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Los Angeles County is a county in California, and the most populous county in the United States, with 10,179,716 residents (as of July 2004)*. The county seat is the city of Los Angeles.

The county is home to 88 incorporated cities and many unincorporated city-like areas (137 total). The coastal portion of the county is heavily urbanized, though there is a large expanse of lesser populated desert inland in the Santa Clarita Valley, and especially in the Antelope Valley which encompasses the northeastern parts of the county and adjacent eastern Kern County, lying just north of Los Angeles County. In between the large desert portions of the county - which make up around 40 per cent of its land area - and the heavily urbanized central and southern portions sits the San Gabriel Mountains containing Angeles National Forest. All of southern Los Angeles County, up to about the center of the county, is heavily urbanized.

This county holds most of the principal cities encompassing the Greater Los Angeles Area, and is the most important of the five counties that make up the area. As of 2004, the county's population is larger than the populations of 43 states.

Law, government and politics


Presidential elections results
Year Republican Democrats
2004 35.6% ''1,076,225 63.1% '' 1,907,736
2000 32.4% ''871,930 63.5% ''1,710,505
1996 31.0% ''746,544 59.3% ''1,430,629
1992 29.0% ''799,607 52.5% ''1,446,529
1988 46.9% ''1,239,716 51.9% ''1,372,352
1984 54.5% ''1,424,113 44.4% ''1,158,912
1980 50.2% ''1,224,533 40.2% ''979,830
1976 47.8 ''1,174,926 49.7% ''1,221,893
1972 54.8% ''1,549,717 42.0% ''1,189,977
1968 47.6% ''1,266,480 46.0% ''1,223,251
1964 42.5% ''1,161,067 57.4% ''1,568,300
1960 49.4% ''1,302,661 50.2% ''1,323,818
The county is governed by the five-member Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, who are elected by the county's voters. The small size of the board means each supervisor represents over 2 million people. The board operates in a legislative, executive, and quasi-judicial capacity. As a legislative authority, it can pass ordinances for the unincorporated areas (ordinances that affect the whole county, like posting of restaurant ratings, most must be ratified by the individual city). As an executive body, it can tell the county departments what to do, and how to do it. As a quasi-judicial body, the Board is the final venue of appeal in the local planning process, and holds public hearings on various decisions.

The county government is operated by a Chief Administrative Officer (currently David Janssen) and is organized into many departments, each of which is enormous in comparison to equivalent county-level (and even state-level) departments anywhere else in the United States. Some of the larger or better-known departments include:

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, despite its name, is not a County department. Technically it is a state-mandated county transportation commission that also operates bus and rail.

The Los Angeles Superior Court, which covers the entire county, is not a County department but a division of the State's trial court system.

Despite being a highly liberal county, many suburban cities in Los Angeles County are relatively conservative, particularly in the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Twenty-six cities in the county had a majority of votes go to George W. Bush in the 2004 Presidential Election; they were *: Arcadia, Avalon, Covina, Diamond Bar, El Segundo, Glendora, Hidden Hills, Industry, La Canada Flintridge, La Habra Heights, La Mirada, La Verne, Lakewood, Lancaster, Palmdale, Palos Verdes Estates, Rancho Palos Verdes, Rolling Hills, Rolling Hills Estates, San Dimas, San Marino, Santa Clarita, Torrance, Vernon, Westlake Village, and Whittier. The remainder of the 89 cities and districts in the county voted for Bush's Democratic opponent, John F. Kerry.

Legal system

The Los Angeles County Superior Court has jurisdiction over all cases arising under state law, while the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California hears all federal cases. Both are headquartered in a large cluster of government buildings in the city's Civic Center.

Unlike the largest city in the United States, New York City, all of the city of Los Angeles and most of its important suburbs are located within a single county. As a result, both the county superior court and the federal district court are respectively the busiest courts of their type in the nation.

Many celebrities like O.J. Simpson have been seen in Los Angeles courts. In 2003, the tabloid television show Extra (based in nearby Glendale) found itself running so many reports on the legal problems of local celebrities that it spun them off into a separate show, Celebrity Justice.

State cases are appealed to the Court of Appeal for the Second Appellate District, which is also headquartered in the Civic Center, and then to the California Supreme Court, which is headquartered in San Francisco but also hears argument in Los Angeles (again, in the Civic Center). Federal cases are appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which hears them at its branch building in Pasadena. The court of last resort for federal cases is the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.

Geography

With 4,061 square miles (10,517 km²), it borders on the Pacific Ocean and has the following rivers: Los Angeles River, Rio Hondo, the San Gabriel River and the Santa Clara River. The primary mountain ranges are the Santa Monica Mountains and the San Gabriel Mountains. It includes the westernmost part of the Mojave Desert, San Clemente Island and Santa Catalina Island.

The county has a total area of 12,308 km² (4,752 mi²). 10,518 km² (4,061 mi²) of it is land and 1,791 km² (691 mi²) of it (14.55%) is water.

Major divisions of the county

List of adjacent counties

See also: List of California counties

Largest Cities

Other Cities

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Los Angeles County, California".

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