Fleecing Taxpayers: LA County’s Crazy Payout | The American Spectator

SACRAMENTO — LAist’s investigative report was almost too hard to believe, even in a state that squanders taxpayer dollars with wild abandon. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors quietly provided a $2 million settlement to county CEO Fesia Davenport after she claimed that she suffered “reputational harm, embarrassment and physical, emotional and mental distress.”

No, she wasn’t the victim of any apparent malicious behavior by county officials. The source of her distress, it turns out, was the county’s voters. In July 2024, the county’s elected board members directed the drafting of a charter change for the November ballot. It was pitched by supporters as an attempt to make “Los Angeles County work better for its 10 million residents by improving ethics, representation, transparency and accountability.”

It’s a classic good-government measure designed to increase voter representation and improve transparency of government spending. Voters approved it, 52 percent to 48 percent. L.A. County is an enormous entity, with a population larger than 40 states. It’s four times the geographic size of Rhode Island and more than double the size of Delaware. Its $45-billion budget (not including the city of Los Angeles’s budget) is comparable to some state budgets. (RELATED: Los Angeles Faces an Olympian Task)

Yet despite its massive size, county voters are represented by a measly five elected supervisors. When I lived in the San Gabriel Valley on the eastern edge of the county, I was pleasantly surprised at how responsive my supervisor’s office was in handling an issue involving the county’s maintenance of some local fire-prone property.

Nevertheless, it’s a bit much to expect great representation from an elected official with 2 million constituents. That’s nearly three times the number of people represented by the average member of Congress. Primarily, Measure G expands the five-member board to nine members. It also creates a separate budget director, an independent ethics commission, and a charter commission. It’s no panacea, but more representation and oversight are better than less.

Here’s where it gets rather strange. In approving Measure G, voters also turned the appointed CEO position into an elected position, thus eventually booting Davenport from her job (unless she subsequently runs a successful election). Supporters argued it would “empower voters by creating an elected county executive directly accountable to the people, putting an end to the current system where an unelected bureaucrat controls the county’s … budget.”

That portion of the ballot measure was, as the Los Angeles Times correctly explained, the most controversial part of the proposal. It divided the county’s powerful public-sector unions. Having an elected CEO with the power to overturn the board and to appoint department heads isn’t particularly unusual. As I see it, it provides one more elected position, thereby offering voters another check and balance. The elected county executive would serve like the county version of a mayor.

But, however it works out, it’s hard to believe that voters caused such harm to Davenport, who is an at-will hire, that it required taxpayers to give her $2 million. “Without going into detail, Measure G has taken a toll on me personally with demonstrable professional, emotional, physical health and emotional impacts,” she wrote in a letter to the county. The will of voters often has an impact on government bureaucrats’ employment status. Such is life.

Not to be too snarky, but I have yet to meet an American who hasn’t suffered some emotional grief from any number of elections. Many elections have caused me “embarrassment” and have taken a toll on my finances. It’s beyond absurd to demand compensation. It may be amazing that she asked for this compensation, but the real outrage is that the board went along with it – and then kept it unusually quiet. As LAist added, “The county’s usual process is to publicly report out and approve proposed settlements above $100,000.”

One supervisor said she reluctantly agreed to avoid a court battle, but sometimes elected officials just have to say no. Per LAist, Davenport argued the Measure G “text impugned her reputation by saying ‘the lack of strong, elected executive leadership has impacted our ability to address these challenges.’” But isn’t that simply a description of the nature of an appointed v. elected position? The pro-Measure G group rightly blasted it as “a blatant misuse of public money.” The payout reinforces the frustration of county voters who believe their government is out of touch.

It’s long been one of my hobby horses, but most Americans — especially in heavily populated states such as California — suffer from too little elected representation. Our state Assembly has one elected member for every 483,000 residents, compared to New Hampshire, which has one representative for every 3,290 residents. It seems counterintuitive, but the best way to reduce the power of politicians is to have more of them — and thereby dilute their power. Expanding the size of legislatures (at the local or state level) will certainly assure the election of some crazies. But it will reduce the power of special interests, which will find it harder to hand-pick and fund candidates.

Anyway, L.A. County’s reform idea is a good one, but it’s too bad the county board gave in to this unbelievable request. As that pro-Measure G group explained, it’s “a clear demonstration of why Measure G was necessary in the first place.” Perhaps once the measure is fully in place in 2028, voters will elect supervisors who have more backbone.

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Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at [email protected].