Zev Yaroslavsky

Zev Yaroslavsky
Yaroslavsky in 2009
Member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors from District 3
Incumbent
Assumed office 1994
Preceded by	Edmund D. Edelman
Personal details
Born	December 21, 1948 (1948-12-21) Los Angeles, California
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Barbara Yaroslavsky
Children	Mina, David
Residence	Los Angeles, California
Religion	Jewish
Website	http://zev.lacounty.gov

Zev Yaroslavsky (born 1948) is a Los Angeles County, California, politician who served on the Los Angeles City Council from 1975 through 1994 and has been a member of the County Board of Supervisors since then. He has been active in the areas of transportation, the environment, health care and cultural affairs. In the 1970s, he was a leader in opposing Soviet antipathy toward Jews in the USSR.

Biography

Family

Zev Yaroslavsky, the son of David and Minna Yaroslavsky, was born on December 21, 1948, in Los Angeles. He and his older sister, Shimona (married name: Kushner), were the children of Jewish immigrants from Russia and grew up in a Zionist household in Boyle Heights. His father was a founder of the Hebrew Teachers Union in Los Angeles, and both parents, who were born in Ukraine, were founders of Habonim of Los Angeles, a labor Zionist youth movement. Yaroslavsky recalled that his parents spoke to their children only in Hebrew to prepare them for emigrating to Israel. They took their children to that country when Shimona was thirteen and Zev was five. Shimona later emigrated permanently.

Yaroslavsky is married to Barbara Edelston, whom he met as a student at UCLA. In 1985, when Yaroslavsky was a City Council member, a newspaper reporter described their home in the Fairfax District as a "a drab yellow structure with peeling paint and a dirt-patched front lawn." The reporter noted that Yaroslavsky, known for frugality, was rarely home and spent much of his spare time following world events in newspapers and on television. They couple has two children, Mina and David.

Education

Yaroslavsky went to Melrose Avenue Elementary School, Bancroft Junior High School and Fairfax High School. He earned a bachelor of arts in history and economics from UCLA in 1971 and a master of arts in history, specializing in the British Empire, from the same school in 1972. Afterward, he taught Hebrew at temples in Pasadena and Bel Air.

Activism

At UCLA he was, by his own account, a "flaming liberal." In his sophomore year, Yaroslavsky was taken to visit relatives in Moscow in the USSR and learned that "life for Jews in the Soviet Union was grimly oppressive." On his return to college, he organized a group called California Students for Soviet Jews, which picketed a Russian track and field team in town for an event. In December 1969 he guided a protest march against the USSR's treatment of Jews, which attracted 5,000 people, including Mayor Sam Yorty and television performer Steve Allen.

Later he worked as executive director of the Southern California Council of Soviet Jewry, and in 1971 made news when he boated out in Los Angeles Harbor late at night to paint graffiti in favor of Russian Jews on the side of a Soviet ship. He also led demonstrations against Soviet ballet companies and orchestras. He was arrested during "an aborted stunt involving black balloons at a Bolshoi Ballet performance." He was "deeply involved" in a campaign to burn Standard Oil credit cards after the company sent a letter to 300,000 stockholders that appeared to support a pro-Arab Middle East policy. He resigned that $150-a-week job to campaign for the City Council.

As a councilman, he announced that he would go to Skokie, Illinois, in June 1978 to attend a rally protesting a planned march by American Nazis through the heavily Jewish Chicago suburb. He called the march "an insidious provocation which should shock the conscience of every American."

City Council

Elections

See also List of Los Angeles municipal election returns, 1975 and after.

In 1975, Yaroslavsky ran for the Los Angeles City Council District 5 seat that had been vacated by Edmund D. Edelman when Edelman was elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. The district spans the west side of Los Angeles and parts of the San Fernando Valley, including such communities as Bel Air, Westwood, Hollywood, Fairfax, Sherman Oaks and Encino. In the primary, he was second after Fran Savitch. Rosalind Wiener Wyman, who ran third in the primary, later endorsed him over Savitch, and in the final vote Yaroslavsky won, 23,372 votes to Savitch's 19,606.

Yaroslavsky, 26, was sworn in as Los Angeles's youngest councilman on June 10, 1975, to complete Edelman's unexpired term. After the ceremony, Mayor Bradley told him "Congratulations. Now you're part of the establishment," to which Yaroslavsky recalled that he replied, "Yes, but the establishment is not part of me."

Yaroslavsky was reelected thereafter until he resigned in 1994 to go to the county's Board of Supervisors, where again he succeeded Supervisor Edelman, who was retiring from the board.

