By Anusha Shankar
City News Service
LOS ANGELES (CNS) – After weeks of back and forth, the county Board of Supervisors in a final vote on Tuesday, July 30, added a series of proposed County Charter amendments to the November ballot, including an expansion of the board from five to nine members.
If approved by voters on Nov. 5, the board would expand to nine members in 2030 and the county CEO would become an elected position by 2028. The measure would also create the positions of county legislative analyst and director of budget and management.
The proposal also includes the establishment of an Ethics Commission and a compliance officer by 2026. The board last week already began the process of creating an Ethics Commission, with Supervisor Kathryn Barger noting that the move doesn’t require voter approval. But if it is also approved on the ballot, the Office of Ethics Compliance will be codified in the charter, protecting it from being disbanded in future absent another public vote.
The charter changes have been championed by Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Janice Hahn, and supported by Supervisor Hilda Solis.
Barger and Supervisor Holly Mitchell again voted in opposition Tuesday, calling it a rushed move and expressing concern about some of the proposed changes. They suggested removing the proposal to make the CEO an elected position, saying the job should remain fully nonpartisan and be given to someone with the proper qualifications. But the other board members declined to remove that item from the package of proposed changes.
Mitchell also questioned the contentions that the changes included in the package will be done without any fiscal impact to the budget.
Some questions were also raised during past discussions about whether nine members would be the appropriate size of an expanded Board of Supervisors.
But Horvath insisted, “Nine is measured, nine is not new,” and said there is excitement from the public on the expansion proposal, especially from communities who would like a more representative seat at the table.
The split board also disagreed on the process that led to the formulation of the proposed amendments, with Barger noting that Mitchell was the initial champion of county government reform discussions but seemed to have been cut out of the conversation when the proposed ballot measure was crafted.
Horvath and Hahn have argued on the need to bring about the changes – saying the current County Charter was adopted in 1912, when the population was about 500,000. But the county now has 10 million residents and encompasses 88 incorporated cities within its border.
The proposal also calls for a commission that would review the County Charter every 10 years, annual open departmental budget hearings and creation of a task force to oversee the implementation.
The highest paid council members in the city with the highest poverty and homeless rates. In the private sector all these people would have lost their jobs but in CA, people fail up.