Board to try sharing some power

Squirreled away on the top floor of the drab, eight-story Hall of Administration downtown, Los Angeles County’s five supervisors work in a building suggestive of the government they were elected to run: sprawling, confusing to navigate and somewhat dysfunctional.

In office together for nearly 11 years, the supervisors -- three Democrats and two Republicans in the officially nonpartisan posts, one a black woman, one a Latina -- wield enormous power.

As members of the county Board of Supervisors, Mike Antonovich, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, Don Knabe, Gloria Molina and Zev Yaroslavsky oversee a government responsible for scores of services, including courts and jails, hospitals and public health, and adoptions and foster care. Their constituents are the 10 million residents of the nation’s most populous county.

Now the board is poised to take the extraordinary step of ceding some of its power to an appointed chief administrative officer. The supervisors’ 4-to-1 vote Feb. 13 set in motion the shift of some authority. Although it would require approval from voters to become permanent, the move was a board majority’s acknowledgment that the county system needs an overhaul.

“What we have to do is solve a problem right now,” Burke said at a recent meeting. “If you want to say we don’t have a problem, you have something over your head, a bag over your head.”

County department heads report directly to the elected supervisors, who can fire them, leaving the top administrator with diluted authority. Supervisors generally have avoided interfering in each other’s districts -- each with about 2 million residents.

The responsibility for many departments falls to all five supervisors, but some duties are divvied up among them for organizational reasons.

“There is no one person in the county who’s responsible for the functioning of county government,” said Yaroslavsky, the board chairman. “We have a system that values gridlock and abhors decisiveness.”

He and Knabe led the charge for a more powerful chief executive, who would oversee department heads and have hiring and firing ability, albeit subject to board approval.

The change comes after the board struggled to find a candidate to replace retiring Chief Administrative Officer David E. Janssen. Few eligible people seemed interested in a job with muddled authority to run a county with seemingly intractable problems -- among them, the largest homeless population in the nation, a health services department on the brink of financial collapse, crowded jails and a system for juvenile offenders that is under fire from the federal government. Two people who were offered the chief administrative job turned it down.

Among the county’s most persistent problems was Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center near Watts. Plagued with years of mismanagement and dangerous lapses in patient care, the hospital nearly lost its federal funding when it failed a key inspection last fall. Forced into action, the board downsized the hospital and put it under the management of another county hospital; it has been renamed Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital.

Not long before they embarked on the restructuring, all five supervisors agreed to rare sit-down interviews. From those conversations emerged a portrait of five elected officials with distinct ideologies, management styles and personalities.

Burke and Knabe are chiefly concerned with constituent services, such as neighborhood improvements. Molina and Yaroslavsky look more at bigger-picture issues. Antonovich, the most ideological, tends to hew closely to his conservative political views. He cast the only “no” vote against the proposed government restructuring, believing authority should stay with elected officials.

With divergent priorities, the supervisors lack a unified strategy to tackle county issues, the interviews showed. Each, however, has strong views on how best to oversee the county.

susannah.rosenblatt@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Mike Antonovich

Age: 67

District: Fifth

Party: Republican

Resume: Longest-serving of current board members; previously a state assemblyman, chairman of state Republican Party, campaigner for Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, community college trustee, teacher

Leadership style: Committed to local projects, such as building libraries, combined with a strong conservative ideology.

Key issues: Public safety, adoption of foster children. He likens an expanded county administrator’s job to the colonial government under King George III, and opposed the Grand Avenue downtown Los Angeles redevelopment plan.

Proudest achievements: Reopening Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar in 1986; launching a program to disarm parolees

Family: Married, with a daughter, 5, and a son, 7; lives in Glendale

Hobbies: Going on biannual horseback rides in his district; attending children’s sporting events; volunteering in his Lutheran congregation

Did you know? The decorations on his office walls include a framed letter from his “hero,” inventor and visionary Buckminster Fuller. Also has been known to mail voluminous packets of conservative news clippings to friends. Displays a puppy or kitten before each board meeting to help it find a home

First elected: 1980

Termed out: 2016

Most memorable public scolding of a department head: As the situation at the then-Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center worsened in 2005, Antonovich ratcheted up the pressure on the county’s then-chief of the health department, Dr. Thomas Garthwaite:

“I don’t understand how you have ... over $260 million worth of administrators, you have the other medical centers giving us reports, how they pass accreditation and yet we don’t have this information being given to us except through a daily newspaper. There’s a disconnect there and I don’t understand and that’s why, you know, Dr. Garthwaite, perhaps now is the time for you to step aside. There has to be full accounting. We don’t know what we’re going to read next week.”