Positions

His City Council colleagues called him "the most driven and most ambitious" of their members. Some of the positions he took included:

'Slow growth'

Yaroslavsky planned to run for mayor against Tom Bradley in 1988 on a "slow growth" platform, but the Los Angeles Times noted that there were two sides to that claim. The headline and blurb of a major feature that took up almost all the first page of the newspaper's Metro Section in February 1988 read:

The Two Sides of Zev Yaroslavsky: He's been a crusader for slow growth who has assailed Mayor Bradley as pro-development. But the councilman has also worked quietly in support of the same projects he has publicly criticized. This duality is expected to come under intense scrutiny during Yaroslavsky's bid for mayor.

"I lead a dual life," Yaroslavsky told a reporter. "I have to deal with the practical, day-to-day monotony of negotiations between contesting parties. . . . I can't lock myself in a closet and say, 'I'm a crusader.' "

The investigative feature was accompanied by a chart that listed nineteen buildings of eight stories or more, or of comparable size, that were opened during Yaroslavsky's term in office to that time, including the Beverly Center a "shopping-restaurant-movie mall built on the site of a popular pony ride and amusement park," Westside Pavilion and Fox Plaza complexes and two structures at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. On the other hand:

Yaroslavsky and fellow Councilman Marvin Braude, also from the affluent Westside, had joined in 1986 to push the passage of Proposition U, a successful initiative measure that aimed to slow down or halt the building of commercial high-rise districts near residential areas. He also, for the first time anywhere, insisted on factoring in the effects of increased traffic caused by commercial development, which "is now used as a standard measurement in gauging the impact of growth."

He also drove ordinances that imposed height limits on single-family homes and small businesses, which saved the Pico-Robertson area from being overrun with tall buildings. Yaroslavsky countered that, in the case of the Westside Pavilion, he did not want to "spot-zone a piece of property and go after somebody."

The Times, however, found that Yaroslavsky had taken "unpublicized official actions to help projects he either criticized or outright opposed," including writing ordinances favoring two large projects that he later said he was against. He also received strong financial support from major developers.

LAPD

In September 1978 Yaroslavsky and Councilman David S. Cunningham, Jr. called for investigating the Police Department's controversial Public Disorder and Intelligence Unit, saying the unit's guidelines are "overly broad, and permit extensive political, as opposed to criminal, surveillance." He said that the LAPD kept files on nearly 200 organizations, including the National Council of Churches and the Southern California Council for Soviet Jews, of which he had been executive director. He later made a written request to Police Chief Daryl Gates asking how much was being spent on secret intelligence gathering while the LAPD was being "faced with a reduced total force and rising street crime." He did so after an assistant chief refused to provide the information to the council, even in a closed meeting.

Yaroslavsky later authored a successful freedom-of-information ordinance that, among other things, required the police department to furnish citizens access to their police intelligence files, or else explain why it couldn't do so. The department balked, with Assistant Police Chief Robert Vernon saying it would be "stupid" to tell a potential terrorist that it has no file on him and that Yaroslavsky had a "lack of integrity" by voicing unfounded charges against the department.

He also campaigned against the LAPD's supposed use of "choke holds" while making arrests and the paucity of women and minorities on the force.

Other

RFK assassination, 1975. Yaroslavsky submitted a successful resolution to the council creating an ad hoc investigative group that was to review the police and other official investigations into the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.

Bakery prices, 1977. He offered a resolution that would have required bakeries to post the prices of their goods.

Olympics, 1978–84. Yaroslavsky and Councilman Bob Ronka were known as the "most active . . . skeptics" concerning the city's role in staging the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Council feud, 1981. Yaroslavsky successfully worked to unseat long-time council President John Ferraro from his post in favor of Joel Wachs. The move was symptomatic of a "bitter feud" between Yaroslavsky and the veteran Ferraro, who called the younger councilman "childish, desperate . . . immature" after a council debate over the demolition of a small apartment building housing six disabled seniors in Yaroslavsky's district, which demolition Ferraro favored and Yaroslavsky opposed.

'Back stabbing,' 1985. Yaroslavsky broke with City Council tradition when he campaigned for challenger Michael Woo against pro-growth fellow council member Peggy Stevenson, who had helped defeat a controversial building moratorium planned for part of Yaroslavsky's district. Councilman Dave Cunningham called that an act of "back stabbing."

Board of Supervisors

Yaroslavsky represents the Third Supervisorial District of Los Angeles County, which encompasses the cities of Malibu, Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Calabasas, as well as most of the western San Fernando Valley and other portions of the City of Los Angeles.

Elections

Yaroslavsky won his first term on the Los Angeles Board of Superviors when Edmund D. Edelman did not seek re-election in 1994. In his 2006 re-election race he ran against David Hernandez, a Republican and retired insurance adjuster who campaigned to keep the cross on the Los Angeles County Seal, and Randy Springer. Yaroslavsky won the election, receiving 70.49% of the vote in the primary. Yaroslavsky was re-elected for a fourth time in 2010, running unopposed.

