Long Beach church hosts debate between Board of Supervisors candidates

Two candidates ruing to take Don Knabe’s place on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors affirmed their support for county govement’s role as a social service provider during a Tuesday night debate in Long Beach.

“At the heart of what L.A. County is, we’re a safety net. We are there for folks who have reached the end of their rope,” one the participating candidates, Rep. Janice Hahn, D-San Pedro, said during her closing statement.

Her opponent in Tuesday’s debate, Steve Napolitano, works as a senior deputy to Knabe, who won his first election to the supervisor’s post in 1996.

“Nobody knows the Fourth District better than I do. Nobody knows the county better than I do,” he said.

Hahn and Napolitano appeared in the sanctuary of First Congregational Church in downtown Long Beach to answer questions posed by representatives of several advocacy groups and social service organizations. Coalition for a Just L.A. hosted the event, which involved two of the three candidates vying to represent the county’s 4th Supervisorial District. The campaign for the third candidate, Whittier Union High School District board member Ralph Pacheco, did not raise enough money to participate, according to organizers.

Hahn and Napolitano did not reveal any sharp ideological differences that may exist between the two hopefuls. The candidates’ statements did, however, reveal some hints of variation as to how they would attempt to shape Los Angeles County policy. Their words also suggested broad agreement on such topics using the county’s power to expand the availability of public housing, providing health services to undocumented immigrants, reducing pollution around the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and increasing funding for county govement’s work related to the growing homelessness crisis, early childhood education, senior services and reentry services for offenders retuing to freedom.

At different points in Tuesday’s debate, Napolitano said he wants county govement to offer incentives for developers to set aside shares of future apartments for seniors and others who caot afford to pay market rates for housing. He also called for a clean truck lane on the 710 Freeway and floated the possibilities of using social impact bonds and marijuana taxes to, respectively, finance expanded preschool and homeless services.

County supervisors took action this past October to create a new affordable housing fund with the intention of having $100 million for county govement to spend on the issue by the 2020-21 budget year. Hahn said she would seek to have that money placed in a proverbial lockbox, so it could not be spent on any other aspect of county business.

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Hahn also expressed support for third-party oversight of emissions control efforts at the local ports, enacting a special tax on people eaing more than $1 million per year to pay for homeless services and facilitating the development of senior housing complexes near rail lines to help older residents find places to live and be able to move around the county. She also said her experience in Congress could benefit county govement’s bids for federal grant dollars that would pay for preschool services.

The candidates also called for a better accounting of how any savings derived from Proposition 47, a 2014 state ballot measure that converted some drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, can be applied to programs intended to prevent offenders rejoin society without committing future crimes.

Besides serving in Congress, Hahn has also been a member of Los Angeles’ City Council. Napolitano is a former council member and mayor in Manhattan Beach.

The county’s 4th Supervisorial District extends as far as Marina del Rey at its weste edge and its territory wraps around the South Bay coastline to include communities in Torrance, beach cities and the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The district’s territory also includes San Pedro, Long Beach, Downey and communities near the paths of the 605 and 60 freeways as far east as Diamond Bar. Nearly 2 million people live in the district, according to a 2011 county population estimate.

The Primary Election is scheduled for June 7.