Background
Los Angeles County follows usual California practice (which is similar to that of almost all other states) 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, unique in California as it is legally both a city and a county, and no new counties have been 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 supervisorial 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. Despite the County's diverse population, the Board had lacked any Latino representation until 1991.
A local nickname some use for the Board is "the five little kings." Unseating an incumbent supervisor is extraordinarily difficult, due largely to the prohibitive cost of mounting a successful challenge in districts of such enormous geographical and population size. Indeed, no new members had been elected to the Board since Don Knabe took office in 1996, however, that record was broken when Mark Ridley-Thomas joined the board in 2008. 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 $3,400,000 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.
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.
Read more about this topic: Los Angeles County Board Of Supervisors
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