Positions

Land use and the environment

Yaroslavsky has been a longtime environmental advocate, most notably in restricting development and preserving open space in the Santa Monica Mountains. Since joining the Board of Supervisors in 1994, he has helped acquire 7,870 acres of county parkland through bonds and matching funds. In 2004, Yaroslavsky helped craft a controversial ordinance that made it more difficult to develop scenic ridge lines in the Santa Monica Mountains, while also cutting in half the amount of grading allowed without a conditional use permit. This reversed the extensive development policies of county leaders in the 1980s and early 1990s. Opponents denounced the ordinance as an arbitrary and unrealistic “land grab.” But it had the backing of the board majority, the National Park Service and the California Department of Parks and Recreation, among others.

The following year, Yaroslavsky was credited with being the key to finalizing a complex $35-million deal to preserve a 588-acre swath of “mostly pristine woodlands” in the Santa Monica Mountains for use as parkland. The Los Angeles Times called the protection and purchase of the land from Soka University a “major environmental achievement,” noting that Yaroslavsky and others had worked for months to bring together a coalition of agencies and residents to find the purchase money. The historic property—named King Gillette Ranch after the razor blade tycoon who once owned the land—is now open to the public.

Transportation

As a county supervisor, Yaroslavsky sits on the board of directors of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. In 1998, citing concerns about the MTA’s mounting internal problems, growing debt and myriad subway construction mishaps and cost overruns, Yaroslavsky sponsored a controversial ballot initiative, Proposition A, to prevent transit sales tax monies from being used to build underground rail lines. Yaroslavsky argued that mass transit could be achieved less expensively and more efficiently through light-rail and dedicated busways than through subways at a cost of $300 million per mile. Critics portrayed Proposition A as too extreme and argued that it would prevent subways from coming to the county’s minority neighborhoods. But county voters, including those in heavily minority areas, overwhelmingly supported Yaroslasky’s MTA Reform and Accountability Act. In the meantime, Yaroslavsky pushed for a 14-mile dedicated busway that would cut through the San Fernando Valley on paved right-of-ways. It was nicknamed the “Napkin Line” because Yaroslavsky drew the route on a napkin while flying home from studying a similar system in Curitiba, Brazil. Officially called the “Orange Line,” the $350-million busway began service in 2005 and soon achieved ridership numbers that far exceeded planners’ predictions and led to better freeway commute times. “This is one of Metro’s greatest success stories,” the agency’s deputy CEO said.

Money was restored to subway construction and other major transit projects in 2008, when county voters approved a half-cent sales tax measure promoted by Yaroslavsky and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Measure R is expected to generate $40 billion over 30 years. The measure detailed specific rail and highway projects that will be undertaken, including the Purple Line subway on the Westside and the Expo Line, a light rail project backed by Yaroslavsky that will start in Downtown Los Angeles and end in Santa Monica when completed. The supervisor was also an early proponent of easing Westside traffic by converting Pico and Olympic Boulevards into complementary one-way thoroughfares.

Health care

In 2002, Yaroslavsky authored a ballot initiative to raise $168 million annually in an effort to avert the potential collapse of Los Angeles County’s vast emergency and trauma-care network, which was threatened by a deep health-care budget deficit. Measure B passed with a surprising 73 percent of the vote, marking the first time since the 1978 passage of tax-slashing Proposition 13 that county voters had approved a direct tax on their property. As a result, the county was able to avoid the possible closure of two public hospitals while keeping emergency and trauma-care services afloat.

Yaroslavsky, a former smoker, also has been acknowledged for playing a key role in the county’s anti-tobacco efforts. In 1996, he successfully pressed the county to sue six tobacco companies to recover hundreds of millions of dollars in health-care costs from smoking-related illnesses. He accused the companies of specifically marketing to poor people, immigrants and teenagers who turn to county hospitals and clinics for treatment. Four years later, as part of a statewide settlement of tobacco litigation, the county received a $79 million payment, the first to be made annually for 25 years. In all, Los Angeles County was expected to receive nearly $3 billion as result of the litigation.

In 2001, Yaroslavsky was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Although a longtime daily runner, he immediately changed his diet and lifestyle, reducing his weight from 215 pounds to 185 in 2008. Yaroslavsky said the diagnosis led to his successful sponsorship of an ordinance that now requires all fast-food outlets in unincorporated Los Angeles County areas to post calorie counts on their menus.

Yaroslavsky also is credited with bringing health care to a largely working-class Latino neighborhood in the northeastern San Fernando Valley by providing services through an innovative clinic built on the campus of the local Sun Valley Middle School. The clinic serves an area where many residents are uninsured, living below the poverty line and rarely seek medical attention. The county appropriated $7.5 million for construction costs.

