The wrong-headed decision by the five Los Angeles County supervisors to push aside the chief executive officer and consolidate power in their own hands comes at the worst possible time, just as the county is facing a homeless crisis of epic proportions
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As described by Abby Sewell in the Los Angeles Times earlier this month, the board unanimously voted to assume the power to hire and fire department heads “and work more directly within county government’s myriad agencies.” In other words, supervisors and their staffs will stick their noses into the minute details of health care, such as running county hospitals and clinics, overseeing immunizations and providing health care for the poor. You’ll have five supervisors and their assistants, each with their own agendas, telling department heads and mid level bureaucrats who to hire and fire and how to program their computers.

The homeless crisis is a powerful example of the harm the supervisors are causing by making themselves more inefficient.

There are 44,359 homeless women, men and children in the county, 31,018 of them living on the streets or in cars.

The county tries to provide health care, treatment and, the worst option, jail for the homeless. Los Angeles city has the largest number of homeless, and the city and the county collaborate in the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, run by a commission whose 10 members are appointed in equal numbers by the Los Angeles mayor and city council and the county supervisors. The city, with Mayor Eric Garcetti as chief executive, is centering city government on the problem and exerting leadership on the authority. The county, with five bosses, each with their own agenda, isn’t doing this. That is too bad. The county departments have many people experienced in providing social services to the poor and troubled.

Collaboration is a stranger in the county building. Don’t expect suburban supervisor Don Knabe to share the concerns of his urban colleague, Hilda Solis, whose district includes Skid Row, with its sidewalks crowded with homeless.

In 2007, the supervisors, criticized for micro managing, gave the unelected chief executive officer more power, including managing departments and hiring and firing department heads. But the supervisors immediately regretted giving up power. They continued to meddle in the small details of running departments. Finally, they made it official, returning this month to the old system.

When it comes to the rapidly increasing number of the homeless and other complexities, the old system won’t work. Former Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky favors an elected county executive to take charge. But even when confronted with the grave homeless crisis, the five supervisors aren’t about to surrender any authority.

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This is an interesting time for politics in the African American community. The names of two black elected officials are being thrown about as possible rivals to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. And, up the hill from city hall, fears are being expressed that demographic trends threaten African American representation on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

This may sound like the most inside kind of speculation. Garcetti isn’t up for re-election until 2017, and demography won’t make itself felt until even later in the decade. Drought, earthquake or an unbelievable El Nino could make LA politics irrelevant by then. But the speculation tells something about the current state of Los Angeles.

First, there are Mayor Garcetti and the two African American officials, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and City Council President Herb Wesson.

Garcetti is receiving increasing scrutiny and criticism by the news media. While favored to win a second term, he is working hard to assure it, accumulating funds for the campaign. A fund-raising stop in Washington, reported by Peter Jamison of the Los Angeles Times, drew some of the criticism.

Wesson, whose control of the legislative body gives him clout approaching that of Garcetti, has been speaking out on major issues such as neighborhood representation, homelessness and race. Wesson, wrote the Times’ David Zahniser, “spent the last 10 days sounding like a mayor.” Just doing my job, said Wesson, who reminded Zahniser that he has already endorsed Garcetti for another term. Not so shy was Ridley-Thomas, who also sounded like a mayoral candidate at a recent event, when he spoke out about municipal failures on homelessness, excessive police force and income inequality. Has he ruled out a run for mayor in 2017? “No,” he told Zahniser.

Some African American political activists, who are concerned about a drop in the African American population, might greet a candidacy by either of them with enthusiasm. For a steady decline in African American population could mean a loss of black representation on the city council and board of supervisors.

Alan Clayton, a longtime expert on minority representation and redistricting, analyzed the demographic threat. In an article for the San Gabriel Valley Tribune and the Daily News, Clayton noted how in a recent Los Angeles City Council race an unsung Latina, Ana Cubas, finished a surprising close second to the winner, State Sen. Curren Price, an African American who was backed by elected officials, unions and other power players in the South Los Angeles 9th District. Cubas’ showing reflected the fast growing Latino population in an area that was once heavily black.

Clayton said the vote could be a sign of the difficulties African Americans may face in holding the 2nd supervisorial seat now occupied by Ridley Thomas, whose term expires in 2020.

The district, which includes South Los Angeles, Compton and Inglewood, has a declining black population. In 2011, Clayton said, 36 percent of the voting age population was black, 34 percent Latino, 17.5 percent white and 10.4 percent Asian American. By the 2020 election, Clayton said, the voting age Latino population will reach 38 percent and the black population will drop to about 32 percent.

For African Americans, a solution to this dilemma is to expand the five-member board of supervisors to seven members, as envisioned by a state constitutional amendment proposed by State Sen. Tony Mendoza, an Artesia Democrat.

But, as is the case with county supervisors around the state, the Los Angeles board has opposed it, the supervisors fearing their power would be diluted. Better, they said, to be one of five than one of seven. The white majority voted against it while Ridley-Thomas and Hilda Solis, a Latina, abstained.

Expansion of the board would do much to make it more representative of the county’s population, perhaps making possible the election of another Latino, retention of a black and a chance for an Asian American to be elected. Accomplishing this would likely touch off a multi-ethnic election battle but it probably would give the county a more diverse board than we have today.

Marcie Edwards, Los Angeles' water boss, gives an audience no sense of the calamitous nature of the drought. But maybe that’s as it should be. The drought is being fought in increments, one lawn and one repaired water pipe at a time. The task doesn’t lend itself to dramatic words.

Edwards, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, told a Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum luncheon Wednesday that the solution was reducing landscape watering, fixing and replacing old pipes, increasing storage capacity, recycling water and capturing storm water instead of allowing it to flow into the Pacific.

Mostly, she said, it’s all about infrastructure, not interesting to read about but necessary.

It was interesting to me. I’ve been writing about water since when there was plenty of it—or in some years far more than we could handle. The water bosses of that time thought of expansion. Los Angeles had plenty of water from the Owens Valley, supplemented by allocations from the Metropolitan Water District, which imports water from the Colorado River and Northern California and supplies it to the DWP and many other Southern California water agencies. Everyone thought big.

Now we think small. Los Angeles, Edwards said, has reduced water consumption by 16 percent. “Los Angeles has been trying very hard to cut water use,” she said. Much of the reduction is coming from cutting down water use for lawns, gardens and other landscaping. And, she said, there is “an increased focus on water pipe breaks.”

She made an interesting point about the difficulties of fixing things. As Edwards described it, the Department of Water Power is having trouble finding people with the craft skills and teamwork abilities needed to respond to emergencies, such as a big water pipe break. City hiring rules and union contracts also slow the process. And other city rules make it difficult to hire outside contractors to do the work.

I guess I was hoping for a stirring call to action from the water boss, but that’s probably inappropriate for someone who will be judged, in the long run, by how many pipes she fixes and how much water she recycles.