Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is the five member governing board of Los Angeles County. Members of the board of supervisors are elected by district, the current members as of Feb 2005 are:

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• District 1 Gloria Molina(Currently Chairwoman of the board) Democrat
• District 2 Yvonne Burke Democrat
• District 3 Zev Yaroslavsky Democrat
• District 4 Don Knabe Republican
• District 5 Michael D. Antonovich Republican

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 unequalled in few other places on Earth; each one represents more than 2 million people, more than the populations of many states. 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.

Related Topics:
San Francisco - 1907 - Voting Rights Act - Gerrymandered - Latino - African Americans

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A local nickname some use for the Board is "the five little kings." Unseating an incumbent supervisor is extraordinarily difficult, due in no small part to the seven-figure discretionary fund given each supervisor: reelection campaign expenditures of dubious legality are frequently drawn from the fund. Supervisors regularly waive parking and rental fees for favored groups, schedule bus trips and give free tickets to county facilities for favored organizations, and build projects for the community, all with the supervisor's name clearly marked. Part of the reason why voters in the county don't approve measures that have been put before them to increase the number of Supervisors is fear of a political power shift that might prove unfavorable to them - necessitating the status quo. However, supervisor Molina has supported expansion of the board (to increase the Hispanic representation on the board), and supervisor Yaroslavsky has supported the idea of an elected county executive, much liike King County, Washington, who directly supervises county departments.

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Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors: Board Meetings ►