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Years of laborious efforts to improve the responsiveness of Los Angeles County government to the needs of its 10 million residents are in danger of being undone by an unimaginable drafting error. The extent of the error, which was made public last month, is gradually becoming clear.
The effects may be felt across the country.
There are two ballot propositions in question, both of which change the county charter and were written by the attorneys for L.A. County. Measure J, which was overwhelmingly approved by voters in 2020, allocates a sizeable portion of the county budget annually to addressing decades of racial and economic injustice by requiring funding for housing, health care, job training, and alternatives to jail.
Measure J distinguishes L.A. County. During the intense and turbulent months after George Floyd’s police murder and the demonstrations demanding that the government rethink its service to underprivileged areas, several state and local governments made symbolic moves toward structural change.
Few made any real progress. However, L.A. County put its money where its mouth is with Measure J.
Measure G, which would increase the size of the Board of Supervisors and establish an elected chief executive and ethics committee, foolishly overrode Measure J in November.
By finally enforcing the same checks and balances that Americans take for granted in other governmental levels, the aim is to increase the accountability of county government. We choose the mayor, the governor, and the president. A larger Board of Supervisors will now examine the performance of the county leader that we elect.
Except for the fact that the county’s lawyers crafted G to be placed in the exact same spot in the charter that J already occupied, the two significant measures cover extremely different ground and normally wouldn’t cancel each other out. Therefore, a major component of G will abolish J when it takes effect in December 2028.
County attorneys said in a statement, “Don’t worry.” Practically speaking, the repeal would not affect anything because the Board of Supervisors can continue spending as if Measure J were still in effect.
The lawyers are aware that’s not the point. In order to enable long-term planning and funding for ongoing projects, Measure J was intended to bind all upcoming Boards of Supervisors. Without it, future managers may decide to reallocate funds to other areas whenever political tides shift and eliminating racial inequality is no longer in style.
And isn’t that our current location? 2020’s spirit is a faint recollection. Municipal budgets are tight, public attention has shifted to fires and floods, and Democratic politicians are once again crafting tough-on-crime legislation.
More importantly, President Trump is ignoring anything that he perceives as progressive, such as health funding, mental health care, housing for the homeless, and, most importantly, DEI diversity, equity, and inclusion programs like those that Los Angeles County proudly supports and that are supported by Measure J.
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With Measure J as its benchmark and as the biggest local government in the country, L.A. County served as a Noah’s Ark to preserve and uphold the spirit of 2020 amidst the turbulence of Trumpism, serving as a national model for equality and justice initiatives. By being steadfast, L.A. County might be able to assist other state and local governments in finding their skeletons.
However, the ballot measure disaster gives culture war activists an unfair advantage. In the name of health-based alternatives to jail, L.A. community activists, county officials and employees, and to some extent even law enforcement joined together, and it jeopardizes the fragile and hard-won trust between them. The Reimagine L.A. Coalition, which coordinated support for Measure J, may have to redo its work because of the drafting blunder. It makes sense that they are upset about the possibility.
Furthermore, it’s not a given that voters will approve Measure J a second time because things have changed. Or Measure G, for that matter. Los Angeles voters may be reconsidering their support for robust presidential authority after seven months of the acrimonious second Trump administration.
LA County moves too slow and too fast
Advocates for each charter amendment are now at odds with one another, and there is candid discussion about which should be abandoned to protect the other.
In her 2020 testimony as West Hollywood’s mayor, Lindsey Horvath urged the Board of Supervisors to include Measure J on the ballot. She informed the board that systems of accountability and systems of care must work together.
Horvath spearheaded the campaign for Measure G four years later while serving as a county supervisor. She was right when she said that J and G should support each other in terms of care and accountability.
A careless drafting error puts them at odds.
Supervisor Kathryn Barger opposed putting both measures on the ballot, arguing that they were slapped together in haste, with insufficient time for vetting.
She’s right, too.
But it s worth remembering that in January 2023, the Board of Supervisors commissioned a study of L.A. County governance in order to improve transparency, representation and ethics. A year and a half later, the county had not even hired a contractor to do the study. It may take a little haste to break that kind of maddening stasis.
Los Angeles County moves simultaneously too slow and too fast, and as a consequence accomplishes too little of its leaders lofty and laudable goals. Was it too fast ordering up Measure G, leaving the lawyers too little time to realize they were overwriting Measure J? Or too slow in putting Measure J in the charter, so that the lawyers had no idea that it was there when they put Measure G in the same spot?
The County Counsel s Office blames the mess on the board s clerk for not updating the charter, even though the lawyers not only wrote Measure J, but lived with it every day for three years as it was nullified in trial court andrevived in the Court of Appealin July 2023. It s hard to believe that they wouldn t remember it a year later, or that they had no duty to discover it, when they plopped Measure G on top of it.
AGovernance Reform Task Force has been meetingto flesh out the details of implementing Measure G. Its three meetings so far seem to underscore the ongoing battles over J and G, well after the elections are over. At its first meeting, about a third of the members revealed that they had voted against the measure, or represented organizations that opposed it. At its second meeting, one of its members reported the drafting error that seems likely to doom Measure J, or Measure G, or both.
At the third meeting, three lawyers from the Office of County Counsel were prepared to offer the task force a preliminary report on what happened and what might be done to rectify the situation. They waited patiently through three hours of discussion about committee assignments.
And then the audio crew had to leave, and the meeting came to an abrupt end without the lawyers report. Apparently, nobody had thought about the audio crew. It was a very Los Angeles County moment and another reminder that the nation s largest local jurisdiction is badly in need of a revamp.
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