EDITORIAL POSITIONS OF POWER COUNTY ADMINISTRATOR NEEDS AUTHORITY, NOT AN ARMY OF BUREAUCRATS.

LOS Angeles County's Board of Supervisors did the right thing Tuesday by endowing the position of chief administrative officer with some power to hold the vast bureaucracy accountable.

This change to make the job more like its counterparts in other California counties will no doubt help supervisors in their future search for a successor to CAO David Janssen, who came out of retirement when they couldn't persuade any qualified candidates to take the job.

It's important that the county's top administrative officer have the power to police the county's departments and roll some heads if need be -- something that might have averted the King/Drew Medical Center crisis had it been implemented years ago. But the CAO doesn't need an army of more bureaucrats for support.

As part of the CAO's new empowerment, Janssen is proposing creating a team of deputy CAOs who would each oversee a few department heads. We support giving the CAO more power, but not the power to create a whole new layer of government -- no doubt one that's well paid.

The department heads are supposed to police their departments. If they don't, then they need to be replaced. Having an underboss micromanage them doesn't necessarily ensure better government.

The entire board should be as skeptical of this proposal as Supervisor Mike Antonovich is -- and reject the idea of a whole new and expensive layer of bureaucracy.