During the 2021 redistricting process to redraw Los Angeles City Council district maps, a closed-door conversation between three council members and a leading labor official about how they wanted district boundaries redrawn in their favor was secretly recorded, then released to the public a year later.
Even before the audio leak, L.A. City Hall had been battered by a series of scandals that sent former City Councilmembers José Huizar and Mitchell Englander to prison. But the explosive conversation heard in that recording appeared to be the final straw, leading to widespread demands for reforms to improve government transparency and to strengthen ethics oversight.
“In recent years, the City Council of Los Angeles has been rocked by a series of scandals, including the indictment of former members and then notably the incredible, racist recorded conversation among four leaders of our city,” said Councilmember Paul Krekorian, who recently stepped down as council president.
Krekorian became president of the council shortly after the audio leak scandal. One of his first actions as president was to create an ad hoc committee on city governance reform “to begin to restore public confidence in the institution of the City Council.”
Now, two years after the audio leak that upended City Hall, voters in Los Angeles are asked to vote on six measures on the Nov. 5 general election ballot that would amend the city charter and address some of the demands for government reforms.
Two of the proposed charter amendments call for an independent redistricting process to redraw district maps for the L.A. City Council and the Los Angeles Unified School District every 10 years.
A third would strengthen the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission by giving it more power and authority, while a fourth proposes to transfer all peace officers who work for the city’s various departments into the same pension plan.
Two other measures, representing a hodgepodge of changes to the city charter, deal with adding sections to, or clarifying sections in, the charter having to do with city governance, political appointments and elections, and changes intended to make city departments run more efficiently and transparently.
Below is an overview of the six measures.
While official ballot arguments were submitted by the supporters of each of the six measures, no official arguments opposing the ballot measures were submitted to the Los Angeles City Clerk.
All six measures need only a simple majority vote in order to be passed.
Charter Amendment DD: Independent Redistricting (City Council)
Every decade after the new U.S. Census data comes out, municipalities go through a process called “redistricting” to redraw local city council maps to reflect population shifts in different neighborhoods over time.
Updating these maps helps to right-size council districts so that each council member represents roughly the same number of residents. It’s also meant to ensure that historically underrepresented groups are given a fair chance to elect their favored candidate — by not arbitrarily breaking up racial or ethnic communities into different districts which can dilute their voting power.
For the past century, city council members in L.A. have had the final say in how these district maps are drawn, giving them the power to fashion their own council district boundaries in ways that would make it easier for them to get reelected.
Up to now, the commission that recommended changes to council district maps were advisory only, meaning the maps they recommended could be vetoed by elected officials. In addition, commissioners were appointed by the mayor, city attorney, city controller and city council members – leaving critics to question their ability to act independently.
Charter Amendment DD proposes to create a new, independent redistricting commission free of meddling by council members. Commissioners would no longer be appointed by elected officials. Instead, the city clerk would manage the application process.
First, the city clerk and city ethics commission would divide the city up into eight geographic regions with similar population sizes. Then the clerk would randomly draw names from a pool of applicants – pre-screened to ensure they’re eligible to serve – to select one commissioner from each of the eight regions.
Those eight commissioners would review applications from the remaining pool of applicants and select eight more commissioners, taking into account factors like race, gender, sexual orientation, age, income, profession and area of residence to reflect the city’s diversity.
Those 16 commissioners would then select four alternates.
In addition to no longer having commissioners be political appointees, maps approved by the commission would be final. The City Council would no longer be able to change them.
Calls for a truly independent redistricting commission were renewed after the 2022 audio leak scandal, which critics felt was an attempt by some council members to rig the last redistricting process.
“Fair elections in fairly-drawn districts are essential to democracy and to effective city government. Once and for all, Charter Amendment DD will let the voters choose their Councilmembers, instead of the Councilmembers choosing their voters. Let’s take the politics out of the redistricting process,” supporters wrote in their ballot argument in favor of the measure.
The argument was written by Councilmembers Krekorian and Nithya Raman. The participants in the secretly recorded audio said that Raman wasn’t a political ally and that her district was “one to put in the blender and chop up.”
Amendment DD also has the support of California Common Cause, an organization that advocates for government transparency and redistricting reform.
Charter Amendment LL: Independent Redistricting (LAUSD)
Similar to DD, Charter Amendment LL would establish an independent redistricting commission – this one to determine district boundaries for the seven members who sit on the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education.
The city clerk would select one commissioner from each of the seven school board districts through a random drawing. Those seven commissioners would review the remaining applications and select seven more commissioners, taking into account a person’s relevant experiences and backgrounds and their familiarity with LAUSD neighborhoods, plus to ensure that the commission reflects the diversity of LAUSD’s stakeholders.
At least four of the 14 commissioners must be parents or guardians of an LAUSD student at the time of selection. The 14 commissioners would then name four people as alternate commissioners.
Like the independent redistricting commission for the City Council under Amendment DD, the commission established by Charter Amendment LL would have final say in the drawing of new LAUSD district maps without interference from elected officials.
LAUSD school board President Jackie Goldberg and board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin are among those who signed the ballot argument in support of Measure LL. Others who signed on include members of OUR L.A., a coalition of community organizations and racial justice advocates who support racial equity and transparency.
