Plans to expand the Los Angeles City Council from 15 to 25 members are fading as a key council committee said the proposal needed more study before it could go to voters.
The Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee, made up of five council members, recommended dropping plans to expand the council as part of a charter reform measure for the Nov. 3 ballot, saying the measure needs more study before it is put before voters. The idea has been under discussion for nearly four years.
The council committee, which had its final meeting on charter proposals Monday, also rejected proposals to adopt ranked choice voting, in which voters list candidates in order of preference, and to split the city attorney’s office into two roles — an elected city prosecutor and appointed city attorney.
The committee did move forward with putting other measures before voters — including allowing noncitizens to vote in L.A. city and L.A. Unified School District elections, increasing Police Department oversight, establishing a director of Public Works, implementing a two-year budget cycle (instead of every year), establishing a capital improvement program to guide the city’s infrastructure, and removing a section of the charter that had prevented the city from selling goods it produces.
The panel’s recommendations will be taken up Wednesday by the full City Council, which will have the final say over what proposals are included in the charter reform ballot measure.
The committee’s decision to hold back on council expansion and other hot-button issues came after the chief legislative analyst office recommended that the measures be studied further, with council expansion going before voters in 2028. Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who chairs the committee, said he would establish a council committee to address future charter reform.
Councilmember Nithya Raman pushed to have the council expansion included on the ballot, but she couldn’t persuade other committee members when the measure was up for discussion on Friday.
Raman, who is challenging Mayor Karen Bass in the Nov. 3 mayoral election, said council expansion was one of the original issues that prompted the reform process and questioned what more study was needed.
“I am a little disappointed that we may be punting big questions again to a future charter reform process,” Raman said Friday. “There is a great deal of mistrust in L.A. city government right now.”
Harris-Dawson said that while he supports a larger council in theory, it also shifts the city’s power dynamic between the council and mayor. Council expansion has been raised as an issue for 27 years, he said. For now, he said, he was “absolutely opposed.”
“A bigger council makes the mayor more powerful than the mayor would be now,” he said during committee discussion. “In every city that has a large council, the mayor is vastly more powerful than the situation that we have in L.A. today, where there’s a good amount of balance between the mayor and the council, which is why there’s all this focus on the council.”
The chief legislative analyst’s report recommended the City Council should move forward with about a third of 66 proposals made by the Charter Reform Commission, a panel of citizens who were tasked to review the charter and make recommendations on how to update it to improve governance. They also considered motions made by council members, including a proposal from Hugo Soto-Martínez that would allow noncitizen residents to vote in L.A. and school board elections.
On Monday, the council committee moved forward with Soto-Martínez’s proposal before the City Council, even though it wasn’t part of the Charter Reform Commission’s recommendations.
“Hopefully, a majority of them agree that people that work here, that live here, that have roots here, that have been contributing to society for such a long time, should be able to have a say in their local elections,” he said.
The committee also recommended moving forward with police accountability reform measures, including one to increase the council’s authority over Los Angeles Police Department policies.
The committee moved three measures on police accountability for a full council vote, each over the dissent of Councilmember John Lee, who said he was concerned about politicizing oversight of the LAPD.
“It’s a much better department. It’s a department that is extremely progressive,” Lee said. “It is a department that strives to … make positive changes.”
During public comment, many speakers expressed criticism and urged the committee to take up major reforms to the charter. Some of the harshest criticism about the overall process came from within City Hall. City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who won reelection this year, posted a video Sunday. He said he was frustrated by the committee’s decision to hold off on major proposals such as council expansion, describing it as “the status quo of the political machine working, wanting to maintain its power.”
“We all got into office trying to flip City Hall because it’s not working here,” Mejia said. “But no, when it comes to things like expanding council sizes … when it comes to ranked choice voting to make our elections more democratic, and being able to vote our conscience, that got punted.”
Mejia was critical of the council committee for not taking up his office’s recommendations to increase the office’s oversight and funding through the charter process.
“City Hall doesn’t care about transparency and accountability and oversight,” he said. “We are not serious at City Hall.”
The effort to reform the city’s charter began in 2022, when The Times reported on a leaked audio recording in which former City Council President Nury Martinez and two other council members made racist remarks, disparaged council colleagues and talked crassly of carving up the city politically.
After the audio leak scandal, the council created a committee to discuss how to improve government and trust with voters. In 2022, then-Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell authored a motion to direct the city staff to take the steps necessary to prepare a ballot measure on council expansion in 2024.
Eventually, the city established the Charter Reform Commission, made up of volunteers, to discuss big-ticket items including council expansion. That took nearly a year to get off the ground, and the commission issued a report in April with several recommendations.
But advocates for better governance say many of the big-ticket items are being kicked down the road once again.
Godfrey Plata, deputy director of L.A. Forward, a progressive group, said he disagreed with the chief legislative analyst’s recommendation to “further study” issues that have been studied.
He said he was happy to see police accountability measures move forward but felt that council members need to “pass the baton” and allow voters to decide on the reforms.
“We are disappointed that we have yet another 10-month committee to look forward to. … Advocates are getting more and more impatient,” Plata said. “It feels like we’re going in circles.”
Rob Quan, an organizer with the group Unrig LA, said that the committee dropping the vast majority of proposals was frustrating to watch.
“It’s really weird to see major items central to why this commission was created appear like they’re not going to go anywhere,” he said. “What has the committee decided? We’re going to create a new committee after this that is going to carry the torch. … [It’s] a merry go round from hell.”
