Voters could be asked to dramatically reform the way Los Angeles County is governed by nearly doubling the size of the Board of Supervisors and creating an elected position to oversee day-to-day operations.
On Wednesday, Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Janice Hahn announced the proposal, which would require approval by the five-member board to go to voters in November.
Horvath, the new board member, said she became convinced in her first year on the job that five supervisors cannot effectively represent a population larger than most states. Each supervisor oversees a district of about 2 million people.
Under the proposed charter amendment, the number of supervisors would increase to nine. The county executive, who runs county government and oversees its budget, would be elected by voters rather than appointed by the board. And the county would create an independent ethics commission to root out corruption among officials.
The proposal would require the supervisors, sometimes called the “five little queens” because of their unglamorous but powerful jobs governing the nation's largest county, to give up some of their individual power as their districts shrink to make room for more colleagues.
It could also result in a more racially diverse board in a county that is nearly 50% Latino. The current board is made up entirely of women, with three white supervisors, one Latina supervisor and one Black supervisor. Los Angeles County has never had an Asian-American supervisor.
“The last time the county significantly changed its form of government was in 1912, before women had the right to vote,” Horvath said at a stifling news conference Wednesday. [changes] They are not radical. They should have been adopted a long time ago.”
In 1912, the year voters approved a charter, Los Angeles County's population was about 500,000. Today it is 10 million.
Horvath and Hahn said they plan to file a motion Tuesday to direct county attorneys to draft an amendment to the letter that could be included on the November ballot.
Two of her colleagues, Supervisors Hilda Solis and Holly Mitchell, have previously put forward proposals aimed at changing the county's governance structure, albeit at a slower pace.
There are no estimates of how much the changes might cost, Horvath and Hahn said Wednesday, though they promised that residents' taxes would not increase to pay for the overhaul, which would require additional salaries for the new supervisors. Each supervisor earns about $280,000 a year.
It will be a tight race to get the charter amendment on the November ballot. If the motion passes next Tuesday, it will have to go back to the board two more times for a vote on the text. Horvath spokeswoman Constance Farrell said the plan is for those votes to take place on July 30 and Aug. 6.
The final vote of the board would have to occur before August 9 to hold the November vote.
If achieved, the full-throttle timeline would be in stark contrast to the slower process of reforming the Los Angeles City Charter. In June, the City Council voted to create a citizens' commission That would consider expanding the size of the council, among other changes. The earliest the proposals could go before voters would be November 2026.
“The county has completely outmaneuvered the city,” said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for Los Angeles Studies at Loyola Marymount University, who submitted research to the city for its charter reform efforts. “Kudos to the county for not bogging it down by studying it ad nauseum.”
Although the time frame for the measure to be put on the ballot is short, the idea of reforming county government dates back decades. Since the 1970s, numerous studies have looked at how to make county government more representative, with many recommending an elected executive or more supervisors.
“The main points have been made for decades — and I mean many decades,” said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Haynes Foundation, which funds governance research in the greater Los Angeles area. “It seemed like it had plateaued.”
Even if the measure goes to the ballot and voters support it, it could be years before the most significant changes materialize. The deadline for creating an independent ethics commission would be 2026, according to the motion. The county chief executive would be elected in 2028. The nine-supervisor structure would not begin until 2032, following a redistricting process.
Voters, generally uncomfortable with the idea of paying politicians more, have rejected the idea of expanding the Board of Supervisors eight times since 1926. Most recently, in 2000, 64 percent of voters rejected increasing the board to nine.
“This time is different,” Hahn said, noting that her father, longtime supervisor Kenneth Hahn, had pushed for similar reforms.
Horvath's office provided reporters with a poll conducted for the county by the firm FM3 Research, which surveyed about 850 likely voters. About nine in 10 said they believed there was a “need for reform.” Three in four said they would support a measure to expand the board.
The poll also suggested strong support for some of the smaller changes Horvath and Hahn want to make, including requiring county departments to present their budgets at public meetings and prohibiting former elected officials and staff from lobbying the county for two years after leaving office.
“It may be the right time for this,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, who supported board expansion during his two decades as a county supervisor. “There is a lot more public attention on governance than there has been in the last half-century.”
