Third District County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky has represented Malibu and surrounding areas on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors since 1994. He has held public office since 1975, when he was elected to the L.A. City Council at age 26. Due to term limits, he will leave the Board of Supervisors at the end of 2014.
Over the last two decades, Yaroslavsky has helped obtain 17,000 acres of public open parkland space, pushed for major reform in the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, helped enact a ban on plastic bags and touted several other environmental causes while representing two million constituents. He has also made it a point to protect the Santa Monica Mountains from overdevelopment.
“We have to let the terrain dictate development, not the other way around…,” Yaroslavsky said. “We’ve done a lot in that regard because that area is a crown jewel in the environmental mosaic of Southern California.”
Drawn to political activism early on, Yaroslavsky organized protests against the oppression of Jewish people in the Soviet Union as an undergraduate at UCLA.
“I grew up in a household where social action and political activity was a way to advance the common good,” he said. “…The opportunity to change the face of the county in so many positive ways really stemmed from my upbringing and my life experience, which is getting things done, not just sitting back and being an armchair critic.”
Despite rumors that he would run for the L.A. mayorship in 2012 and most recently to replace the retiring Rep. Henry Waxman in the U.S. Congress, Yaroslavsky said he plans to fully retire from politics once his term is over.
“I said in 2012 that four decades in elected office was long enough, and I meant it,” Yaroslavsky said earlier this month. “I am committed to public service and to advancing those public policies I have believed in all my life, but I intend to do so outside of elected office.”
As for what the future holds after retirement, Yaroslavsky has no major plans yet, except that he plans to write a book.
“I believe the people who’ve been part of making history owe it to future generations, however many that may be, to describe what they did and why they did it.”