Supervisors and Assessor

Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, who is running for a fourth term, describes herself as a “fairly opinionated” person--a self-assessment that supporters would translate as confident and energetic and critics as in-your-face and cranky. Molina admits that her style is “not one that creates comfort” and prides herself in not playing the game of politics, especially if politics means compromise. It is a style that earns her admirers outside the county Hall of Administration but not always results within.

Molina does her best work building communities: encouraging her constituents in the Eastside, East L.A. and parts of the San Gabriel Valley, many of them poor or immigrants, to get involved in civic life. Working with the sheriff and the district attorney and with housing, health and other county departments, she set up a task force to fight crime and gang violence in Valinda, a San Gabriel Valley community that was having three to five shootings a month. The team attacked from all angles, using building codes to shut down gang houses, for instance, and sending in social workers to investigate child neglect and abuse. The strategy proved successful, and Molina plans to duplicate it elsewhere.

Molina faces a single opponent in the race, community college professor David Sanchez, who ran unsuccessfully last spring for a Los Angeles City Council seat. Sanchez has admirable goals, from bringing down crime to creating jobs, but no clear plan for how to accomplish them.

The Times endorses Molina as the best choice for the 1st District.

In the 3rd District, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky is running unopposed for a third term. If Molina is an issues-oriented gadfly, Yaroslavsky is a pragmatist adept at the art of compromise. But he also can stand his ground--and the heat. He championed and won approval last year of a much-needed busway across the San Fernando Valley despite vigorous opposition from an Orthodox Jewish community, a key constituency in a district that runs from the Westside to Los Feliz and includes much of the Valley. Would that he could show the same backbone when it comes to another key constituency. A member of the Local Agency Formation Commission, which will decide whether to put Valley secession to a public vote, Yaroslavsky opposes secession but seldom questions his vocal secessionist constituents. An expert on the $16-billion budget who helped save the county from bankruptcy once, Yaroslavsky is the best hope for keeping the deficit-ridden health department from torpedoing the county’s hard-won financial stability.

Los Angeles County Assessor Rich Auerbach, elected in 2000 to fill the previous assessor’s unfinished term, got off to a fast start. He appointed an office ombudsman to serve as an advocate for property owners and small businesses with complaints about appraisals or taxes. He brought the assessor’s office into the 21st century by making it easily accessible via the Web and is working to computerize the county’s 2.3-million-parcel property roll.

Three other candidates are running for assessor, but none can match Auerbach’s track record. He deserves reelection to a full four-year term so that he can continue these reforms.

To read other March 5 primary election recommendations from the Los Angeles Times, go to: latimes.com/recommend.