In his own words:

On problems at King/Drew (now Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital): “The political players permitted that to exist as a second-class hospital for patronage reasons.

“For the life of me, I can’t understand how elected officials defended an inferior medical facility when they ought to have been stomping and screaming for first-class medical service and not the status quo.”

On the foster care system: “One of the greatest child abuses that occurs and is condoned by our government is the emancipation of 18-year-olds that have no support system in place.”

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Yvonne Brathwaite Burke

Age: 74

District: Second

Party: Democratic

Resume: California’s first African American congresswoman; first African American woman in the state Assembly; first woman to give birth while serving in Congress; previously chairwoman of the Los Angeles branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco; attorney

Leadership style: Downplays her race in her political persona and tries for board consensus. Focuses on constituent concerns. Relies on quiet persistence to get her way.

Key issues: Easing employment restrictions on ex-convicts; providing social services to constituents, including AIDS care and child care.

Proudest achievements: Turning industrial zones into parks; establishing a children’s charitable foundation

Family: Married, one grown daughter, one stepdaughter; lives on the Westside

Hobbies: Pilates, tennis

Did you know? Married to William A. Burke, founder of the Los Angeles Marathon

First elected: 1992

Termed out: 2016, but plans to retire in 2008 and become a mediator

Most memorable public scolding of a department head: Delivered to Dr. Thomas Garthwaite, who was county health chief as supervisors struggled with mismanagement and patient care problems at then-Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center (now MLK-Harbor):

“And, as far as I’m concerned, Dr. Garthwaite, you have to do everything that you can to fix this hospital. There is nothing that prevents you from doing whatever is necessary, but I’ll tell you this, that hospital will be closed over my dead body. I want to be clear on that.”

In her own words:

On her role as supervisor: “Most of the things that I do are not the things that are really very sexy ... [I do] the kinds of things that can make a little difference in people’s lives.”

On King/Drew, which is in her district:

“MLK Hospital, from the day I sat in this chair, has been a source of nothing but issues. I don’t know why it’s always been a problem.

“Maybe it was trying to do too much with a medical school and a hospital at the same time ... I’m not willing to take the full responsibility of everything that happened in the last 27 years at King/Drew.”

On criticizing department heads in public: “No one who is a person with a tremendous reputation and who is a professional wants to sit up in public and have to be castigated.”

On her role as trailblazer: “There are lots and lots of young women out there of all races who believe they can do it because I was willing to do it.”

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Don Knabe

Age: 63

District: Fourth

Party: Republican

Resume: Former Cerritos mayor and city councilman; chief of staff to his predecessor, the late former Supervisor Deane Dana

Leadership style: Like Burke, Knabe shies away from public clashes and builds alliances with other supervisors. He and Yaroslavsky have united to protect coastal regions from pollution. Embraces issue-oriented rather than partisan decision-making. He loves to emcee events and host auctions, appearing among constituents as much as possible.

Key issues: Law enforcement, welfare fraud and mental health care; also Marina del Rey development, beaches and community impacts of Los Angeles International Airport

Proudest achievement: Establishing the Safe Surrender program, under which mothers can leave unwanted newborns at fire stations

Family: Married, with two adult sons, two granddaughters; lives in Cerritos

Hobbies: Listening to Eric Clapton on his iPod; golf

Did you know? Knabe’s political career has not unfolded without controversy. The supervisor bristled at criticism last year of his approval of a lucrative county contract with a computer firm that retained his son Matt as a lobbyist. Knabe said newspaper coverage of the vote “crossed the line.” “I’m a public figure, so I’m an open book,” Knabe said. “But my family’s off-limits.”

His golf handicap is 11.

First elected: 1996

Termed out: 2016

Most memorable public scolding of a department head: None that anybody can recall

In his own words:

On his governing style: “I don’t try to create chaos.”

On King/Drew (now MLK-Harbor): Closing the hospital’s trauma center in 2005 was “the toughest political decision that I’ve ever made in my life.”

