Yaroslavsky feted at Disney Hall

Yaroslavsky on stage Monday night. LAO.

Retiring Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky received the accolades of friends, supporters and colleagues on Monday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, which he had a hand in getting built. Among the speakers praising Yaroslavsky's 39 years as a supervisor and city councilman were former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former supervisor Yvonne Burke and current board chairman Don Knabe, LACMA director Michael Govan, the former county CAO David Janssen and Yaroslavsky's children. Vin Scully made a surprise and very funny appearance on video, after repeated references through the evening that the one other job Yaroslavsky wished he had pursued was Scully's in the Dodgers broadcast booth.

When he took the stage, Yaroslavsky, 65, said he planned to write a memoir — and he pointed into the audience at one his City Council predecessors, Roz Wyman, and demanded that she get to work writing her memoir. Yaroslavsky asked his successor, Sheila Kuehl, to stand and he praised her as the right person to take his place. Kuehl received a very warm reception from the audience. Notably absent, it seemed to me and others, were Yaroslavsky's Board of Supervisors colleagues Gloria Molina, Mark Ridley-Thomas and Mike Antonovich.

The line of the night was Yaroslavsky's, who said that the county's system of government in which three electeds can do just about anything they want looks "abhorrent" — unless you occupy one of those seats of power. Then it looks pretty good, because you can get things done without the partisanship of Washington or Sacramento. Scully, for his part, quipped that before Yaroslavsky could dare to "yank his chair" out from under him, he should start in the low minors, perhaps at the Dodgers farm club in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Oh but the Grand Rapids Loons don't allow facial hair — so, Scully said churlishly, Yaroslavsky would have to choose between his dream job and his mustache.