Editorial: The new Board of Supervisors should make its own rules

One of the many thorns thrust into the sides of law students is the requirement that they learn the Rule Against Perpetuities, a complicated, ancient but still sensible legal formula that is meant to restrict a person’s continuing ability, after death, to dictate how future generations may use his property.

Some delightfully morbid English legal commentator explained that the rule was meant to prevent a person from extending his virtual dead hand from the grave to govern the living. A rich man certainly could leave his property to the next generation, and could even condition the inheritance on particular behavior — for example, my son will come into my fortune only if he weds before age 30, and not even then if he marries the daughter of that wretched baron whose hounds keep tearing up my pasture. But the will might be invalid if it set conditions binding the son’s sons and other generations yet unborn. No dead hands reaching from the grave to move around the living pawns.

A modified rule against perpetuities is in effect in California. Florida’s version oddly and wonderfully made the big screen in the 1981 film “Body Heat.” That crafty Kathleen Turner — or her character, anyway — certainly knew her way around what lawyers call executory interests.

There is, however, no political version of the rule against perpetuities that applies to county boards of supervisors. Perhaps there should be.

The issue comes up as Los Angeles County’s board is about to undergo its most sweeping change in personnel since — well, since Turner’s character maneuvered William Hurt’s into violating the rule. That change is scheduled for December, but on Tuesday the board, including two members soon to be termed out, is due to vote on whether to hire Los Angeles County Treasurer-Tax Collector Mark Saladino to be the county counsel — the lawyer who will advise the new board when it takes over.

That’s just not right. Nothing against Saladino, who after all has worked for the county for many years and is a duly licensed attorney, even if he hasn’t practiced in more than a decade. He may be the best choice to offer legal advice to the Board of Supervisors. He might even give the board his best legal thinking, which would be terrific, since it so often appears instead as if the board tells the counsel what advice to give and the counsel then complies — or else discovers a new and sudden desire to spend more time with his or her family.

But regardless of the choice, the new Board of Supervisors should pick its own lawyer. There might have been some benefit to John Krattli staying on the job because he had been there for a while and could provide some needed continuity amid all the board coming and going. But Krattli did not stay, and the continuity to be enjoyed from a county counsel serving for just a few months before the two new supervisors take their oaths is far outweighed by the bad practice of the termed-out dictating to the termed-in.

In another case of reaching from the grave, the Board of Supervisors several weeks ago voted to require a supermajority — four votes instead of three — anytime the supervisors want to increase county employee compensation outside the regular budgeting period. Now that we’re going, the old board is essentially saying, you newbies can’t be trusted to make your own decisions.

Meanwhile, the outgoing board is in the midst of a process to select a new chief executive officer — or perhaps a new chief administrative officer, if it decides to change the role and job description of the top county staffer.

Gloria Molina’s successor, Hilda Solis, has already been elected and Zev Yaroslavsky’s replacement is to be elected in a month and a half. The new board rather than the old one should make its own policies and hire its own staff and allow those leaving to enjoy the legacies they left behind — or run for the City Council as the case may be — and leave county government to those in office.

Perhaps Jefferson said it best when he used another ancient legal term to describe the degree that one generation should be able to bind the next. “The earth,” he said, “belongs in usufruct to the living.”

“Usufruct” may never become the core gimmick of a Hollywood movie, but for county government, the concept is sound. Let the new supervisors choose their own advisors and make their own rules.

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