Don Knabe named chairman of L.A. County Board of Supervisors
Don Knabe was named chairman of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, and used his opening remarks to call for reforming the bureaucracy to make it more responsive to the county’s 10 million residents.
“Interacting with the county should be as easy as making a purchase on Amazon,” Knabe said. “But we must realize that innovation should not just be updating old technologies and developing apps for smartphones. It should be about changing our overall culture to be more responsive to the needs of our residents. We need to commit ourselves to move away from the mentality that ‘This is the way we’ve always done things.’ ”
He said the county’s departments need to move away from a mentality that results in redundancy and inefficiency, and announced the creation of the “chairman’s challenge,” an award for two or more departments that work collaboratively to create an innovative program.
“We have an opportunity to write a new chapter of county government that will be smarter, more efficient, better serving, and easier to work with,” Knabe said. “We can leave this county in a better place.”
Knabe was unanimously named the chairman by his peers on the five-member board, taking the reins from Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas. The one-year position is largely ceremonial, though the chairman does run the board’s weekly meeting. Knabe made one immediate change -- forbidding public comment on agenda items that are continued to a future meeting.
Looking forward, Knabe said the county faces the greatest test in its 163-year-old history -- the implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act.
“It doesn’t matter whether you were for it or against it, come Jan. 1, 2014, it goes into effect,” Knabe said. “There are major ramifications for Los Angeles County and we’ve been working hard to prepare for it.”
Knabe also touched upon the dramatic changes the board will see in coming years because of term limits, which are forcing four supervisors from office by 2016, and worried that a less experienced board would result in less long-term planning.
“This is a bittersweet time for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. In the upcoming year, we will be saying goodbye to our colleagues Supervisors Gloria Molina and Zev Yaroslavsky, who have served over 40 combined years on the board,” Knabe said.
In a matter of months, the board, he added, will have a “dramatically different look and feel.”
“When Zev and Gloria ride off into the sunset next year, they’ll be taking with them irreplaceable knowledge and experience,” Knabe said. “While the term-limit ship sailed a long time ago, there is no doubt that this county has benefited enormously from steady, consistent leadership.
“I fear that term limits will make priorities more short-termed as well. I sure hope I am wrong.”
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