetings in order to safeguard against abuses. And it agreed to invite the public to meetings of supervisorial deputies, who gather to hammer out issues of public concern.

“I think these changes are long overdue,” Zev Yaroslavsky, the chairman of the board, said. Yaroslavsky, who recommended many of the proposals approved Tuesday, added: “I think it’s a significant first step.”

The board actions--all of which were taken in a unanimous single vote--came after a two-hour hearing. More than 50 open-government advocates, union leaders, county employees, neighborhood activists and others criticized the supervisors’ long-standing practice of meeting in secret on matters that have public impact.

Those moves reposition Los Angeles County, which has long been among the state’s most private governments, more into the mainstream in terms of public access to official proceedings.

Access to those proceedings is particularly important because Los Angeles County supervisors wield enormous influence over local affairs. They are, in effect, the legislative and executive branches of a government that commands a $16-billion annual budget and whose decisions shape the region’s policies on health care, homelessness, poverty, transportation and other vital matters.

Despite their reach, however, Los Angeles’ supervisors have largely worked out of public view. A recent analysis by The Times found that more than 90% of the supervisors’ official business was conducted without public comment. Supervisors typically meet individually with the county administrative officer on Mondays to discuss the board’s Tuesday agenda. In addition, the supervisors’ aides also meet before the board’s official sessions to resolve policy matters.

Both of those regular meetings were criticized Tuesday.

“It is not acceptable for you or your deputies to hold closed meetings because reaching a consensus in private saves time,” said Tom Clanin, president of the Greater Los Angeles chapter of the Society Professional Journalists. “We cannot allow the public’s right to know to be suppressed for the sake of official convenience.”

On Tuesday, supervisors did not acknowledge any wrongdoing or even discuss the issue that led them to consider change: the inadvertent disclosure of a secret vote to kill a proposed ballot initiative. That disclosure, made to The Times last month, touched off the debate that has consumed the supervisors for weeks and that resulted in Tuesday’s vote.

When Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke briefly alluded to that issue, Yaroslavsky reined her in.

“We don’t want to rehash history,” he said. “We do need to remember that we have been sued.”

The Times sued the board last week for allegedly breaking open meetings laws, and the district attorney is reviewing county materials to see whether the supervisors may have violated those laws.

Meanwhile, political pressure has mounted as well. On Tuesday, hundreds of county workers from three unions protested the board’s closed-door meetings outside the Hall of Administration, then streamed into the meeting room to put their complaints on the record.

Among the dozens of speakers were an AIDS activist made to wait 72 days and charged more than $300 for a seven-page report, probation officers who were kicked out of a meeting where supervisors’ deputies discussed policy changes that affected their jobs, and a journalist who was repeatedly denied access to a children’s shelter and required to put her questions to the county in writing.

Speakers recommended their own reforms, including the passage of a local “sunshine” ordinance, which would require quicker response to public records requests, expand the list of public documents and limit closed-door discussions.

The union representing home health-care aides, whose initiative the board had voted to scuttle, asked the board to discuss all ballot initiatives in public and release to the public documents relating to private discussions of proposed ballot measures, including term limits.

None of those suggestions was immediately taken up by the board.

One measure sought by critics of the board--a recommendation by Yaroslavsky to open to the public meetings of supervisors’ deputies--almost did not pass Tuesday.

Cautioning against a “rush to some judgment,” Don Knabe and Gloria Molina suggested that the board leave out that issue, until Yaroslavsky insisted it be included.

Knabe and Molina also asked their colleagues to have the remaining recommendations reviewed by J. Kenneth Brown, who is defending the board against accusations that it has violated the law.

Despite the intensity of Tuesday’s debate and the public interest in it, the board resolved the items with customary dispatch. Once the public had its say, the board’s discussion and vote took 30 minutes.