Events

LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis, chair of the Board of Supervisors as well as the Metro Board, has had an impressively long and broad career in politics, having served in both houses of Congress and in the California Assembly and Senate, under governors and presidents ranging from Pete Wilson to Barack Obama—who appointed her to serve as U.S. Secretary of Labor, the first Latina to hold this position.

When people wondered why she’d left Washington DC to come back to LA and serve on a county-level board, it was often pointed out that the LA County Board of Supervisors is the most powerful county-level legislative body in the U.S. It is also said that the role of supervisor may be the fourth most powerful position in California politics—following Governor, U.S. Senator and Mayor of Los Angeles.

LA County is a very big place, with so many residents that each LA County Supervisor presides over some two million constituents, and the board controls a workforce larger than the U.S. Labor Department’s, with a budget equivalent to that of the average state.

Supervisor Solis was often the first Latina to hold particular governing positions, despite the fact that her high school guidance counselor had warned her mother that Hilda wasn’t “college material.” Her parents had come here from Mexico and Nicaragua and raised her in La Puente, and she later graduated from Cal Poly Pomona and then from USC with a Master of Public Administration degree.

After college she worked for two federal agencies before returning to LA County, where she was elected to the Rio Hondo Community College Board of Trustees. Her work on student issues there may have informed her decision to champion Metro’s Fareless System Initiative as the Metro Board Chair this September, now providing free transit to all LA Community College and K-12 students.

We applaud Supervisor Solis for guiding the Fareless System Initiative motion forward through a maze of complications and then bringing it to a successful conclusion. And we will heartily applaud her efforts at our Dec. 10 event, where we encourage you to join us! REGISTER HERE!

We believe Metro’s Fareless System Initiative was a direct outgrowth of Move LA’s persistence over a decade about the need to create a discounted student transit pass program for community college students—something Denny Zane helped to create at Santa Monica College. We believe this was and still is the best way to help build ridership on Metro’s extensive new transit system and it also makes it easier and less expensive for students to get around and to access opportunity.

During all her years in the California Legislature and in Congress Supervisor Solis has supported many of the same issues Move LA supports, ranging from workplace safety and compliance with wage and hour laws (her father was a Teamster shop steward and organizer in Mexico), to environmental and environmental justice legislation, to concerns about gentrification and the lack of affordable housing.

She authored 17 bills to prevent domestic violence, and when she authored a bill to raise the minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.75 and Gov. Wilson vetoed it, she used her own campaign funds to get it on the statewide ballot, and voters passed it.

She has said that she is “A big believer that government, if done right, can do a lot to improve the quality of people’s lives.” We also believe that to be true, so please join us to honor LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis.

Join us at the Boomtown Brewery in the Arts District in DTLA on Friday, Dec. 10, 5:30-8pm. We will be honoring LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis as well as others who are working with us on the BIG STUFF! REGISTER HERE! And remember that LA county guidelines require all guests to provide proof of vaccination and wear a mask inside of indoor public places.

Denny Zane for Move LA
http://www.movela.org/