What a fiasco for Los Angeles County: Ballot Measure G’s passage in 2024 turns out to have accidentally effectively repealed Measure J, approved by voters in 2020, and the latter measure will now sunset in December 2028.
So of course the County Board of Supervisors has directed the county counsel and chief executive officer to investigate and correct, by any means, the administrative error that inadvertently repealed a voter-approved measure earmarking funds for community investments and alternatives to incarceration.
Any outcomes determined by accident in government work need to be investigated and, we suppose, corrected.
It’s just a lot harder to root for that correction when both Measures G and J were wrongheaded in the first place. Five years ago, when this editorial board opposed the passage of Measure J, it wasn’t because we were meanly against community investments and alternatives to incarceration. In the wake of the murder by George Floyd by the police, we editorialized with the feelings of so many Americans: “we have understood that justice has a long way to go in our country, and that the way we do law enforcement needs to change.”
But the supervisors could have made the decisions for reform by themselves. And they punted. We wrote: “That’s why, well-meaning as the measure is, it’s also a massive cop-out by our electeds. Why be reluctant to make the hard call? Why even consider this such a hard call, given that their constituents are increasingly for preventative rather than punitive approaches?”
Now, the chickens have come home to roost, so to speak, and the cop-out will be repealed, by accident. And, you know what? If the supervisors still want to earmark 10% of the county budget for justice reform, they still can — on their own. But, what she said then is still true now: “Kathryn Barger, the only supervisor opposing J, rightly says: ‘This amendment will tie the hands of future boards, preventing them from acting nimbly to meet the public’s needs in real time.’”
John Fasana, the former Duarte councilmember who flagged the error, notes that it’s an example of how poorly written Measure G — which creates the absurd post of a county mayor — was. We wouldn’t regret the disappearance of both G and J.