By JOSE HERRERA, City News Service
While attorneys work to finalize ballot language for proposed Los Angeles City Charter amendments, political reform advocates on Friday criticized the City Council’s decision to delay consideration of council expansion for at least another two years.
In a 12-0 vote on June 17, the City Council directed the City Attorney’s Office to draft ballot language for several charter amendments to appear on the November general election ballot. Any changes to the City Charter must be approved by voters.
The action marked a significant milestone in the city’s effort to restore public trust and improve accountability and transparency. But it left out several major reforms proposed in the wake of political scandals that rocked City Hall.
Four former City Council members faced separate corruption scandals that resulted in federal charges. In 2022, a leaked racially charged recording — often referred to as the Fed Tapes — fueled calls for governance reform. The conversation centered on consolidating political power by manipulating the redistricting process.
Godfrey Plata, deputy director of the LA Forward Institute, told City News Service he was disappointed by the council’s decision to postpone expansion and instead create another committee to study the issue.
Los Angeles established the Charter Reform Commission, a civilian-led panel, to conduct public hearings, commission studies and recommend charter reforms.
“…It does feel like we’re going in circles. It is very disappointing to many Angelenos who saw this commission’s process as the place where this would get hammered out,” Plata said. “It doesn’t feel fair to Angelenos to say ‘further study’ is required for expansion.”
Plata argued the commission went “above and beyond” in studying different expansion proposals before recommending increasing the council from 15 to 25 members.
Each council member represents roughly 260,000 residents.
While Plata welcomed several reforms advancing to the ballot, he said his enthusiasm was tempered by the lack of support for council expansion and other major proposals.
He noted that some council members, including Councilwoman Nithya Raman, appeared willing to support expansion. Raman is set to face Mayor Karen Bass in a November runoff.
Raman urged her colleagues on the rules committee to recommend council expansion. Instead, the committee voted to send the issue to a new ad hoc charter reform committee for further study, along with other proposals that failed to gain enough support for the November ballot.
“The size of our City Council hasn’t changed in 100 years, while the size of Los Angeles has grown dramatically — and despite more than three years of study, including through the Ad Hoc Committee on Governance Reform and the Charter Reform Commission, it is disappointing that we are once again deferring this decision to a future Charter reform process,” Raman said in a statement to CNS. “Angelenos are right to be exasperated with this process — I certainly am!”
Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said he wanted additional time to work through the details of council expansion before potentially placing the issue before voters in 2028.
Harris-Dawson and other members of the council raised concerns about the logistics of council expansion — the fiscal impact, administrative issues, potential unintended consequences of changes to the charter, and how it would alter the power balance between the council and the mayor.
“I’m committed to ensuring any structural change to our city government is done correctly and able to be implemented as promised,” Harris-Dawson told CNS.
“We’ve established the Ad Hoc Committee on Charter Review to conduct a final analysis of items like Council expansion and Ranked Choice Voting. The committee will begin meeting after recess,” Harris-Dawson added.
Plata argued the council could have put the question before voters in November — under a similar process L.A. County took for Measure G.
Approved by voters in November 2024, the Los Angeles County Government Structure, Ethics and Accountability Charter Amendment created an elected county executive, established an independent ethics commission and office of ethics compliance, and required county departments to present annual budgets in public meetings.
The measure also expands the Board of Supervisors from five to nine members beginning in 2032, after redistricting based on the next Census.
The county is conducting meetings to comply and effectuate the mandates of Measure G.
“It (the county) created a process, knowing that the public wanted expansion,” Plata told CNS. “In this case, the council has heard from the public, and continues to put forth questions.”
“We could have put this on the ballot in November, confirmed the public’s desire for expansion and then carried out a multi-year process,” Plata added. “We could have given ourselves a smart, longer runway, and we are cutting ourselves from the opportunity to do that by delaying the decision even further.”
Plata described the council’s uncertainty around council expansion as “analysis paralysis.”
He also raised concerns over the delay in establishing the civilian-led panel on charter reform, noting that time lost could have been spent on studying the issues in more depth.
Bass faced criticism for taking months to name her appointees to the commission, though she has said the delay stemmed from more pressing issues, including the Palisades fire. Bass has said she supports charter reform.
“The Charter Reform Commission delivered a list of more than 40 ballot measure recommendations to the City Council on time, per the City Ordinance,” according to a statement from the Mayor’s Office. “After over a month of hearings in committee, the City Council considered all of these measures. Mayor Bass looks forward to considering the measures that the Council voted to move forward.”
Mike Bonin, a former councilman and now executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State LA, said it was unfortunate the council decided not to let voters weigh in on council expansion.
Bonin said the issue is not only whether to expand the council, but also how many residents each council member should represent.
He said the issue has been studied extensively since 2022.
“Councilmembers clearly prefer the current system and have legitimate questions about how much it would cost, and how it would shift the balance of power at City Hall, but those are questions that can be discussed when it is on the ballot, and voters can weigh all that in their decision,” Bonin told CNS.
Bonin noted that most of the major reforms discussed in the wake of the Fed Tapes were ultimately delayed.
“At the time, people were rightfully furious about the tapes — and about political corruption — and the time seemed ripe for some big reforms,” Bonin said. “But windows of opportunity shut quickly in politics. When the idea did not make (it) onto the ballot in 2024, it was clear that the appetite in City Hall for the idea of council expansion has ended.”
Two other proposals — ranked-choice voting and lowering the age requirement from 18 to 16 — were also sent to committee.
Bonin said he was skeptical that either idea would move forward, as the charter commission had little time and money, and how quickly the council needed to act.
“…Both ideas certainly speak to the core of the reform impulse, which is to restore faith in local government. Ranked choice voting is very popular in the jurisdictions that have implemented it, and I suspect voters would have approved it,” Bonin said.
However, he said that elected officials generally do not think changes to the electoral process are a way to restore faith in government.
“The system that exists got them elected, so they have faith in it, so they look to other potential solutions,” Bonin said.
“What this whole process speaks to is a need for a charter commission to be able to put questions on the ballot without council approval,” Bonin added.