Supervisors Support D.A., Assessor in Term Limits Fight

Los Angeles County supervisors voted Tuesday to back the county’s district attorney and assessor in their battle to overturn the term limits voters imposed on their offices three years ago.

The decision to challenge the limits follows a Superior Court ruling in October that identical restrictions on the county’s sheriff violated the state Constitution.

The supervisors voted unanimously in closed session to allow Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley and Assessor Rick Auerbach to hire attorneys to contest the term limits, which restrict officials to three four-year terms.

Cooley won election in 2000 and was reelected last year. Under the current term limits, he can run for D.A. two more times.

Auerbach was also elected in 2000 to serve the two years remaining after Kenneth P. Hahn retired. In 2002, Auerbach won reelection. He can seek reelection again twice.

Both men have said they do not plan to take advantage of any reversal of term limits but believe their offices should be treated the same as the sheriff’s.

“The point is that this is something that isn’t personal to me. It’s not a selfish issue on my part because it’s not going to be affecting me,” Auerbach said. Auerbach said he believes his job and that of the sheriff and district attorney are far different from a supervisor, and should be treated as such when it comes to term limits.

“The job is substantially different from the Board of Supervisors. It’s a policy-making body, whereas the assessor, the sheriff and the D.A. are more administrative,” he said.

In the March 2002 election, county voters overwhelmingly supported limits for elected county officials, approving the measure with 61% of the vote.

Baca waged a three-year legal battle against the restrictions. His lawyers successfully argued that the office of sheriff owes its authority to the state Constitution, and that counties cannot impose the limits. The Legislature has amended state law to allow voters to create term limits for county supervisors, but not for other elected county officials.