San Diego Dashboard · LEGISLATIVE

San Diego County Board of Supervisors

San Diego County is governed by a five-member Board of Supervisors, each elected from a geographic district to a staggered four-year term under CA Government Code §25000 et seq. The Board sets the county budget (roughly $8 billion), hires and fires the Chief Administrative Officer, and runs the county departments — Sheriff's civil operations, Health and Human Services, the Registrar of Voters, and the Assessor's office. Through the chair, the Board appoints its two SANDAG seats (one primary, one secondary) and its two seats on the Airport Authority. Voters imposed a two-consecutive-term limit in 2010 (Measure B); any officer is recallable under CA Elections Code §11000. The Board covers roughly 3.3 million residents across 18 incorporated cities and the unincorporated backcountry.

NEW HERE? Read this body's chapter in The Wiring → Part 4: The Supervisors

Composition

Who Appoints These Seats

Five people decide the roughly $8-billion annual budget of the second-most-populous county in California. Three of the five are enough to pass anything. There are 3.3 million residents in San Diego County, spread across 18 incorporated cities and thousands of square miles of unincorporated backcountry that no city council covers. The Board of Supervisors is the government those residents share.
How the five seats are filled. California Government Code §25000 et seq. establishes the county Board of Supervisors. Each supervisor is elected by the voters of a single geographic district to a four-year staggered term — Districts 1, 3, and 5 on one cycle; Districts 2 and 4 on the other.[1] District lines are redrawn every ten years by an independent redistricting commission under CA Elections Code §23000 et seq. (added by Assembly Bill 849 in 2019); before that, the Board drew its own lines. District 1 covers the South Bay and downtown; District 2 covers East County and the Lakeside area; District 3 covers the northern coast; District 4 covers central and southeast San Diego; District 5 covers the rural North County backcountry to the desert.
Three votes pass anything. There is no veto. The Board is the legislative body, the chief-executive body, and the budget-adoption body for the county — there is no separately elected county executive, no mayor-equivalent to wield a veto. CA Government Code §25005 sets the quorum at a majority of the Board; all ordinances and budgets pass on a majority vote of members present and voting. On a fully seated Board, three aye votes carry everything from a $50,000 contract to the adoption of the $8-billion operating budget.[2] Supermajority thresholds apply only in narrow statutory carve-outs — urgency ordinances (§25123), certain tax measures requiring 4/5 under Proposition 218, and Brown Act noticing exceptions.

There is no County Mayor. Three of five supervisors pass anything. An $8-billion budget, 3.3 million residents, a single aye vote from the third supervisor.

MathPolitics Primer
The Board hires and fires the CAO — who runs the operational county. The Chief Administrative Officer is appointed and dismissible at will by the Board under CA Government Code §24300 and the County Administrative Code. The CAO supervises most department heads — Health and Human Services, Public Works, Planning and Development Services, Registrar of Voters, the Probation Department — each of which runs on a budget the Board adopts. A handful of department heads are separately elected and sit outside the CAO's line: the Sheriff, the District Attorney, the Treasurer-Tax Collector, the Assessor-Recorder-County Clerk. Those four answer to the voters directly. Everyone else answers to the CAO, who answers to three Supervisors.
Term limits and recall. Voters approved Measure B in November 2010, amending the county charter to cap Supervisors at two consecutive four-year terms.[3] The measure applied prospectively. Any Supervisor is recallable under CA Elections Code §§11000–11386 — a county-wide recall for a single supervisor is triggered by a petition signed by 20% of registered voters in that district, a threshold materially higher than the 15% used for city-council recalls and calibrated to the larger district population.
Why the structure matters for the stories we cover. Our Desmond Files examines how developer money structured a North County supervisor's political career, including a unanimous five-vote approval of 453 homes at the end of a two-lane road in a designated fire zone. The Lawson-Remer Files documents a $36-million handshake that moved through the Board on a majority vote. The Vargas Files traces a Supervisor's Form 700 disclosure drop-off after she stopped filing and the Board stopped watching. In each case, the story is a three-vote majority using the same statutory mechanics described above.
What the Board decides beyond its own boundaries. The Board names two of its own as the County's representatives on the SANDAG Board of Directors (CA Public Utilities Code §132351.1), two on the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority Board (§170002), and the County's seats on LAFCO, the Local Agency Formation Commission that governs annexation and incorporation. A Supervisor's vote on those regional boards moves transportation and airport money across the whole county. The appointing decision is a three-vote action inside this Board — no direct voter input on who holds those seats.

Sources

[1] California Government Code §25000 et seq. — County Board of Supervisors — California Legislative Information https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codesTOCSelected.xhtml?tocCode=GOV&tocTitle=+Government+Code+-+GOV
[2] California Government Code §25005 — Majority vote requirement — California Legislative Information https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=25005&lawCode=GOV
[3] San Diego County Charter — Term Limit (Measure B, November 2010) — San Diego County Charter https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/content/dam/sdc/cob/docs/County_Charter.pdf
[4] California Elections Code §23000 et seq. — County Independent Redistricting Commissions (AB 849, 2019) — California Legislative Information https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayexpandedbranch.xhtml?tocCode=ELEC&division=21

Where the Money Comes From

As Seen In Our Reporting