Orange County Board of Supervisors

The Orange County Board of Supervisors is the five-member governing body of Orange County, California.

The Board consists of five Supervisors elected by districts to four-year terms by the citizens of Orange County. The Supervisors represent districts of approximately 600,000 people.

Supervisorial elections take place in June, with run-off elections (if necessary) in November. Supervisorial terms begin the first Monday after January 1 after the election. Vacancies on the Board are filled via special election since Orange County voters adopted a county charter in March 2002. Prior to the adoption of the charter, vacancies on the Board were filled by appointment by the Governor of California. The December 1996 appointment of Laguna Niguel City Councilman Thomas W. Wilson by Governor Pete Wilson (no relation) was the last time that a gubernatorial appointment was used to fill a supervisorial vacancy (Supervisor Marian Bergeson had resigned to become the California Secretary of Education). The January 2003 special election of former State Assemblyman Bill Campbell was the first time that a special election was used to fill a supervisorial vacancy (Supervisor Todd Spitzer had resigned after he was elected to the State Assembly to replace the term-limited Campbell).

The current members of the board of supervisors are:

The board makes decisions relating to land use, public utilities, and transportation, both directly and indirectly through its power over budgets and appointments to boards, committees, and commissions. Services that are ultimately managed by the board include regional parks, water, sewers, animal control, buses, freeways, and commuter rail.

In the conservative political climate of Orange County, a number of the problems and controversies encountered by the board in its history have been related to questions of the proper size and role of government.

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