A plan to reshape Los Angeles County government moved closer to a November vote on Tuesday, despite concerns from a handful of supervisors that the reforms are rushed and haphazard.
In an unusually testy meeting, the supervisors voted 3 to 0 to direct county lawyers to draft an amendment to the county charter that would nearly double the size of the five-member Board of Supervisors and create an elected position to oversee day-to-day operations.
Supervisors Kathryn Barger and Holly Mitchell, who criticized parts of the plan throughout the meeting, abstained from the vote.
Superintendent Hilda Solis cast the decisive yes vote, joining the program’s authors, Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Janice Hahn, in moving the program forward. Horvath and Hahn said their goal is to make the government structure — largely unchanged in more than a century — more responsive to the needs of the county’s 10 million residents.
Five ombudsmen each oversee an area of about 2 million people. In 1912, when voters first approved the charter, the ratio was one supervisor for every 50,000 people.
“I’ve always thought we do need more representation,” Solis said.
Under the proposed charter amendment, the number of supervisors will increase to nine. The county administrator, who oversees the budget and manages day-to-day operations, would be elected by voters rather than appointed by the board. The county will establish an independent ethics commission to investigate corruption.
The amendment must return to the board for two more votes before appearing on the November ballot.
Barger and Mitchell posed a series of pointed questions to their colleagues and two experts.
Why 9 supervisors instead of 7 or 15?
Can research be conducted to determine the correct number?
Will an elected chief executive make the position partisan?
What funding is needed to fund this overhaul?
“I have a problem,” Mitchell said. “I just think it’s too risky for us to take a bite out of an apple that’s not absolutely ideal.”
Barger, who offered some of the sharpest criticism, said she believed county supervisors were plagued not by structural problems but by indecision. She pointed to the long-delayed closure of the Men’s Central Prison, a dilapidated facility that supervisors voted to close years ago. The problem, she told the meeting, is that supervisors “have no appetite to make hard decisions about how to replace it.”
Barger and Mitchell also criticized the development of the ballot measure, which drew public attention during a news conference last week. Barger said she felt her colleagues excluded Mitchell, who proposed two plans early last year — one of which successfulone no ——Improve county-level government institutions.
“There’s nothing transparent about the process as it relates to how it’s rolled out,” Barger said.
It was an unusually contentious meeting, one in which executives, at least publicly, preferred to express their agreement or disagreement in the mildest possible terms.
“You get really upset about it,” Hahn said, noting that she and Barger are generally on the same page. “I feel it now.”
Horvat and the experts she and Hahn invited tried to allay some concerns, saying the proposal, while not a panacea, could sensitize the government.
Fernando Guerra, director of Loyola Marymount University’s Center for the Study of Los Angeles, told supervisors he had never heard of a jurisdiction of 10 million people without an elected chief executive.
“It may not be perfect, and it may not meet the needs of all five members, but I insist it’s the right thing to do,” Horvath told her colleagues.
Under the plan, the nine-supervisor structure would not be launched until 2032, followed by redistricting that could give some racial and ethnic groups new political prominence, especially those who are often overlooked in the county’s non-German communities. Groups in organized areas.
Sara Sadhwani, a political science professor at Pomona College who served on the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, noted to the commission that Rowland Heights and Hacienda Heights have large Asian American populations, while East Los Angeles has Important Latino communities, which could form powerful voting blocs depending on how the lines are drawn.
There has never been an Asian American county supervisor, and Solis is the only Latina on the all-female board in a county where the Latino population is nearly 50 percent.
“These areas are just too big, and the dilution of various communities of color is incredible,” Sadhwani said.
Horvath’s office said the final two votes on the charter amendment language are planned for July 23 and August 6.
A final board vote must take place before August 9 The amendment will be put to a vote in November.
