It has been a year and a half since the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors directed staff to examine ways to improve governance structure, transparency, representation and ethics, and develop recommendations.
The report has not yet been published. In fact, the study has not even begun, nor has a contractor been selected. The official call for tenders to carry out the study has not yet been published.
That maddeningly slow pace and mind-boggling process form Exhibit A in support of a motion by Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Janice Hahn to get down to business with a Nov. 5 ballot measure to reform county government.
Meanwhile, countless failures and inefficiencies never come to light, because county government lacks even the most basic checks and balances essential to democracy.
The supervisors are a collective executive that implements its own directives and then purports to provide its own oversight. It is as if a state were functioning without a governor, and Los Angeles County has more people and a bigger budget than most states. Congress functioned this way, without a chief executive, for about a decade after the American Revolution, but it worked so poorly that the nation adopted the Constitution, with three separate branches.
The Horvath-Hahn motion proposes an analogous solution, albeit more than a century after Los Angeles County adopted its current charter in 1912, when there were more cows than people here and before women could vote.
The main points of the motion are a larger, nine-member board, meaning smaller, more manageable districts; and an independently elected county executive. Equally important would be a new ethics board to investigate government misconduct, a budget and management unit and panels to implement and periodically update county governance. These are all good ideas, and all are things the Times editorial board has supported for decades.
There would be a provision to ensure that the revamped government would not impose additional costs on taxpayers. How would that be possible? The county budget is nearly $46 billion, almost double what it was a decade ago. There is plenty of money.
Horvath is the newest board member, and this motion highlights her exasperation with the county's dysfunction. Thank goodness for her impatience.
But it’s noteworthy that she’s joined by Hahn, who was recently elected to a third and final term after a career that included Congress, the Los Angeles City Council and before that, a city governance reform commission. Hahn’s roots in L.A. County government run so deep that the Hall of Administration is named for her father. Hahn has watched the county’s systemic failures up close.
But, of course, so has every board member. Hilda Solis, who also served in Congress and was a Cabinet member, joined Hahn’s effort in 2023 to get a report on board expansion. Holly Mitchell, a former leader of a child and family services organization and then a member of the state Legislature, got the reform in motion 18 months ago with Horvath. Kathryn Barger, who was just re-elected to a final term, has the longest tenure at the county, working for her predecessor for nearly three decades.
Yet all of the board's experience has produced very little progress on homelessness, public safety, economic development, child welfare and many other county responsibilities. It is the largest and wealthiest county in the country, but it is performing poorly.
The government structure is not the only impediment, but it is important because it protects county leaders from painful but necessary scrutiny.
Voters rejected board expansion decades ago with the belief that government doesn't improve by having more. But the goal here isn't more government, but rather more efficient government. effective government.
Horvath and Hahn are right to launch their reform, and the rest of the board would do well to join them. Details matter and there are many unanswered questions, but the board and county staff have about a month to approve the final ballot language, and voters will have another three months before weighing in.
The task now is to get the process going: the shortest and quickest process, not the one that has not yet selected a contractor to study a problem that has already been studied to exhaustion.