Yaroslavsky and his four colleagues on the Board of Supervisors came under sharp criticism in a Pulitzer Prize-winning 2004 series by the Los Angeles Times on massive and deadly problems inside Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center in South Los Angeles, a county hospital built after the 1965 Watts Riots to serve the area’s then-largely African-American population. Current and previous supervisors were accused of failing to take action for decades because of internal board politics and fear of an angry backlash from some African-American community leaders who strongly supported the hospital, despite its documented problems. After the series was published, in-patient services were shut down. County efforts to reopen the facility floundered for nearly two years until Yaroslavsky proposed a “last, best hope” partnership with the University of California, which he first outlined in an Op-Ed piece in the Los Angeles Times. An accord was reached with the UC in 2009. An editorial in The Times said Yaroslavsky had ”demonstrated the value of experience and political astuteness.”

Homelessness

With Los Angeles known as the nation’s homeless capital, Yaroslavsky created a county pilot program in 2008 called Project 50, aimed at identifying and then providing permanent supportive housing to the 50 people most likely to die on the streets of L.A.’s Skid Row. Funded with a county grant of $3 million, the program was based on the premise that public funds are more effectively and humanely spent by providing chronically homeless people with housing, medical care and social services than by relying on costly jails and emergency rooms. This approach was pioneered by the New York-based group Common Ground.

Project 50 has been criticized by some of Yaroslavsky’s colleagues on the Board of Supervisors and others for not requiring participants to achieve sobriety before they’re permanently housed with public funds. In 2009, the board majority resisted the program’s broader, countywide implementation. “Warehousing without healing,” is how one described Project 50 in a Los Angeles Times series that raised questions about the program’s effectiveness. But Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez, whose relationship with a homeless violinist became the basis of the movie “The Soloist,” studied the program and concluded that “for the most part the results have been remarkable.”

Encouraged by Project 50’s results, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has created Project 60, using the same methods to help homeless veterans in Los Angeles. Project 50 itself has been replicated throughout Yaroslavsky’s Third Supervisorial District, including in such areas as Santa Monica, Hollywood and Venice.In 2012, acting on a motion by Supervisor Yaroslavsky and Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, the Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to create the county’s first interdepartmental council on homelessness. As chairman of the Board of Supervisors, Yaroslavsky acts as the new panel’s first chair. The council has been directed to expand previously successful but modestly-sized programs such as Project 50 and Access to Housing for Health.

Arts and culture

Yaroslavsky has been instrumental in securing millions of dollars in funding for the arts in Los Angeles County. In 1996, he introduced a bond measure designed to improve parks, buy open space and provide new recreational facilities. It passed with 65% of the vote. Among other things, Proposition A set aside millions of dollars to remake the iconic shell at the Hollywood Bowl. Yaroslavsky appropriated an additional nearly $7 million from the Third District capital and maintenance fund to replace the deteriorating 1929 shell, which angry preservationists had sought but failed to save during a two-year court battle. The new shell—praised by members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for its acoustics and larger size—was unveiled in June, 2004.

Yaroslavsky played a key role among local elected officials in the construction of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. He appropriated $1 million to help build architect Frank Gehry’s distinctive hall, which opened in 2003. In 2007, Yaroslavsky appropriated $2 million from the Third District’s capital projects budget for the construction of a landmark concert venue in the San Fernando Valley, predicting that it would revitalize the underserved region as Disney Concert Hall had done in downtown Los Angeles. Located on the campus of California State University, Northridge, the Valley Performing Arts Center opened in January, 2011.

Explaining his arts advocacy, Yaroslavsky told the Los Angeles Times: “Even if you don't like ballet or classical music or opera, it's an economic engine, it puts people to work, and it pays well.”

Quotations

• "The average person walking into City Hall is behind the eight ball before he ever gets to the first step."

• "Let's have a little vision. What does Westwood Village need? Another McDonald's? Pioneer Chicken? What this town needs is a little vision."

• In response to news media organizations' threat to sue over a new city tax: "Let them take us to court. . . . Sue! Sue!"

• "I've always had the propensity to pork up. . . . but when I finally got a chronic disease, it became an issue of life or death."

• "I let the facts dictate the outcome; I don't let the emotion dictate the outcome."

References

Access to some Los Angeles Times and "Los Angeles Daily News" links may require the use of a library card.

External links

• Official Los Angeles County website With a photo.
• NNDB profile
• Newsmeat Congressional Campaign Contributors List
• Yaroslavsky's Flickr page

Documentary

• Yaroslavsky was interviewed in the 2007 documentary Refusenik.[2]

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Political offices
Preceded by Edmund D. Edelman	Los Angeles City Council 5th District 1975–94	Succeeded by Michael Feuer
	Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors 3rd District 1994–present	Succeeded by —