A Closed County Government Opens Up

Conventional wisdom would have us believe that the election of Gloria Molina to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors means that control of that powerful body has passed from Republicans to Democrats. But if Tuesday’s special election in the 1st District was only about a shift in partisan power, then it would not deserve to be described with another word that’s been tossed about a lot in recent weeks: historic.

For Molina is the first Mexican-American elected to the board in this century. She is also the first woman ever elected to the board. So two large and significant segments of the local populace will finally have someone with their sensibilities voting on local government programs like health care and public safety. The old boy network of Anglo males that has dominated county government since the turn of the century has been forced open a crack--and probably a lot more than that, given the political clout supervisors wield and Molina’s well-known reputation for fighting for what her constituents want.

Cracking the county’s old boy network is an opportunity for everyone--not only Latinos and women--who wants more responsive local government. It is a chance to begin reforming a government that was literally designed for the horse-and-buggy era, when only five elected officials could easily share the administration of a rural county. The entire Los Angeles region became too sprawling, too populous and too ethnically diverse for that a long time ago. The problems also became too complex, and won’t be getting any simpler in the future.

It is significant that Molina already has said that one of her first actions will be to revive the long-dormant effort to streamline county government by expanding the Board of Supervisors to seven--and perhaps even nine--members. Two other members of the present board, Edmund Edelman and Kenneth Hahn, support the idea, so there is now a majority vote to make it happen. And while they’re at it, the new board majority should take a fresh look at creating a county executive officer to provide the kind of check and balance on the board’s power that almost every other major form of government has. If Molina does that, she will finally kill off the charge that some of her critics tried to use against her in the campaign--that she is a rigid politician who cares only about issues that concern Latinos and women.

There is still a question whether Molina, with her reputation for being difficult to work with, can get along with the other supervisors. But for now it appears the doors to the county Hall of Administration have been opened not just to new constituencies but to new ideas and new ways of operating. That is the most important result of Molina’s victory.