The Board of Failures
How Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has failed and why Altadena can't recover with them.
By the time the Eaton Fire consumed my home and possessions, I had already evolved from a mainstream libertarian to a minarchist. Non-essential services had been so disappointing throughout my life that I could only muster trust in a minimal government. Then, seeing the failure of even the “fundamental” public institutions—primarily public safety—on full display, it eliminated a good chunk of what remained. I know now that I’m not alone amongst my neighbors in this sentiment. We know now that we are effectively alone. In that case, shouldn’t we officially manage ourselves?
Since the founding of the nation, there has been growing skepticism about the ability of large bureaucratic systems to govern effectively. A review of the confidence in institutions trends shows that it has since gotten worse. Even those with legitimate goals and claims may serve people well for a generation or two before the cracks begin to show. Many don’t even make it that long, lasting only a few budget cycles before they prove useless. As systems age and demographics change, the mismatch between what governments provide and what communities need expands. At some point, usually far beyond the point at which it becomes ineffective, people take notice. That is now the realization for many in Altadena.
Altadena represents the civic failure of abstracting local government to progressively larger, more distant overlords. The fire exposed a profound rot in Los Angeles County’s ability to manage emergencies, allocate resources, and respond to localized needs. There are, of course, many failures that have destroyed Altadena. But focusing on county “leadership”, the closest governing body to Altadena, is a good place to start.
LA County attempts to govern nearly 10 million racially, socioeconomically, demographically diverse people spread across a wide geography. Montrose, Newhall, Marina del Rey, Altadena, Castaic, Hacienda Heights - these cities do not share the same values, needs, or constraints. Is it fair to expect that a government pool resources from all of these distinct communities and come up with a single master plan that addresses all of their needs? Each city, if given the opportunity, may differentially choose to focus on crime, homelessness, wildfire prevention, urbanization, education, or some combination. Each of these alone would demand individualized attention and action, but now must be combined for hierarchical coordination and budgeting of the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors. The result is a persistent misalignment between their policies and local priorities.
Let’s say this overpaid Board of Supervisors could conceivably combine our disparate priorities into a single comprehensive set of policies, they would still be ineffective. Can you find a single meaningful success story in LA County politics for the last 20 years? I’m not talking about opening a new park, but actually shifting communities in a positive direction. Public safety during the Eaton Fire is but one example of the myriad failures of the LA County Board of Supervisors. Improper funding, poor management, low accountability, and questionable personnel standards have given us safety services (e.g., sheriff, fire department, emergency response) that are paid too much and deliver too little.
All departments seem to operate without urgency or connection to the communities they’re supposed to serve, resulting in boondoggles, corruption, and stagnation; it has taken over a decade to connect the Metro to LAX, a sheriff and a supervisor were recently found guilty of forms of corruption, and home ownership is out of reach for most. These are just acute examples of their failure, but we feel the pervasive failures every day when we pay too much for basic things, have to fend off catalytic converter thieves on our own, have subpar transportation, or, in the case of Altadena, have to do everything ourselves.
The Board of Supervisors has directed billions of dollars toward high-profile initiatives—mass transit expansions, homelessness programs, social justice efforts—which have and will continue to underwhelm. Look at their budgets and decide for yourself whether you’d agree with their priorities. They appear designed to satisfy a small, politically active subset of the county’s population, while leaving core responsibilities like emergency preparedness underdeveloped. Then decide if you have seen any measurable change in these priority areas.
So, should places like Altadena continue to rely on the LA County Board of Supervisors for essential governance?
No.
There is an obvious argument for incorporation—turning Altadena into a city with its own leadership and budget, accountable to local needs and priorities. More broadly, it raises the case for subsidiarity: the principle that governance should happen as close to the people as possible. When a single board of career failures governs neighborhoods with vastly different social, environmental, and economic conditions, the result is misallocation of resources and loss of local agency. Residents in both affluent and underserved areas end up with less than what’s needed for their specific conditions.
I won’t hide that I’d prefer the abandonment of most involuntary collective systems. I know that won’t happen. But it should be clear that we need to reassess which institutions deserve trust and budget, and which must be replaced. Public safety, disaster response, school systems—these should be managed locally, by people who understand the objectives, the risks, and the culture. The further decision-making is removed from the people it affects, the worse the outcomes become.
We can’t rebuild Altadena with the same inadequate leadership that we’ve had. We survived in spite of their failure, not because of their oversight.
If LA County is structurally incapable of protecting its residents in moments of crisis, then it may be time to stop expecting it to. The future of local governance—at least for communities like Altadena—may depend not on reforming the county, but on outgrowing it.