Los Angeles County Government Officials

A former Los Angeles County official pleaded guilty Wednesday to illegally soliciting more than $10,000 worth of gifts from vendors doing business with the county. Rudy Alvarez, 48, a former assistant division chief in the county's Chief Administrative Office, entered the plea before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Terry A. Green after Green said he would impose only a 15-day jail sentence as part of a probationary sentence, prosecutors said. Deputy Dist. Atty.

Los Angeles County officials, led by Chief Administrative Officer Richard Dixon, are scheduled to hold first-ever community hearings Sunday in Lancaster and Santa Clarita on the county's proposed $13.4-billion budget and its planned cutbacks in county programs. The Lancaster hearing will be from 1 to 3 p.m. at Antelope Municipal Court, 1040 W. Ave. J. The Santa Clarita hearing will be from 4 to 6 p.m. at Newhall Municipal Court, 23747 W. Valencia Blvd.

Measures that would create an elected Los Angeles County executive and expand the Board of Supervisors to as many as nine members were approved Tuesday for placement on the November ballot. In a 3-2 vote, the supervisors approved the proposed charter amendment, which would separate county government into executive and legislative branches for the first time.

The Board of Supervisors has just voted to close 10 of her libraries and County Librarian Sandra Reuben is nearly beside herself with joy. She believes she has won a great victory. Several colleagues gathered in the board hearing room think so too. They say, "Congratulations." Reuben beams back, "Thank you!" The victory is this: The board has cut only $10 million from the library budget. Reuben got back $1 million she thought she would lose.

Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti's inaugural speech Monday raised hopes that we now have a D.A. who'll earn his pay. I'm speaking of a statement that took only a couple of seconds, one of several pledges he made to a large audience in the Board of Supervisors hearing room. But if Garcetti keeps his word, Los Angeles County won't be the same. For he said he plans to prosecute misconduct in office by public officials. Such a pledge shouldn't be news.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, moving to keep a closer eye on the activities of the county's powerful chief administrative officer, voted Tuesday to increase oversight of fund transfers within county departments. The action comes following a grand jury report that is highly critical of CAO Richard B. Dixon, who has announced that he will retire by the end of the year.

News of runaway expense accounts at the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission is more than a story of public servants living the good life at taxpayers' expense. The story, by Times reporter Jane Fritsch, shows what can happen in the Southland's shadowy form of government, where tremendous power is exercised by a bunch of little-known, extremely powerful public agencies that operate with little public accountability.

In one of those moves that tends to raise more questions than it answers, a motion to make departing Supervisor Kenneth Hahn a "supervisor emeritus" was quietly withdrawn from consideration by the County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

A draft of a long-awaited report on Los Angeles County's controversial pension program--which the Board of Supervisors has delayed acting on until after the Nov. 3 election--has concluded that the supervisors failed to control bureaucrats who spent $265 million on extraordinary retirement benefits.

Removing the last obstacle to a ballot measure to expand the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors from five to nine members, the Department of Justice said Tuesday that it would not oppose placing the proposed charter amendment on the November ballot. County officials said federal approval was required under the terms of a judgment in a voting-rights lawsuit filed by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and other Latino groups.