Several major Los Angeles charter reform proposals cleared a key committee hurdle Monday, including measures to expand City Council’s authority over police policy and allow it to consider extending voting rights to certain noncitizen residents, while long-debated reforms such as council expansion and ranked-choice voting were pushed back for further review.
After two days of deliberations, the City Council’s Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee voted to recommend some proposals, delay others and forward several unresolved questions to the full council, which is expected to decide Wednesday which measures, if any, should move toward the November ballot.
One of the unresolved proposals was Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez’s “residential voting” measure, which would amend the City Charter to authorize the City Council to establish a voting program for certain noncitizen residents in the city and Los Angeles Unified School District elections.
Supporters said the proposal would not immediately extend voting rights to noncitizens, but instead would give the council authority to consider such a program after additional public discussion and policy development.
“I recognize there’s a lot of questions still out there, right? Who’s eligible? What is a resident? What proof do we have? Privacy issues, things like that,” Soto-Martinez said. “I get that, which is why the motion was written not to move full steam ahead, but rather allow us to have that thoughtful conversation and process.”
A representative from the City Attorney’s office said California courts have interpreted the state constitution as establishing a floor, rather than ceiling, on voter eligibility, allowing charter cities to expand voting rights beyond U.S. citizens. The representative also noted that a federal lawsuit challenging noncitizen voting in Washington, D.C., remains pending.
Committee members expressed differing views on the proposal.
Councilmember John Lee warned that giving future councils broad discretion to alter voter eligibility rules could undermine public confidence in elections.
“This is rife with problems, just to give us broad authority to unilaterally change fundamental election rules at any time for any reason, including voting eligibility, the use of separate ballots, vote counting processes,” Lee said. “With everything going on right now and the credibility of our election process, this further jeopardizes that credibility.”
Lee said that if voters wanted to expand voting eligibility, the issue should be decided directly at the ballot box rather than through future council action.
Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, while expressing support for expanding civic participation, said Lee’s comments raised concerns about whether future councils should have continuing authority to modify election rules.
“Mr. Lee’s comments do give me pause, especially the notion that we can do it over and over and over again,” Harris-Dawson said. “So every election cycle, you pick what set of voters you want, right? That’s a scenario that could happen,”
Harris-Dawson also referenced the 2022 leaked City Hall recording surrounding the city’s redistricting process. “If the Council has power to impact elections, we’ve demonstrated that we will do that. That is in large part what the recordings were about,” he said.
Councilmember Nithya Raman questioned how the charter reform proposals would ultimately be grouped for voters and asked whether safeguards could address Lee’s concerns. Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky said she worried the proposal could become a “poison pill” that overshadows the broader charter reform package and suggested it be considered as part of a separate subset of reforms.
Soto-Martinez floated the idea of adding a sunset provision limiting when the council could exercise that authority, while Harris-Dawson suggested tying any future authority to the city’s proposed 10-year charter review process.
The committee ultimately voted 4-1, with Lee dissenting, to forward the proposal to the full City Council without recommendation, signaling that additional discussion is expected before council members decide Wednesday whether to place the measure on the November ballot.
After the meeting, Soto-Martinez’s office told SCNG that the councilmember still hopes to secure council approval Wednesday and is “open to technical changes to eliminate any potential unintended consequences.”
The committee also advanced several police oversight measures that had initially been flagged by the Chief Legislative Analyst for further study.
Those proposals include a measure that would clarify the City Council’s authority to establish Los Angeles Police Department policy by ordinance and another that would expand the council’s authority to review and, in certain cases, modify policy decisions made by the Board of Police Commissioners.
Advocates with LA Forward welcomed the committee’s decision to move those proposals forward.
“We’re excited at LA Forward Institute that a package of police accountability reforms is making it to full council on Wednesday,” the organization’s Deputy Director, Godfrey Plata, said in an interview Monday afternoon.
A separate proposal would require the chief of police to ensure the department protects constitutional rights of all persons, including rights to assemble and protest, and would allow the chief to terminate officers found to have engaged in misconduct before their appeal is completed, while preserving their right to appeal.
That item was forwarded without recommendation after committee members discussed whether the city must complete a meet-and-confer process with the police union.
City staff said the police union had not responded to multiple requests to meet and confer, prompting committee members to discuss whether the city could declare an impasse before the full council vote.
The committee also advanced a proposal by Yaroslavsky that would gradually increase the charter-mandated minimum funding for the Department of Recreation and Parks to about 0.048% of assessed property value over four years, a change projected to increase annual park funding by roughly $175 million by the end of the phase-in.
The compromise would also allow the city to temporarily reduce up to 30% of the required funding during a declared fiscal emergency while directing officials to explore long-term revenue sources for parks.
Meanwhile, a number of major governance reforms were deferred for future consideration.
Those include a proposal to expand the City Council from 15 to 25 members, a measure that has been championed by reform advocates since the release of leaked recordings of city officials in 2022.
Plata criticized the decision to delay council expansion, saying that the idea has already undergone years of analysis through both an hoc committee and the Charter Reform Commission.
“These are the types of punts that give the public a reason to believe that their local government may not actually be hearing them or representing them,” he said. “The charter review process was intended to help rebuild trust. And I think the public still has questions about whether or not they trust that this process works for them.”
The committee also left proposals to adopt ranked choice voting and lower the voting age to 16 for city and LAUSD elections off the package advancing to the full City Council.
In contrast, members forwarded a variety of administrative and governance proposals, including a two-year budget cycle, a five-year capital improvement planning process, clarifying the City Administrative Officer’s role as the city’s chief financial officer, and several ethics, planning and procurement-related reforms.
The full City Council is expected to take up the charter reform package on Wednesday. Any measures approved for placement on the ballot would go before voters Nov. 3.
Harris-Dawson also said he plans to establish an adhoc Charter Reform Committee to continue studying proposals that require additional legal, financial or policy analysis. The committee would meet from August 2026 through June 2027 to develop recommendations for possible placement on the city’s 2028 ballot.