Endorsement: Reelect Janice Hahn to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors
Janice Hahn is running for a third and final term on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and, in all likelihood, the last elected term in her long political career.
In her first four years she was a member of a board that made a historic improvement in the administration of essential programs for people in poverty or otherwise living on the margins in the county. And in her current term, she was a member of a board that grappled with COVID-19, an unprecedented public health emergency.
In both those terms, Hahn served her constituents well. Of the three people on the March primary ballot, including former Sheriff Alex Villanueva, she is the best choice for District 4 — which stretches from Vernon to Long Beach and from Palos Verdes to Whittier.
While the presidential contest will garner the most attention in 2024, there are many important races and measures on state and local ballots.
L.A. County has deep problems and has taken criticism from many quarters, including the Los Angeles Times editorial board. If the county is run so poorly, why should we retain one of the supervisors who has been at the helm for so long?
There are many answers, but they are all grounded in one crucial fact: The county’s outdated governance structure limits what leaders can accomplish. This county of 10 million has the same responsibilities and number of elected leaders as every other county — including Imperial County, with a population of 180,000, and Inyo County, with 19,000 residents.
And yet, Hahn and the other supervisors decisively and correctly moved Los Angeles County away from a future in which every social problem — including poverty, petty crime, family breakdown and homelessness — is addressed by building new and ever-more-costly jails while allowing mental health care and other treatment to deteriorate. The last eight years in L.A. County have been a race to get more treatment beds, more housing and more reentry services for people returning to the county from prison or juvenile hall or aging out of foster care without a place to live or sufficient work skills. It’s the right course, but the board must push further and faster.
Los Angeles County supervisors seem to enjoy their low-tech world where the coronavirus emergency is an excuse to keep the public quiet.
Hahn championed a crisis response system that relies on mental health workers rather than armed law enforcement officers. She took the lead in integrating L.A. County into the nationwide 988 system that, if built out as envisioned, will fill an unmet need for telephone crisis counseling and, if necessary, mobile response and clinical care.
In the midst of the pandemic, when county government became all too comfortable with remote meetings that cut the public out of deliberations, Hahn pulled the public back in by reopening the comment period during board meetings, to the chagrin of some other county leaders. “We just can’t conduct public business without having live public testimony,” she told the editorial board, and she’s right.
Hahn has been a vocal proponent of expanding the board and directly elected executive leadership, two necessary moves if county government is ever to become more representative and responsive to its constituents.
The late Deane Dana was elected to what was then an all-white, all-male, mostly conservative Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in 1980, the same year that Don Knabe entered political life.
All that said, it’s crucial to remember that elections are a choice among candidates. Neither of her challengers are better options.
Villanueva suffered a landslide defeat for reelection in 2022, for good reason. “My record as elected sheriff stands on its own,” he told the editorial board, and he’s certainly got that right. During the era of lockdowns and protests, when the county most needed a calm and capable top public safety official, Villanueva was yet one more problem, misusing his powers as sheriff and refusing to work cooperatively with other county leaders.
The Los Angeles County sheriff’s election is more significant for Alex Villanueva’s defeat than Robert Luna’s election
Businessman, civil engineer and Rancho Palos Verdes Mayor John Cruikshank is more appealing than Villanueva yet offers the wrong prescription for the county, urging a return to less-enlightened criminal justice and housing policies. His perspective may be right for his small, wealthy city. It is wrong for the millions of county residents for whom the county could, and should, provide a way out of the cycle of failure and misery.
At the top of Hahn’s to-do list is a light rail line from downtown L.A. to Artesia, which is a good project. But in her third term she should also focus on other critical projects, including building out the county’s alternative emergency response system and working with the state to provide mental health care, housing and other services by developing the unused land surrounding the Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk. Taking action to restructure county government, of course, should be on the agenda as well.
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