Los Angeles County, California

Law, government and politics

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The county is governed by the five-member Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, who are elected by the county's voters. The small size of the board means each supervisor represents over 2 million people. The board operates in both a legislative, executive, and quasi-judicial capacity. As a legislative authority, it can pass ordinances for the unincorporated areas (ordinances that affect the whole county, like posting of restaurant ratings, most must be ratified by the individual city). As an executive body, it can tell the county departments what to do, and how to do it. As a quasi-judicial body, the Board is the final venue of appeal in the local planning process, and holds public hearings on various decisions.

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The county government is operated by a Chief Administrative Officer (currently David Janssen) and is organized into many departments, each of which is enormous in comparison to equivalent county-level (and even state-level) departments anywhere else in the United States. Some of the larger or better-known departments include:

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• Los Angeles County Coroner - Performs autopsies and determines the cause of death for those who die without medical supervision.
• Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors
• Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services - administers foster care and child support
• Los Angeles County Fire Department
• Los Angeles County Fire Department Lifeguard Division- the Baywatch people
• Los Angeles County Department of Health Services - operates several county hospitals and a network of primary care clinics, and also runs the public health system, which has a requirement that all restaurants in the unincorporated County and the majority of independent cities prominently post their food safety inspection grade in their front window
• Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation - administers public parks and the largest public golf course system in the U.S.
• Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services - administers many federal and state welfare programs
• Los Angeles County Department of Public Works - operates countywide flood control system, constructs and maintains roads in unincorporated areas
• Los Angeles County District Attorney - prosecutes criminal suspects
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art - public art museum
• Los Angeles County Public Defender - defends indigent criminal suspects
• Los Angeles County Public Library - operates a large network of branch libraries
• Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department - provides law enforcement services to unincorporated areas and cities that do not have their own police departments, and operates the huge county jails

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, despite its name, is not a County department. Technically it is a state-mandated county transportation commission that also operates bus and rail.

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