LA Supes Leave Gascon Alone After Facilitating the Ouster of Elected Sheriff

Last summer, by a 4 to 1 vote the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors put a county charter amendment on the ballot that would allow them to fire the sheriff despite his being separately elected to run the independent sheriff’s department.

Voters approved the measure in November.

What the supervisors have not done – and intentionally did not do last summer – is to allow the same potential action in regard to the district attorney.

The question is “Why?” especially considering the supervisors’ running dispute with then-Sheriff Alex Villanueva was purely a matter of politics while District Attorney George Gascon is, unquestionably, by any metric, terrible at his job and a literal danger to the community.

At a hearing on the matter last summer, the Los Angeles Times reported that then-Supervisor Sheila Kuehl said “I don’t see the assessor getting people killed.  It’s really about the ability to hold someone accountable when they have a very powerful position,” when asked why no other county-wide elected official was being considered for such draconian treatment.

Using that logic, the egregious Gascon should qualify as his office has literally let people who killed people when they were let back out on the street:

• https://www.foxnews.com/politics/innocent-la-father-killed-da-gascon-gives-violent-career-criminal-multiple-diversions and here
• https://www.dailynews.com/2022/06/22/gascon-policy-blamed-for-mans-release-from-life-prison-term-before-arrest-in-killing-of-pacoima-transient/ and here
• https://www.foxnews.com/media/deadly-consequences-felt-los-angeles-da-gascons-soft-on-crime-murder-suspect-released  and here
• https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/widows-children-of-murdered-el-monte-officers-sue-la-county-da-probation-department/3147647/ and…

So not only was Kuehl tragically wrong, it should also be noted that the supervisor was at the time of the hearing being investigated by the sheriff’s department for her involvement in an alleged scheme to pay a non-profit run by a personal friend hundreds of thousands of dollars to operate a barely-used government hotline. In fact, a month later deputies raided Kuehl’s home, a raid she was extremely improperly tipped off to by a county attorney. That case currently languishes in the bowels of Attorney General – and Kuehl political ally – Rob Bonta’s office.

Besides the unconscionable personal suffering caused by Gascon, he has lost nearly a quarter of the DA’s staff, has a 10,000+ case backlog, has been sued more than 15 times (lost two already to the tune of millions of taxpayer dollars) for politically-based workplace retaliation, has been dinged by judges for improperly ordering deputy district attorneys to lessen defendants’ charges, mocked crime victim’s families, lessened charges against political supporters, and order that his deputies stop showing up at parole hearings to fight the early releases of various and sundry convicted felons.

With all of that, one would think allowing the supervisors to dump a district attorney – specifically this district attorney – would be a pretty easy decision. But it’s actually not.

The supervisors last year moved against Villanueva for actually doing something about the homeless problem in Venice Beach, for not wanting to close the county jail, for investigating political figures like Kuehl, and for being openly opposed to the policies of the lax, lazy, and lousy Gascon.

If there were ever any questions about the real, purely political, motivation behind the board of supervisor’s actions there can be none anymore; the board’s silence is deafening.

But even the target of the supervisors wrath, former Sheriff Alex Villanueva, would not support such a measure expanding the power of the board to be able to fire the district attorney or any other county-wide independent elected official.

“Gascon is a terrible, dangerous district attorney,” Villanueva said. “But the power to get rid of another elected official just because they disagree with you is too much, especially for a bunch of micro-managing ideologues like most of the current board. “

The former sheriff added that the fact that there has been no move to even consider such a concept only confirms how personally political the reasons behind the measure were last year.

Supervisor Kathryn Barger was the lone vote against the measure last year.  

Though highly critical of Gascon – she supports his recall – she said one of the reasons she had for opposing the measure against Villanueva would remain the same when it came to the district attorney – it would give the board too much power over a fellow, duly elected, independent official.

“The precedent it would set would be awful,” Barger said.  “I support the recall of Gascon and that’s how this should be handled – by a vote of the people.”

Neither Janice Hahn nor Hilda Solis – the two supervisors remaining on the board who voted for power to fire Villanueva – would comment on the matter.

Hahn’s opponent in 2024, Rancho Palos Verdes Mayor Pro Tem John Cruikshank, said he supports “getting rid of Gascon” but that allowing the supervisors to do so on their own is “a terrible idea.”

Cruikshank said the will of the people needs to be respected, particularly as the district attorney is elected by the entire country while supervisors represent only separate parts of it.  He added that he supports the recall effort – now mired in legal limbo over questionable signature counting methods – of Gascon.

Another detractor of Gascon also opposes the idea of letting the supervisors fire him on their own.

“If anyone deserves something like this, it’s Gascon,” said retired veteran prosecutor and former president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys Marc Debbaudt. “He’s decimated the office staff, lost millions in tax dollars to lawsuits, will lose many millions in the near future, disparaged crime victims, grossly unethically played absurd politics when it comes to charging – or not – people with crimes, and let people back out on the street who have gone on to kill, rape, and assault innocent people.”

All that being true, Debbaudt is still leery of the idea.

“We saw how blatantly political it was with Villanueva,” Debbaudt said.  “Even though Gascon deserves it, imagine if a good DA is in office but the supervisors don’t like his or her politics, and like with the former sheriff, they try to remove them on a whim.  I’m just not sure that’s a power they should have over other elected county officials, officials who, remember, have to negotiate their budget with them.”

For his part, Villanueva said the rot at the county needs more fundamental reforms – such as directly electing a county chief executive – to check the power of the supervisors.

“Welcome to the evil empire,”  Villanueva said.  “They should not be both the executive and legislative branches of government, especially since they suck at both.”