Is L.A. area big enough for two mayors?

With 9.8 million people, Los Angeles County has a population larger than that of 42 states. And the county's $21 billion budget is roughly equal to the United Nations' outlay for all its agencies and funds.

Some observers – including at least one on the five-member Board of Supervisors that oversees the behemoth county – say the governing structure of Los Angeles County is amorphous and often dysfunctional. Their idea for promoting more accountability: allow voters to elect a mayor of Los Angeles County.

That person would oversee the nation's largest county – a county holding the city of L.A. ... which already has a mayor.

A second mayor would bring the accountability needed to run the county's unwieldy bureaucracy – and provide the authority to get more things done, proponents say. Critics say the idea could throw a monkey wrench into the politics of America's second-largest city and an OK-Corral-style standoff on whether the region "is big enough" for two top leaders.

The proposal is being floated by current board member Zev Yaroslavsky, who is one of five supervisors – all equal in power – representing a different geographic region of the county. He expects to introduce it soon.

"The people of the county are entitled to have one person they elect to hold accountable for the performance of the county," Mr. Yaroslavsky said at a Nov. 16 luncheon with business leaders. "Our 100,000 employees are entitled to know who their boss is. They have five bosses now, with their five points of view, very often different points of view on the same issue."

Yaroslavsky's remarks came in the context of a local management crisis in a county hospital, according to the supervisor's spokesman, Joel Bellman. Debate has been raging for months since a Los Angeles Times investigative series exposed poor medical care at the Martin Luther King-Drew Medical Center, a county-run hospital in a poorer section of the city.

The proposal has revived discussion about how L.A. County could better serve its population, including whether a county mayor or chief executive by another name would promote or hinder more accountable government.

Also up for debate is whether a charter amendment needed to make such a change should come to voters via approval by the Board of Supervisors or through a ballot initiative.

Many experts say it is a proposal whose time has come. "It's a good idea," says Jack Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif. "The [current] five-member board acts as a de facto executive, and as Alexander Hamilton reminded us ... a plural executive is seldom a good idea.... It tends to conceal faults and destroy responsibility...."

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