Is a county officer a "public officer"?

[8 Cal.4th 1212] "A public office is ordinarily and generally defined to be the right, authority, and duty, created and conferred by law, the tenure of which is not transient, occasional, or incidental, by which for a given period an individual is invested with power to perform a public function for the benefit of the public. [Citation.].... The most general characteristic of a public officer, which distinguishes him from a mere employee, is that a public duty is delegated and entrusted to him, as agent, the performance of which is an exercise of a part of the governmental functions of the particular political unit for which he, as agent, is acting.... [Citations.] As a matter of course, in keeping with these definitions, a county officer is a public officer and may be specifically defined to be one who fills a position usually provided for in the organization of counties and county governments and is selected by the political subdivision of the state called the 'county' to represent that governmental unit, continuously and as part of the regular and permanent administration of public power, in carrying out certain acts with the performance of which it is charged in behalf of the public. [Citations.]" (Coulter v. Pool, supra, 187 Cal. at pp. 186-187, 201 P. 120, italics added and deleted.)

Shortly thereafter, in Spreckels v. Graham (1924) 194 Cal. 516, 228 P. 1040, we reaffirmed our holding in Coulter, supra, 187 Cal. 181, 201 P. 120. In doing so, we explained that "two elements now seem to be almost universally regarded as essential" to a determination of whether one is a "public officer": "First, a tenure of office 'which is not transient, occasional or incidental,' but is of such a nature that the office itself is an entity in which incumbents succeed one another ..., and, second, the delegation to the officer of some portion of the sovereign functions of government, either legislative, executive, or judicial." (Spreckels v. Graham, supra, 194 Cal. at p. 530, 228 P. 1040, italics added.)