What’s so special about nine? L.A. County supes spar over board expansion

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record, our newsletter on the travails of L.A. city — and occasionally county! — government. It’s Times staffer Rebecca Ellis, with help from my colleague David Zahniser, lining up the past week’s news.

How many politicians should represent the largest county in America?

Depending on who you ask, the question has been studied to death — or barely studied at all.

L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath says we already know enough. This November, she’s looking to put a measure on the ballot asking voters to overhaul the county government, most notably by expanding the five-person board to nine.

“It is a number that has been studied for decades. It’s a number that is familiar to L.A. County residents,“ Horvath said in an interview. “It’s been tested. It’s measured. It’s not radical.”

Not everyone’s on board.

“From who? Where are the studies?” said Supervisor Holly Mitchell. “That’s an easy thing to roll off the tongue to say.”

This week, as the expansion plan gained speed, the county’s Hall of Administration became the site of some seldom-seen sparring.

Usually, the weekly board meetings are dominated by pleasantries and unanimous votes. Not this time.

Kathryn Barger panned the proposal to overhaul the government structure as “anything but transparent” — fighting words in county government parlance. Mitchell agreed.

The proposal moved forward 3-0, with Barger and Mitchell abstaining. The supervisors will have to vote on the plan, which also includes creating a new ethics commission and an elected chief executive position, two more times before it can appear on the November ballot.

One overarching question from the two skeptical supes: how did we land at nine?

“I don’t know where nine came from, and no one can really explain that to me,” Mitchell told The Times.

Mitchell said that, while she likes the idea of expanding the board, she feels the plan came together too fast and risked fumbling a rare opportunity to pick a structure that would best represent low-income communities of color. She said the plan was hazy on important details, namely the cost and the rationale behind nine politicians.

Horvath, who crafted the plan alongside Supervisor Janice Hahn, said they polled two numbers: nine and 11. Both did well, but nine did better, she said.

“It’s a number we believe is absolutely doable,” she said.

Hahn’s dad, legendary supervisor Kenneth Hahn, sounded a similar note half a century ago.

At Tuesday’s meeting in the county building named after her father, Hahn played a video of him arguing in 1972 that the county clearly needed at least one supervisor per 1 million people.

“You do not need to study, study, study,” he lamented, wagging his finger.

When voters first adopted a county charter in 1912, there was one supervisor for every 50,000 people. In 1972, it was one supervisor per 1.4 million. Each supervisor now represents about 2 million people.

Expanding the board to nine would pare down each supervisor’s district to about 1.1 million. Supporters say this would give underrepresented racial and ethnic groups new political prominence and make the supervisors more responsive to their constituents.

Just over a million people is still a large constituency, even by California standards. Each state assembly member represents, on average, a little less than half a million residents. A state senator represents just under a million. Each of California’s U.S. representatives has about 760,000 constituents, on average.

Fernando Guerra, director for the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, told supervisors Tuesday that a right number doesn’t exist: it’s up to the Board to pick.

“We have studied this for the county and the city,” he told them. “There is no research that indicates one number is better than the other.”

But there is some history behind the nine, says Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Haynes Foundation, which funds research on governance in greater Los Angeles.

In 1976, the board put a familiar question to voters: would they want to see an elected executive and the board expanded to nine?

“There seems to be some sort of karma around nine,” said Sonenshein.

At the time, a group of civic heavy-hitters, determined to modernize county government, recommended nine supervisors as the best way to serve a population of seven million.

But voters failed to see the logic in more politicians, panning the idea as too costly. About one in three voted yes to more supervisors.

Since 1926, voters have rejected the idea of adding more supervisors eight times. Most recently, in 2000, 64% of voters rejected increasing the board to nine.

“No one’s been able to pull the sword out of the stone,” Sonenshein said.

State of play

— WHITHER WILSHIRE? Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez announced this week that she’s looking to close Wilshire Boulevard as it passes through MacArthur Park, part of a larger effort to improve the area’s quality of life. “It’s bold,” said Michael Schneider, who ran the campaign to pass the bus-and-bike-lane Measure HLA. Still, some in the neighborhood are scratching their heads, saying a street closure is hardly the most important solution for an area ravaged by drug use and overdoses.

— BUCKING UP BIDEN: President Biden reached out to the nation’s Democratic mayors — including Karen Bass — in a Zoom call aimed at reassuring them about his candidacy. Bass declined an interview request about Biden’s travails, saying in a succinctly worded statement: “I’m supporting our nominee, President Biden.

— GRAPPLING WITH GRANTS PASS: In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling on Grants Pass, Bass is worried that neighboring communities will shoo their homeless residents into Los Angeles. The feeling is mutual, as it turns out. In some neighboring cities, councilmembers fear the LAPD will push L.A.’s unhoused residents into their communities.

