Our Carte Blanche Supervisors : They cut services to the bone, but there’s no accountability for their budgets

The spending habits of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors--whether tapping millions in taxpayer dollars to futilely fight lawsuits to protect their political hides or providing themselves with seemingly endless perks while they slash the public budget--have long been shameless. Even so, the board’s unapologetic sense of entitlement to spend taxpayer money for personal benefit and/or self-aggrandizement manages to shock even the most hardened political observers.

As reported by Times staff writers Richard Simon and Frederick M. Muir, the five supervisors are spending $32.75 million this year to staff their offices and cover travel and other expenses--about four times as much as the governor and twice as much as the 15-member Los Angeles City Council.

The board’s spending has increased at nearly twice the rate of the county’s budget in the last 10 years--very probably because, unlike some other legislators, the supervisors have no spending limits imposed on them.

Gloria Molina, the newest member of the board, found that when she took office last March, to her surprise, she and other supervisors had carte blanche budgets. “We asked (county administrators) what our budget was,” she recalled. “They asked: ‘What do you need?’ ”

Sounds ideal--as long as someone else is paying for whatever a supervisor needs. Supervisor Deane Dana apparently really needs a $74,000 bulletproof, armor-plated car. And Supervisor Mike Antonovich apparently really needed a $600 mahogany serving cart. And who could doubt the need for Supervisor Kenneth Hahn to spend $3,700 for miniature county flags? But the most incredible buy may be the $9,874 in taxpayer dollars spent for 50 crystal glass etchings shaped like California and featuring the outline of Los Angeles County.

It’s possible that any one of these expenditures could be justified somehow. The problem is that supervisors don’t have to justify their spending of public dollars. If they want it, apparently, they get it.

It shouldn’t need saying--but with this group, evidently it does--elected officials should keep spending records and there ought to be spending limits. This is basic to accountability and crucial if any elected official is to deserve the public trust.

In a time when elected officials are saying they must cut government services to the bone, that same sense of austerity should be applied to their own budgets. Unless, of course, supervisors want to pool their own money to buy perks that their constituents could only dream of.