As Los Angeles city officials weigh a sweeping rewrite of the city’s governing rules that could go before voters this fall, a marathon public hearing this week offered a revealing snapshot of what Angelenos want from City Hall, and what may be harder to change.
For around two hours Thursday, nearly 80 speakers addressed the City Council’s Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee, with many urging officials to fix crumbling parks and overhaul hiring systems they say shut out Black workers and working-class residents.
Those issues came up repeatedly throughout the hearing. But the proposed reforms go much further, touching on political power, elections and oversight – areas that were also raised, albeit less frequently, during the meeting.
The proposals, developed over nearly a year by the Charter Reform Commission after a series of scandals and a leaked 2022 recording shook public confidence in city leadership, would make sweeping changes to how Los Angeles governs itself — changes that could ultimately go before voters on the November ballot.
Among the most significant: expanding the City Council from 15 to 25 members, adopting rank-choice voting, splitting the City Attorney’s office into an appointed civil attorney for legal counsel and an elected city prosecutor, strengthening ethics enforcement and police oversight, and overhauling how the city plans and funds infrastructure.
Some changes, like doubling parks funding, drew consistent support from speakers. Others, including proposals to reshape power among elected offices, were also part of the discussion. But certain elements of the package, such as a proposal to expand mayoral authority, received little direct attention during Thursday’s public comment.
Committee members set the stage
Members of the City Council’s Rules Committee, which is reviewing the recommendations, showed both openness and caution as they prepared to decide which proposals could ultimately go before the voters.
Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who chairs the committee, framed the effort as a rare and consequential moment, noting that the city has not pursued a comprehensive charter overhaul since 1999 and that the push for reform followed a series of scandals that eroded public trust.
Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez pointed to a separate proposal he is advancing to allow noncitizens to vote in Los Angeles local elections — an idea not included in the commission’s recommendation but in line with efforts to expand civic participation.
Councilmember Nithya Raman, who helped spearhead the initial push for the charter reform, described the city as being at an “inflection point” and said changes need to go beyond adding more council seats to actually improve accountability and how the city operates.
Councilmember John Lee cautioned that the city needs to fully understand the proposals’ fiscal and policy impacts before moving forward.
After hours of testimony, the committee continued the discussion to next week, with many of the most consequential questions still to be worked through in the weeks ahead.
Repeated themes emerged during public comment
Much of the testimony clustered around a few key issues, with speakers repeatedly calling on the city to address park funding and workforce access.
Speaker after speaker urged officials to double funding for the Department of Recreation and Parks, pointing to aging facilities, staffing shortage and stark disparities in access to green space across neighborhoods.
“Parks are not amenities, they are lifelines for our communities,” said Lluvia Arras, an Ascots Hills Park Advisory Board member. “Five years ago, LA ranked 49th in the nation for parks, today, we ranked 90th. We’re going in the wrong direction.”
Others voiced support for workforce reforms advanced by the Los Angeles Black Worker Center, warning that proposals to modernize hiring and expand access to city jobs risk stalling without action to move them forward.
Speakers like Brittany Taylor of Los Angeles Black Worker Center, pointed to disproportionately high unemployment rates among Black workers and described the reforms as a step toward addressing long-standing barriers to stable union city jobs.
“If this process does not move, these reforms will quietly die, and the same barriers will remain,” Taylor said.
The prominence of those issues at Thursday’s hearing reflects, in part, which speakers chose to participate in public comment, and does not necessarily capture the full range of concerns that shaped the commission’s months-long process.
Broader reforms also part of discussion
Other elements of the reform package — including City Council expansion, ranked-choice voting and strengthened police oversight — were also raised during public comment and have been central to the commission’s work, though they drew less sustained attention in the room.
Those proposals aim to address long-standing concerns about representation and accountability in Los Angeles, where each councilmember represents roughly 260,000 residents — among the highest ratios for major U.S. cities.
The commission’s recommendations would expand the council from 15 to 25 members, a shift supporters say would bring government closer to residents and allow for more responsive representation.
The proposed adoption of ranked-choice voting would eliminate runoff elections and allow voters to rank candidates in order of preference, changes backers argue would increase voter choice and help ensure broader support for elected officials.
The recommendations also include a series of changes aimed at strengthening police oversight, including giving City Council clearer authority over police policy and a greater role in decisions involving officers with repeated misconduct. Supporters say those changes would close long-standing gaps in accountability.
The package also includes a proposal to lower the voting age to 16 for city and Los Angeles Unified School District elections, a change supporters say would expand civic participation among younger residents.
A less-discussed proposal: expanding mayoral power
Some elements of the reform package drew less attention during Thursday’s hearing, even as they could significantly reshape how City Hall operates.
Among them is a proposal to expand mayoral authority, allow the mayor to reorganize city departments, transfer funds and personnel across agencies, and participate in council meetings.
The change would mark a shift for Los Angeles, where power has long been dispersed across elected offices and departments, and council members exercise significant influence over decisions within their districts.
Supporters say a stronger mayoral role could improve coordination across city government. But the proposal could also affect the balance of power between the mayor and City Council.
Tensions emerge over how to structure City Hall
The proposals are already drawing pushback from some corners of City Hall.
In a statement released while the meeting was underway, City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto urged committee members to reject a plan to split her office into separate civil and criminal branches, arguing it would increase costs, create redundancies and undermine the independence of the role.
The commission’s proposal would create an appointed city attorney responsible for legal advice and an elected prosecutor to handle misdemeanor cases — a change intended to reduce conflicts of interest within the current structure.
“The Commission’s proposal would erode the fundamental right of Los Angeles residents to select an independent arbiter of law to represent the City and the people of the State of California,” Feldstein Soto said in a statement.
What comes next
The charter reform process was launched after corruption scandals and a leaked 2022 recording that exposed racist remarks and backroom political maneuvering by city leaders.
Over the past year, the 13-member commission spent months holding meetings and gathered input from residents across Los Angeles before releasing a 302-page package of 64 recommendations in early April.
In the coming weeks, council members will decide which recommendations to advance, and which to leave behind.
The Rules Committee is expected to review the proposals over a series of hearings in May, with a full City Council vote anticipated by June 9 to place any measures on the November ballot.