— STICKER SHOCK: The Department of Water and Power’s ratepayer advocate is warning that the city’s push to get to 100% clean energy by 2035 could send electric bills soaring over the next decade. Fred Pickel, who steps down from his post later this year, called for the DWP to push back its renewable energy deadline.

— SPARRING IN VENICE: Housing advocates sued the city this week, accusing Councilmember Traci Park, the city attorney’s office and other officials of violating fair housing laws by blocking a proposed affordable housing development in Venice. Chief Assistant City Atty. John Heath pushed back on those claims, saying the city has continuously worked to “identify a viable path” to move the project forward.

— STATE BAR STRIKES: A former member of the DWP board is facing disciplinary charges from the State Bar of California for allegedly obtaining more than $30,000 in free legal services from a lawyer who secured a $30 million contract from the DWP board. Former DWP commissioner Bill Funderburk, who served under Mayor Eric Garcetti, lied about accepting the legal work in a 2020 interview with the U.S. attorney’s office, according to Bar prosecutors. Funderburk, through his lawyer, denied wrongdoing.

— LOOKING FOR LESS LETHAL: Los Angeles police officers continue to fire their guns at people who are holding knives and experiencing mental health or behavioral disorders. A Times analysis looked at cases since 2018 and found 56 such incidents, even as the LAPD works to make de-escalation a priority.

— LIGHTS OUT: In the Pico-Union neighborhood, thieves have stripped copper wire from street lights, leaving many stretches in darkness and residents fearful for their safety. “I had a guy pull a gun on me one night,” said Albert Robles, owner of Robles Carburetors, at Hoover and West 18th streets. Hernandez, who represents the area, acknowledged that streetlight repairs are taking too long.

— BUYER BEWARE: Real estate mogul Leo Pustilnikov, who owns high-value properties from Beverly Hills to Redondo Beach, is looking to buy 17 buildings owned by the financially flatlining Skid Row Housing Trust. At 1,200 units, the portfolio is one of the largest collections of supportive housing in L.A., providing homes for formerly homeless tenants.

— JUSTICE DELAYED: Sentencing for two key figures in the federal corruption scheme surrounding former Councilmember Jose Huizar was delayed this week. Former lobbyist Morrie Goldman and former city planning commissioner Justin Kim are now scheduled to appear in November.

PHOTO FIGHT WITH FELDSTEIN SOTO

Los Angeles City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto has been a somewhat elusive figure at City Hall, mostly avoiding the spotlight during her first year and a half in office. So it was a surprise to see her at the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum on Wednesday, stepping in as a last-minute replacement for Councilmember Tim McOsker, who canceled after contracting COVID-19.

Feldstein Soto, who filed paperwork this week to run for re-election, discussed her office’s work in combating sex trafficking in South Los Angeles. She defended her handling of the city’s neighborhood prosecutor program, disputing the idea that she dismantled it. And she vowed to head back to Sacramento with another proposal that would keep cities from having to hand over photos of city workers — a move that critics say would undermine the California Public Records Act.

Addressing about 50 people, Feldstein Soto said she views the bill as a way to prevent the harassment of public employees, including sanitation workers assigned to cleanups at homeless encampments.

“The requests that we get from random anonymous accounts are outrageous, and they are designed to intimidate and put our public servants at risk,” she said.

Feldstein Soto tried without success to change the state’s public records law last year. At the time, she acknowledged that her effort was inspired by the LAPD’s accidental release of headshots of police officers. In the wake of that incident, Feldstein Soto filed two lawsuits against the journalist who obtained the images, one of which recently led to a proposed $300,000 legal payout by the city.

Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Southern California, said his organization would likely fight any effort to resurrect her proposal, which he viewed as an attempt to curry favor with powerful police unions.

“If it’s anything like what she attempted in the past legislative cycle, this would be a disaster for the public and the public’s right to know about the important business of city officials,” he said.

Feldstein Soto did not sound like someone looking to avoid a fight, telling the lunchtime audience that she continues to oppose the release of images of rank-and-file city workers, including her own employees.

“I ran for office. You want to plaster my face all over everything? Be my guest,” she said. “My prosecutors … they didn’t sign up for that. They are public servants doing their jobs.”

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s program to combat homelessness did not report any new encampment operations this week. However, about 15 people were moved indoors at previous Inside Safe locations in Koreatown and the San Fernando Valley, according to a mayoral aide.

• On the docket for next week: The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce hosts a State of the State luncheon on Tuesday, offering a panel featuring Assemblymembers Miguel Santiago and Rick Chavez Zbur and state Sens. Maria Elena Durazo and Ben Allen. The panel will look at the state budget shortfall and its effect on homelessness.