Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn sworn in for final board term
Supervisor Janice Hahn was sworn in for her third and final term as a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisor member Monday, carrying on the legacy of the Hahn family's public service.
Hahn, 72, was sworn in by her brother, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Hahn during Monday's ceremony at the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, named after the supervisor's late father, Kenneth Hahn.
"I can't tell you how proud I am of my little sister … Wouldn't all of you love to have a sister like Janice Hahn?" Judge Hahn said at the ceremony.
Hahn was first elected to the Fourth District seat on the Board of Supervisors in 2016. Her district includes most of the Gateway Cities, Avalon and portions of the South Bay area and San Gabriel Valley. At the end of this four-year term, she will have served the maximum allowable time of three terms, 12 years on the board.
Before her time on the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, Hahn served in Congress as a U.S. Representative from California, she was a member of the Los Angeles City Council and she also served on the Los Angeles Charter Reform Commission.
At Monday's ceremony, the Hahn siblings spoke of their father's service, who served as an L.A. City Council member from 1947-52, then a county supervisor from 1952-92. "Our father announced his run for county supervisor just a few days before I was born," Janice said.
"We witnessed from a very early age the power a Los Angeles County Supervisor has to improve people's lives. Over the course of his 40 years as a supervisor, our father made a difference. Not just with big policy decisions and programs, but by solving people's individual problems."
The supervisor highlighted some of her plans for the next four years, including turning six vacant buildings at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk into a village to treat people with mental illness.
Top priorities also included safety on public transit, expanding transit in Southeast LA, improving air quality in the communities surrounding the ports, medical debt relief for low-income earners, an arts center for Southeast Los Angeles, a promise of dedication to the Latino-dominated communities she inherited in the redistricting process, and continued work with UCLA on the Mobile Stroke Unit.
"I know I'm not going to accomplish as much as my dad did over his 40 years on the Board of Supervisors, but I have big plans and plenty of fight left in me for these next four years," Supervisor Hahn said.
She also thanked voters for passing Measure A, a half-cent sales tax increase, intended to generate funding for more homeless prevention initiatives.
Hahn also referenced her work as a supervisor, when in 2021, she spearheaded efforts to return a portion of the Manhattan Beach property known as Bruce's Beach, back to the Bruce family nearly a century after it was illegally taken from them because they were Black.
The county returned the property in 2022, and became the first government body in the nation to return land stolen from a Black family during the Jim Crow era, according to Hahn's office.
Mayor Karen Bass congratulated Hahn at the ceremony, "We are fortunate to have someone of your caliber fighting for our communities."
"For the last eight years in this role, our supervisor has been a champion of solutions and a champion of her constituents, with a commitment to confronting the homelessness crisis, improving our transit system, strengthening our mental health care system, and her strong leadership on the implementation of 988 suicide and crisis lifeline and alternative response just to name a few."
