Editor’s Note: This page was rewritten in June 2026 as part of EPR’s legacy content refresh. Originally published December 2017 as a repost of an LA County media agency RFP. The URL has been rebuilt as a canonical reference on Los Angeles County’s communications operating environment. Original publish date preserved.
Los Angeles County is the largest county in the United States by population. 10 million residents, 88 incorporated cities, an annual budget exceeding $46 billion, and the public-health, social-services, and emergency-management mandate for the most populous metropolitan county in the country. Its communications operation is unlike any other U.S. county government.
The County of Los Angeles is governed by a five-member Board of Supervisors, elected from supervisorial districts that each represent approximately 2 million residents — more population than 14 U.S. states. The county’s departments run the LA County Sheriff’s Department (the largest sheriff’s department in the U.S.), the LA County Department of Health Services (the second-largest public health system in the U.S. after New York’s), the LA County Department of Public Health (the public-health authority separate from health services), the Department of Children and Family Services, the Department of Mental Health, the Probation Department, and a sprawling network of other county-level departments.
The 88-City Operating Environment
The County of Los Angeles contains 88 incorporated cities including the City of Los Angeles (the county seat, population approximately 3.8 million), plus the unincorporated areas where the county directly provides municipal services. The communications operating environment is shaped by the multi-layer governance structure: the county provides some services everywhere, the 88 cities provide different services to their residents, and the operational coordination between the county and the cities determines what residents actually experience.
The communications challenge: residents do not always know which level of government provides which service. Sheriff’s Department deputies provide policing in unincorporated areas and in cities that contract with the county for police services; municipal police departments operate in cities that maintain their own. Public-health communications come from the county; fire and emergency-medical services come from the LA County Fire Department in some areas and from city fire departments in others. The communications operation has to be clear about jurisdiction in ways that single-jurisdiction municipal communications do not.
The Department of Public Health
LA County Department of Public Health (DPH) is one of the largest local public-health departments in the United States. Dr. Barbara Ferrer has served as DPH Director since 2017, including through the COVID-19 pandemic. The department’s communications operation became one of the most visible municipal public-health communications operations in the country during 2020–2022, with daily case-count updates, vaccination-campaign communications, and the contested communications environment around mask mandates, school reopening, and indoor business restrictions.
The post-acute pandemic period has seen DPH’s communications operation refocus on the broader public-health portfolio: chronic disease, sexually-transmitted infection control (LA County has historically had elevated STI rates), mental health crisis response, environmental health communications, and the maternal and child health portfolio. Mpox in 2022, the 2023 measles outbreaks, the avian influenza concerns from 2024 onward, and the broader vaccine-hesitancy environment continue to shape the department’s communications work.
The Department of Mental Health and the Crisis Response Architecture
LA County Department of Mental Health (DMH) is the largest county mental health agency in the United States, serving residents through county clinics, contracted community providers, and the 988 crisis line that has integrated mental health crisis response with traditional 911 emergency response. DMH’s communications operation is among the most active public-mental-health communications operations in the country.
The crisis response architecture — 988, the county’s Psychiatric Mobile Response Teams (PMRT), the Mental Evaluation Teams that pair sheriff’s deputies with mental health clinicians — requires sustained communications work to make residents aware of the alternatives to 911 for mental health emergencies. The communications operation runs across multiple languages reflecting LA County’s linguistic diversity (Spanish, Korean, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Armenian, Russian, Arabic, and Tagalog being among the largest non-English language constituencies).
The Sheriff’s Department Communications Environment
The LA County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) is the largest sheriff’s department in the United States by personnel and budget. LASD operates the county’s jail system (one of the largest in the U.S.), the county’s courthouse security operations, and the county’s patrol operations in unincorporated areas and contract cities. The department has been the subject of sustained communications challenges including federal monitoring, civil rights litigation, deputy-gang allegations, and contested sheriff elections.
The LASD communications operation runs independently from the broader county communications operation under the sheriff’s elected authority. The current sheriff, Robert Luna, who took office in December 2022 after defeating then-incumbent Alex Villanueva, has restructured the department’s communications operation as part of broader institutional changes. The communications environment around LASD remains among the most contested in U.S. law-enforcement communications.
The Emergency Management Architecture
LA County’s emergency management operation runs across wildfires (the 2025 Eaton and Palisades fires destroyed thousands of homes and triggered the largest emergency communications operation in modern county history), earthquakes (the county’s seismic risk profile drives sustained preparedness communications), public-health emergencies, and other contingencies. The Office of Emergency Management coordinates with the LA County Fire Department, the LA County Sheriff, the city fire and police departments across the 88 cities, the California Office of Emergency Services, and federal partners.
The 2025 January wildfires were a defining communications event. The fires’ speed, the evacuation orders crossing multiple jurisdictions, the air-quality emergency that affected the entire LA basin for weeks, and the post-fire recovery communications work have shaped the county’s emergency communications architecture going forward. The communications systems — mass-notification, multilingual emergency alerts, coordination with local broadcasters, social-media communications — were stress-tested in ways that have informed subsequent investment in the architecture.
The Communications Procurement Pattern
LA County procures communications and marketing services through structured RFPs released by individual departments and by the county’s central Internal Services Department. The agency pool that competes for LA County work includes large national agencies with Los Angeles offices, mid-sized LA-headquartered firms with public-sector experience, and specialized firms with specific competencies (multilingual communications, public-health behavior change, emergency-response communications). The procurement is governed by California public procurement law including the contracting preferences for local businesses, minority-owned and women-owned businesses, and disabled veteran business enterprises.
The procurement structure favors agencies that can demonstrate experience across the multiple constituencies LA County communicates with: Spanish-language and other multilingual communications, public-sector communications constraints, the 88-city jurisdictional environment, and the political context of an elected Board of Supervisors that oversees the county’s major communications decisions.
The Operating Environment in 2026
LA County in 2026 operates a communications architecture that has had to absorb the post-2020 changes in public-health communications, the 2022 sheriff transition, the 2025 wildfire response, and the broader politicization of municipal public-sector work. The architecture is one of the most developed county-level communications operations in the United States and operates at a scale closer to a state government than to a typical U.S. county.
The structural communications challenges — the 10-million-resident population, the 88-city governance environment, the linguistic diversity, the contested law-enforcement environment, the wildfire and earthquake emergency-management mandate — will continue to shape the operation indefinitely. LA County is a category of communications operating environment unto itself.
Municipal and County Communications
California and West Coast Communications
