Among the many facets of the November ballot measure to overhaul the structure of Los Angeles County government, the one involving the chief executive is not the most eye-catching.
But it has become one of the most contentious, dividing county unions and politicians even more than the proposed expansion of the Board of Supervisors from five to nine members.
Supporters of the idea of an elected rather than appointed chief executive would bring more responsibility to one of the county's most important jobs, as voters would elect and potentially remove the chief executive. Opponents warn that this would only make the largest county in the United States an outlier.
“The newly elected executive director is, at best, an experiment,” said Richard Pippin, director of the Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs Association, one of several county employee unions arguing that an elected chief executive would politicize the post and fuel “internal political games.”
But that's already the case with the appointed director general, said Fernando Guerra, director of the Los Angeles Studies Center at Loyola Marymount University, who supports the measure.
“It’s one of the most political positions in the state of California,” Guerra said, noting that the current CEO can be fired by a majority vote of county supervisors. “Anyone who says this is not a political position doesn’t understand politics.”
The five appointed supervisors Fesia Davenportlongtime county employee, serving as executive director in 2021. She oversees the county's day-to-day operations and crafts its $45 billion budget.
Simply put, the supervisors provide the vision for the county and Davenport is responsible for carrying it out. The supervisors can fire her, but the electorate cannot vote her out.
The November ballot measure will ask voters whether they want to dramatically reform the way Los Angeles County is governed. In addition to expanding the board and making the chief executive an elected official, the ballot measure, spearheaded by Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Janice Hahn, would create a new ethics commission.
“It’s clear from the conversations I’ve had … that the most troubling element of the proposed ordinance is the county-level elected chief executive,” Supervisor Kathryn Barger said at a board meeting last month before she and Supervisor Holly Mitchell were outvoted by their colleagues, 3 to 2, placing the measure on the ballot.
Under the bill, the elected executive would have the power to veto board policies and have full authority over department heads. Currently, supervisors have the final say over departments.
This would create a system of checks and balances that most voters should be familiar with, said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Haynes Foundation, which funds research on governance in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
The overseers would be the legislative branch, and the chief executive, like the president of the United States, would head the executive branch. Right now, Sonenshein said, the overseers are doing everything.
“There is a general consensus that the executive branch should have its own branch,” he said. “You would never think of Congress running departments.”
Horvath's motion to draft the ballot measure mentioned several counties with elected executives, including Cook County, Illinois (population 5.2 million); Montgomery County, Maryland (1 million); and Cuyahoga County, Ohio (1.2 million).
But for most larger counties, an appointed executive is the norm, said Jason Grant, advocacy director for the International City and County Management Association.
The association, which often works with local governments considering a change in structure, wrote to the Board of Supervisors in July, arguing that an elected executive was a bad idea. The letter cited a study that had found there is less corruption in a “council-manager” form of government with an appointed executive, similar to what the county has now.
An elected executive, Grant said, could be influenced by donors and political allies.
Los Angeles County public employee unions opposed to an elected chief executive say the system would fuel dysfunction.
AFSCME Local 685, which represents probation officers, wants to see “a career professional, not a politician” leading the county. Dave Gillotte, president of the Los Angeles County Firefighters Local 1014 union, had urged the board to “remove” language about an elected chief executive.
But the county's largest union, representing 55,000 employees, is willing to give him a chance.
David Green, The president of Service Employees International Union Local 721 said his union is leaning toward supporting the CEO-elect, in part because of frustrations during recent contract negotiations.
Green said he can easily communicate with all five county supervisors, but the person who holds much of the power in negotiations, the executive director, remains behind the scenes.
“We could do better, honestly,” Green said. “Will an elected CEO fix that? I don’t know. I don’t have a crystal ball.”
Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.
