On the Ballot: Does Los Angeles County need a bigger board of supervisors?
Voters will decide next month if the county government should be overhauled by adding four more supervisors, an elected executive and a multitude of other changes.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors oversees the largest jurisdiction in the world and this November voters could determine if the current five elected positions is enough to serve the massive county, or if the board should be expanded to nine.
The board voted in July to place Measure G on the ballot for the Nov. 5 election. The vote was split with three supervisors supporting asking voters to decide whether the county structure needs to be shaken up with the other two abstaining from the vote and now advocating against it.
Measure G would do a number of things like create a new county legislative analyst to provide the board with non-partisan takes on policies and a county ethics commission that could investigate misconduct by county officials.
But the expansion of the board from five to nine and the potential transition of the county executive an elected position have become points of conflict among supporters and those opposing Measure G.
Supporters of the measure say that expanding the board would help to diversify it and make supervisors more responsive to communities that would have smaller geographic footprints if the measure passes. Proponents also say that it would empower voters to decide who serves as the county executive, a position that oversees the county’s $45 billion budget.
Currently, each supervisor represents about two million LA County residents and expanding the board would mean fewer constituents and potentially more minorities serving on the board in the future.
If Measure G passes, the expansion wouldn’t happen until after the 2030 Census is completed and new district lines are drawn. The first elections for the four new seats would occur in the 2032 election and a total of seven seats on the board (three existing) would be up for election that year.
What it would it would cost the county is unclear. A fiscal impact statement accompanying the ballot measure says that the implementation of all the proposed changes could cost $8 million but the ongoing costs like the salaries and benefits for the new supervisors, their staff and others are unknown but could require existing funding for other county programs to be cut to pay for them.
The five supervisors all have total wages of more than $280,000 annually, according to the California State Controller’s office.
The last time voters were asked to expand the board was in 2000 when voters declined to make changes to the county’s structure with 64% of residents voting against the measure.
Opponents have argued that the dramatic shift in county governance is not necessary and would put too much power in the hands of the elected county executive and strip power away form the supervisors, who the executive currently answers to, and create more bureaucracy.
Other changes in the measure like requiring county agenda items to be posted five days in advance, requiring county departments to present their annual budgets in public settings and prohibiting county officials from lobbying the county for two years after they leave their county posts could all be accomplished without the ballot measure, opponents say.
Measure G needs a simple majority of voters to support it in order to pass.
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