RivCo Supe Kevin Jeffries To Be Seated as Board Chair Tuesday

RIVERSIDE COUNTY, CA — The most senior member of the Riverside County Board of Supervisors is slated to be appointed Tuesday to the position of chairman of the board -- the last time he will serve in that capacity as he closes in on retirement.

Supervisor Kevin Jeffries, who represents the First District, is next in the rotation to take the helm, the second time in the 10 years that he's been on the board that he'll be placed in the top slot.

A majority of the five supervisors must affirm the appointment to chair. Jeffries can vote for himself.

The only time in the current century that a Board of Supervisors chairmanship was confirmed by a threadbare majority occurred in January 2022, when Supervisor Jeff Hewitt was appointed. He garnered support from Supervisors Jeffries and Karen Spiegel, then voted for himself after abstentions by Supervisors Manuel Perez and Chuck Washington.

Perez and Washington publicly supported fellow Democrat and Moreno Valley Mayor Yxstian Gonzalez in his bid to unseat Hewitt, a Libertarian, in the Nov. 8 general election. Yxstian won by a margin of 54% to 46% and will be attending his first meeting as representative of the Fifth District on Tuesday.

Jeffries declined the chairmanship during his first term, when he was still the most junior member of the board. However, he accepted the position and was unanimously appointed during the latter half of his second term.

Each supervisor is given an opportunity to rotate into the chair, which is a one-year term. The line of succession is based only on whichever district supervisor is slated for a turn. Washington is expected to be appointed vice chair Tuesday.

The chair oversees establishing board schedules, guiding hearings, attending functions on behalf of the entire board, signing proclamations and other ceremonial duties that don't require a quorum.

The 61-year-old Jeffries announced in October 2021 that he intended to retire at the end of his present term, which expires in December 2024. The Lakeland Village resident said he wanted to spend more time with family, and most of his children and grandchildren had left California.

Jeffries, a property investor and former volunteer firefighter, first ran for the board in 2012 after being termed out of the state Assembly, where he served as a Republican. He was elected to his third supervisorial term in 2020.

He is the only supervisor who has consistently declined salary increases, and he has been a steadfast critic of excess spending and an advocate for pension reform to preserve the county's fiscal health and prevent successive structural budget deficits.

Jeffries has additionally decried the overgrowth of warehouses countywide and has voted in opposition to several projects due to their breadth and encroachments on residential spaces.

He led the charge against illegal cannabis grows, particularly throughout his district, but later spearheaded efforts to implement a regulatory scheme to provide a permitting process for enabling marijuana vendors to do business in the county after recreational use of the product was approved by voters in 2018.

Last year, he called for a suspension of permitting proposals brought before the board for review because, he said, too many licenses had been granted, but the applicants had been inert, failing to move ahead with establishing their outlets, or failing to fulfill the terms of their conditional use permits.