On holding county office: Constituents “expect visibility. You don’t get elected staying” in the Hall of Administration.

“The day-to-day stuff that doesn’t get headlines -- I think that’s what we work hard here to do.”

“There is absolutely no question: The longer you’re around here, the better you become at your job. I say that just because of the size and scope of what we have to do.”

“There’s no way in this job you could become complacent -- the responsibility’s just too big.”

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Gloria Molina

Age: 58

District: First

Party: Democratic

Resume: State Assemblywoman; first Latina on the Los Angeles City Council; the first Latina and first woman elected to the Board of Supervisors; San Francisco Department of Health and Human Services, women’s health advocate

Leadership style: Knabe and Burke’s nonconfrontational approaches offer a stark contrast to Molina’s bulldog style. She is unafraid to give county officials public tongue-lashings and question county spending. She believes department heads are the root of many county ills.

Key issues: Exposing government waste at times in partnership with Antonovich, responding promptly to constituent complaints, combating gang violence

Proudest achievements: Increasing transparency of board spending; beefing up law enforcement, transportation and other services to residents of unincorporated areas

Family: Married, one daughter in college; lives in Mt. Washington

Hobbies: Quilting

Did you know? Molina was elected after a 1991 U.S. Supreme Court decision upheld county redistricting to allow a Latino to be elected supervisor. Oldest of 10 children.

First elected: 1991

Termed out: 2014

Most memorable public scolding of a department head: In 1995, then-county health chief Robert Gates fainted and was hospitalized after Molina and other board members pressed him about hospital construction costs. Before Gates collapsed, Molina had told him, “I am disappointed that you are not doing a very effective job.”

In her own words:

On her hard-hitting approach:

“I fought like crazy to get here. I represent a community that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to make sure that I had a voice here. I’m not going to give it up easily.”

“I don’t do a lot of the meet-and-greet, the picture taking ... I don’t present big checks. I’m not really good at” ceremonial events.

“It’s not like I got up on the wrong side of the bed and decided I was going to chew somebody up that day.”

“I’m fairly opinionated, as you can tell -- not the kind of personality that’s usually good for a political candidate ... I thought I’d be a pretty effective mayor.”

On King/Drew (now MLK-Harbor):

“I think we get misled very often by our own bureaucrats. We don’t always have the right person in the job. MLK hospital needed a commanding presence to put it on track.”

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Zev Yaroslavsky

Age: 58

District: Third

Party: Democratic

Resume: Had been a student activist at UCLA a few years before his election to the Los Angeles City Council in 1975. Publicly considered running for mayor in the 1989, 1993 and 2001 elections

Leadership style: The most philosophical and loquacious board member, Yaroslavsky is also pragmatic, at times providing the swing vote on important issues.

Key issues: Reforming the Probation Department and juvenile justice system, streamlining county government, protecting the Santa Monica Bay and Santa Monica Mountains and developing a Westside subway

However, Yaroslavsky sponsored a successful 1998 ballot initiative to ban using sales tax money to build subways, arguing at the time that light rail and busways were better alternatives.

Proudest achievements: Helping to pass a property tax increase in 2002 to keep medical trauma centers open; establishing Orange Line bus service in the San Fernando Valley

Family: Married, one adult daughter, one adult son; lives in the Fairfax District

Hobbies: Jogging, classical music

Did you know? Played the oboe; gave $1 million of his office’s money for the construction of Walt Disney Concert Hall

First elected: 1994

Termed out: 2014

Most memorable public scolding of a department head: Delivered to Sheriff Lee Baca last month, for unauthorized spending on staff:

“This is mismanagement of a level that is very unsettling, that this could have taken place without the knowledge of the board ... and I don’t know how far up the chain in the Sheriff’s Department it was known. You can’t -- this is a rogue operation.

“You simply can’t be creating phantom” positions and “paying for them with overtime without getting any authority to do that from any authorized person or entity in the county government.”

In his own words:

On the board partisanship: “The issues we deal with aren’t partisan issues; they’re life-and-death issues.”

On restructuring county government: “For anybody to say the system we have is adequate ... we all five of us need to look in the mirror, because this organization is not adequate.”

On the Probation Department: “It’s been patently evident to people who have monitored this area of probation that our system was failing. This goes back a number of years, maybe seven or eight years, that our system was just plain broken in every way, shape and form.”