العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
EspañolLOS ANGELES COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS
The 'Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors' is the five member governing board of Los Angeles County, California. Members of the board of supervisors are elected by district, the current members as of April 2006 are:
★ District 1: Gloria Molina, Democrat
★ District 2: Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, Democrat
★ District 3: Zev Yaroslavsky, Democrat (currently 'Chairman' of the Board)
★ District 4: Don Knabe, Republican
★ District 5: Michael D. Antonovich, Republican
Until recently, the chief administrative officer (currently David Janssen) was the appointed individual heading the county but had little power as supervisors retained the right to fire and hire department heads and often directly admonished department heads in public. Under an ordinance to be effective in April 2007, Janssen will now directly oversee departments on behalf of the supervisors, although the Los Angeles County Fire Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Assessor, Treasurer/Tax Collector, Auditor/Controller, and Executive Office would continue to be under the direct purview of the Board of Supervisors. The change was made in response to several candidates either dropping out or refusing to accept the position to replace Janssen, who was planning to retire in 2006. Janssen will stay on for another year while these changes are implemented.
The Board meets every Tuesday at 9:30 AM in the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration in downtown Los Angeles. Its weekly meetings are televised on local public television (KLCS Channel 58) and transcripts are published online. Most items are approved on a "consent calendar" without discussion. However, because of the huge implications of some Board decisions, the meetings are regularly attended by speakers and protesters on behalf of many causes. The county is sued frequently by various public interest law firms and organizations on behalf of people who disagree with the Board's decisions.
Meetings can last for hours at a time. At the start of a meeting, after an invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance, all items that do not have "holds" placed on them by a supervisor or a member of the general public, or are mandatory public hearings, are approved. Following that, presentations of various dignitaries such as directors of local consulates, awards to County employees and the general public, and a pet for adoption are made. The presentations can take over an hour. Then, items that were not approved are called in numerical order unless a supervisor wishes to take items out of order. Because of this, department heads with controversial items stay for the entire meeting to wait until their item is called, which may not be the order on the agenda. Some items are "special orders", where at a set time the item will be called in order to invite guests to make presentations that they could not otherwise wait for.
During the meeting, adjournments are sprinkled throughout as well, and can include anyone the supervisor finds worthy of note. Public comment is very limited, with an individual being able to comment for a total of three minutes for all items one wishes to address during a meeting, and an additional three minutes every 90 days on any topic within the board's jurisdiction. Individuals must submit comment cards before the start of the meeting and wait until their item is called. On popular topics with multiple speakers, comments may be restricted to as little as one minute each, and the board has the discretion to figuratively muzzle anyone who is addressing the board in a disruptive manner, such as holding multiple unrelated items.
Los Angeles County follows usual California practice in that it did not subdivide into separate counties or increase the number of supervisors as its population soared after 1920. The only county with more than five supervisors is San Francisco (both a city and a county), and no new counties were formed since 1907 in the state. As a result, the concentration of local administrative power in each county supervisor is high; each one represents more than 2 million people. Moreover, because of the equal representation provisions of the Voting Rights Act, the supervisoral districts often make little geographical sense; in particular, Supervisor District 1 was specifically gerrymandered to be a majority-Latino area, while Supervisor District 2 was designed to have a plurality of African Americans.
A local nickname some use for the Board is "the five little kings."[1] Unseating an incumbent supervisor is extraordinarily difficult, due largely to the prohibitive difficulty of mounting a successful challenge in districts of such enormous geographical and population size. Indeed, no new members have been elected to the Board since Don Knabe took office in 1996. Like other elected officials, supervisors enjoy built-in advantages of incumbency. Supervisors routinely waive parking and rental fees for various organizations, provide bus trips and give free tickets to county facilities to constituents, and build projects for the community with the supervisor's name clearly marked. Each supervisor has a budget of $3,000,000 for staff and office expenses, with the remainder going into a "discretionary fund" that can be used for grants to non-profit agencies, without a vote by the other supervisors. "Good-government" advocates have long supported the idea of expanding Board membership to reduce the size of each district, and establishing an elected County Executive as a check and balance on the Board's power, but voters have rejected such proposals every time they have appeared on the ballot. However, Supervisor Molina has supported expansion of the Board (to potentially increase Hispanic representation), and Supervisor Yaroslavsky has supported both Board expansion and the creation of an elected County Executive, much like King County, Washington, who directly supervises county departments.
To curb the powers of the five supervisors, voters passed in March 2002 Measure B by more than 63%, to limit the terms of the supervisors to three consecutive four year terms. If a supervisor fills a vacancy, the unexpired term counts towards the term limit if there are more than two years (half the term) left to serve. The provisions are not retroactive, meaning that Michael Antonovich, currently the longest serving supervisor, could serve until 2016.
Currently, the chair of the Board of Supervisors has the option of calling himself or herself 'mayor'. The title has drawn criticism as it can lead to confusion with the mayor of the city of Los Angeles. However, those who support the use of the title say that the Board of Supervisors acts as "mayors" or chief executives for the millions of people who live in unincorporated areas. Currently, only Antonovich uses the "mayor" title when he is the chair. All other chairs use the title chair, chairman, or chairwoman, depending on their preference.
Members of the Board of Supervisors also sit on the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, although that organization is not a County agency.
★ Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors
★ Los Angeles County Supervisors - Past To Present
1. Niki Cervantes, "Five little kings' power at stake in redistricting suit; Proposed changes would clip clout of L.A. supervisors," ''San Diego Union-Tribune'', 10 May 1990, A3.
