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Politics Jan 10, 2023
Riverside County Supervisor Kevin Jeffries. | Photo courtesy of Riverside County
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The most senior member of the Riverside County Board of Supervisors was appointed Tuesday to the position of chairman of the board — the last time he will serve in that capacity as he closes in on retirement.
Supervisor Kevin Jeffries, who represents the First District, was next in the rotation to take the helm, and it’s the second time in the 10 years he’s been on the board that he’ll serve in the top slot.
The appointment was unanimously affirmed by the board, as was the appointment of Supervisor Chuck Washington as vice chairman.
Jeffries quipped that he didn’t mind whether someone else took the position because he’s not a fan of organizing “public presentations,” eliciting laughs in the chamber.
“I believe in the efficiency of staff,” he said. “I hope as chair to continue with presentations, but I want to keep them efficient and cap them at two per meeting. We all need to be in sync on who’s going to receive presentations and make sure they’re done professionally and efficiently.”
He complained that prior meetings had been plagued with excess presentations that chewed up time, causing unnecessary delays in delving into agenda items.
Jeffries’ appointment was in sharp contrast to the appointment of former Supervisor Jeff Hewitt a year ago, which was the only occasion in the current century that a Board of Supervisors chairmanship was confirmed by a threadbare majority. Hewitt garnered support from Jeffries and Supervisor Karen Spiegel, then voted for himself, after abstentions by Supervisors Manuel Perez and Washington.
The pair publicly supported fellow Democrat and the former mayor of Moreno Valley, Yxstian Gonzalez, in his bid to unseat Hewitt, a Libertarian, in the Nov. 8 general election. Gonzalez won by a margin of 54% to 46% and now represents the Fifth District.
Jeffries declined the chairmanship during his first term, when he was still the most junior member of the board. However, he accepted the position and was unanimously appointed during the latter half of his second term.
Each supervisor is given an opportunity to rotate into the chair, which is a one-year term. The line of succession is based only on whichever district supervisor is slated for a turn.
The chair oversees establishing board schedules, guiding hearings, attending functions on behalf of the entire board, signing proclamations and other ceremonial duties that don’t require a quorum.
Jeffries, 61, announced in October 2021 that he intended to retire at the end of his present term, which expires in December 2024. The Lakeland Village resident said he wanted to spend more time with family, and most of his children and grandchildren had left California.
Jeffries, a property investor and former volunteer firefighter, first ran for the board in 2012 after being termed out of the state Assembly, where he served as a Republican. He was elected to his third supervisorial term in 2020.
He is the only supervisor who has consistently declined salary increases, and he has been a steadfast critic of excess spending and an advocate for pension reform to preserve the county’s fiscal health and prevent successive structural budget deficits.
The chairman has additionally decried the overgrowth of warehouses countywide and has voted in opposition to several projects due to their breadth and encroachments on residential spaces.
He led the charge against illegal cannabis grows, particularly throughout his district, but later spearheaded efforts to implement a regulatory scheme to provide a permitting process for enabling marijuana vendors to do business in the county after recreational use of the product was approved by voters in 2018.
Last year, he called for a suspension of permitting proposals brought before the board for review because, he said, too many licenses had been granted, but the applicants had been inert, failing to move ahead with establishing their outlets, or failing to fulfill the terms of their conditional use permits.
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