Days after the mayoral election, L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath is already thinking about the 2028 Los Angeles County Executive election.
On Monday, Horvath was the first to announce her candidacy for Los Angeles County CEO.
The position is new and will replace the current role of chief executive officer. Measure G, which voters approved in 2024, created the new Los Angeles County CEO position, changing it from one the board appoints to one county voters elect.
“Los Angeles has never been a place that dreams small,” wrote Horvath in a statement on her website. “But for too long, our County government has moved too slowly, failed to meet the moment, and allowed bureaucracy to stand in the way of progress.”
Former Board Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky believes the new reforms to the board will make the new position and county more powerful.
“What makes it powerful is that the county, if it was its own state, would be the 12th largest in the United States,” Yaroslavsky told CBS Los Angeles in an interview. “It has a budget of $52 billion.”
The chief executive officer position acted as an administrative manager, made to serve and carry out the board’s directions, but with the new position, the L.A. County CEO will be able to implement key priorities for the board. The position will have veto power, oversight over an estimated $52 billion of the county budget, control over department heads and management over labor relations.
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a government that finally meets the scale of our challenges and the ambition of our people,” wrote Horvath.
While voters approved the new position, not all supervisors are on board with how this position will work on the board.
L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger was against the creation of the position in the first place, disapproving of Horvath’s bidding announcement. Barger said supervisors should wait on candidacy plans due to unresolved legal concerns regarding the new position.
At the October board meeting, Barger promised not to run for the position and urged her fellow supervisors to follow suit.
“With a $54 billion budget, more than 110,000 employees, no term limits, and no professional credentials required, the elected County Executive will be one of the most powerful and most highly paid politicians in the entire state of California and perhaps the nation,” said Barger. “If we are approving these reforms, we should do so in a way that is not self-serving to any of us.”
There have been ongoing debates on whether the CEO’s veto and contract control power would override current powers assigned to the board under the California Constitution.
During the board meeting, Barger questioned whether supervisors should even be able to run for the position in the first place.
“Given that the current Board of Supervisors authored and approved the motion that placed Measure G on the ballot, one could argue that it’s a conflict of interest for any of us to run for the county-elected position,” Barger said.
The new CEO position isn’t the only change coming to the board. By 2030, the Board of Supervisors will also be expanding its team from five to nine members.
Unlike Barger, Yaroslavsky has approved of adding more supervisors to the board, and says the county CEO should have more power and the new reforms make sense.
“When you have five people in charge of a government this big, nobody’s in charge,” he said.
The post Lindsey Horvath Plans to Run for the L.A. County CEO Position appeared first on LAmag.