★ District 1: Gloria Molina, Democrat
★ District 2: Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, Democrat
★ District 3: Zev Yaroslavsky, Democrat (currently 'Chairman' of the Board)
★ District 4: Don Knabe, Republican
★ District 5: Michael D. Antonovich, Republican
| Contents |
| Governance |
| Board meetings |
| Background |
| Former Supervisors |
| External links |
| References |
Governance
Until recently, the chief administrative officer (currently David Janssen) was the appointed individual heading the county but had little power as supervisors retained the right to fire and hire department heads and often directly admonished department heads in public. Under an ordinance to be effective in April 2007, Janssen will now directly oversee departments on behalf of the supervisors, although the Los Angeles County Fire Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Assessor, Treasurer/Tax Collector, Auditor/Controller, and Executive Office would continue to be under the direct purview of the Board of Supervisors. The change was made in response to several candidates either dropping out or refusing to accept the position to replace Janssen, who was planning to retire in 2006. Janssen will stay on for another year while these changes are implemented.
Board meetings
The Board meets every Tuesday at 9:30 AM in the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration in downtown Los Angeles. Its weekly meetings are televised on local public television (KLCS Channel 58) and transcripts are published online. Most items are approved on a "consent calendar" without discussion. However, because of the huge implications of some Board decisions, the meetings are regularly attended by speakers and protesters on behalf of many causes. The county is sued frequently by various public interest law firms and organizations on behalf of people who disagree with the Board's decisions.
Meetings can last for hours at a time. At the start of a meeting, after an invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance, all items that do not have "holds" placed on them by a supervisor or a member of the general public, or are mandatory public hearings, are approved. Following that, presentations of various dignitaries such as directors of local consulates, awards to County employees and the general public, and a pet for adoption are made. The presentations can take over an hour. Then, items that were not approved are called in numerical order unless a supervisor wishes to take items out of order. Because of this, department heads with controversial items stay for the entire meeting to wait until their item is called, which may not be the order on the agenda. Some items are "special orders", where at a set time the item will be called in order to invite guests to make presentations that they could not otherwise wait for.
During the meeting, adjournments are sprinkled throughout as well, and can include anyone the supervisor finds worthy of note. Public comment is very limited, with an individual being able to comment for a total of three minutes for all items one wishes to address during a meeting, and an additional three minutes every 90 days on any topic within the board's jurisdiction. Individuals must submit comment cards before the start of the meeting and wait until their item is called. On popular topics with multiple speakers, comments may be restricted to as little as one minute each, and the board has the discretion to figuratively muzzle anyone who is addressing the board in a disruptive manner, such as holding multiple unrelated items.
Background
Los Angeles County follows usual California practice in that it did not subdivide into separate counties or increase the number of supervisors as its population soared after 1920. The only county with more than five supervisors is San Francisco (both a city and a county), and no new counties were formed since 1907 in the state. As a result, the concentration of local administrative power in each county supervisor is high; each one represents more than 2 million people. Moreover, because of the equal representation provisions of the Voting Rights Act, the supervisoral districts often make little geographical sense; in particular, Supervisor District 1 was specifically gerrymandered to be a majority-Latino area, while Supervisor District 2 was designed to have a plurality of African Americans.
A local nickname some use for the Board is "the five little kings."[1] Unseating an incumbent supervisor is extraordinarily difficult, due largely to the prohibitive difficulty of mounting a successful challenge in districts of such enormous geographical and population size. Indeed, no new members have been elected to the Board since Don Knabe took office in 1996. Like other elected officials, supervisors enjoy built-in advantages of incumbency. Supervisors routinely waive parking and rental fees for various organizations, provide bus trips and give free tickets to county facilities to constituents, and build projects for the community with the supervisor's name clearly marked. Each supervisor has a budget of $3,000,000 for staff and office expenses, with the remainder going into a "discretionary fund" that can be used for grants to non-profit agencies, without a vote by the other supervisors. "Good-government" advocates have long supported the idea of expanding Board membership to reduce the size of each district, and establishing an elected County Executive as a check and balance on the Board's power, but voters have rejected such proposals every time they have appeared on the ballot. However, Supervisor Molina has supported expansion of the Board (to potentially increase Hispanic representation), and Supervisor Yaroslavsky has supported both Board expansion and the creation of an elected County Executive, much like King County, Washington, who directly supervises county departments.
To curb the powers of the five supervisors, voters passed in March 2002 Measure B by more than 63%, to limit the terms of the supervisors to three consecutive four year terms. If a supervisor fills a vacancy, the unexpired term counts towards the term limit if there are more than two years (half the term) left to serve. The provisions are not retroactive, meaning that Michael Antonovich, currently the longest serving supervisor, could serve until 2016.
Currently, the chair of the Board of Supervisors has the option of calling himself or herself 'mayor'. The title has drawn criticism as it can lead to confusion with the mayor of the city of Los Angeles. However, those who support the use of the title say that the Board of Supervisors acts as "mayors" or chief executives for the millions of people who live in unincorporated areas. Currently, only Antonovich uses the "mayor" title when he is the chair. All other chairs use the title chair, chairman, or chairwoman, depending on their preference.
Members of the Board of Supervisors also sit on the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, although that organization is not a County agency.
Former Supervisors
External links
★ Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors
★ Los Angeles County Supervisors - Past To Present
References
1. Niki Cervantes, "Five little kings' power at stake in redistricting suit; Proposed changes would clip clout of L.A. supervisors," ''San Diego Union-Tribune'', 10 May 1990, A3.
This article provided by Wikipedia. To edit the contents of this article, click here for original source.
psst.. try this: add to faves
Featured Companies
| Dancing Moon Travel | |
| Alpine Interface Inc. | |
| Travelbugs, LLC |
Newest Companies
Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Travel Deals