Charter Amendment ER: City Ethics Commission
Charter Amendment ER is intended to give the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission greater authority and independence so it can more effectively enforce city and state laws concerning matters like campaign financing, contracts, lobbying activities and ethics rules. The commission can issue fines to officials, lobbyists and others who violate the city’s ethics laws.
Calls to strengthen the ethics commission isn’t new, although interest in doing so resurfaced following a series of corruption scandals at L.A. City Hall.
Since 2020, three former city councilmembers have been convicted of bribery or other crimes.
They include Mitchell Englander, who served time in prison for obstructing a federal investigation into his acceptance of lavish gifts in Las Vegas from a businessman who sought favors from him; José Huizar, who this month began serving a 13-year prison sentence for accepting bribes from developers and cheating on his taxes; and Mark Ridley-Thomas, who was convicted in March 2023 on charges of federal bribery and conspiracy, along with mail and wire fraud, for actions during his time on the county Board of Supervisors. Ridley-Thomas is appealing his conviction.
Two other current council members are fighting allegations of wrongdoings. Councilmember John Lee has refuted allegations that he failed to report excessive gifts received while chief of staff to Englander. And Councilmember Curren Price, who last year was charged with theft by embezzlement, perjury and conflict of interest, has pled not guilty.
These cases are in addition to others who have worked for or represented the city of L.A. and have been sentenced to prison for their roles in various corruption cases.
Given the string of scandals, good government advocates want an ethics commission that wields more power.
Charter Amendment ER would, among other things:
- Allow the commission to triple the fine – from $5,000 to $15,000 per violation – for someone who commits an ethics violation, and to adjust this amount annually based on the Consumer Price Index.
- Require the City Council to hold a public hearing on a policy proposed by the ethics commission within 180 days.
- Allow the commission to hire outside legal counsel in some cases, including on matters that have to do with the city attorney, city attorney’s office, the city attorney’s campaign, or on specific investigative and enforcement matters.
- Increase the commission’s budget for a special prosecutor from $250,000 to $500,000.
- Guarantee that the ethics commission, whose budget is set by the City Council, gets at least $7 million each year starting in the 2025-26 fiscal year. This amount shall be adjusted each year based on changes to the city’s revenues in the prior year unless the council finds that “exigent circumstances” exist to deny the adjustment.
- Allow the commission to spend money without prior approval from city offices or staff when the expenses are within the commission’s budget – unless the City Council determines there are “exigent circumstances.”
- Exempt the commission from hiring freezes if it operates within its approved budget.
Krekorian, who wrote the ballot argument in support of Amendment ER, said the changes proposed represent “the first significant ethics reform measure in the history of the Ethics Commission.” The commission was established in 1990.
“This amendment gives the City Ethics Commission more freedom to investigate ethics violations, and it increases potential penalties for those who break the rules. In recent years, a few city officials have betrayed the public and disgraced their position by acts of corruption, and they have been punished under the law,” Krekorian wrote in the ballot argument.
“An effective city government must be beyond reproach,” he continued. “The people of Los Angeles depend on the City Ethics Commission to discourage the kind of violations that undermine public confidence in government.”
Rob Quan, an organizer with the good government advocacy group Unrig LA, had mixed feelings about the measure. While it “does a lot of things that get our ethics commission in a better place” and some of the proposed changes are “decent steps forward,” Quan said there are also a number of “shortcomings.”
In his opinion, the most notable shortcoming was a decision by the City Council to not include a proposal that good government advocates had pushed for that would have allowed the ethics commission to place a measure on the ballot directly without needing council approval.
“We aren’t elevating the independence of the commissioners and we’re not changing (their) relationship with the City Council,” Quan said.
Some good government advocates had also wanted the number of members on the ethics commission to be increased from five to seven, with the extra two chosen through an open application process instead of being political appointees like the current five commissioners.
Currently, the mayor, city attorney, city controller, and the president and pro tem of the City Council each get to appoint one member.
In addition, Quan said that while Charter Amendmet ER would require the City Council to hold a public hearing on a proposal that’s brought before them by the ethics commission within 180 days, the council is not obligated to vote on it.
“All they have to do is … (take) public comment. They don’t need to say a single word about it or take a single vote and it satisfies their obligation,” Quan said. “It does nothing to force the council to take ethics recommendations seriously. It’s pathetic. It’s really really pathetic.”
Although not everyone is completely satisfied with the measure, no formal ballot argument opposing it was submitted to the city clerk.
Charter Amendment FF: Peace Officers’ Pensions
While most of L.A.’s city employees are enrolled in the Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement System (LACERS), its firefighters and police officers belong to a different pension system called the Los Angeles Fire and Police Pension (LAFPP).
Current peace officers in the Los Angeles Police Department, as well as those hired by the L.A. Port Police since 2004 and those hired by the L.A. Airport Police since 2018, are also in the LAFPP plan.
But about 460 peace officers and park rangers who work for the city’s police, airport, harbor, or recreation and parks departments remain in the LACERS retirement plan. These include many who were hired by the city before changes were made to automatically enroll new hires at the Port or Airport Police into LAFPP.
Charter Amendment FF would allow those remaining 460 or so peace officers and park rangers to transfer from LACERS into the LAFPP pension system at the city’s expense.
LAFPP is the more attractive of the two retirement plans. Under LACERS, an employee must put in 30 years of service and be at least 55 years old to receive regular retirement benefits. Under the LAFPP system, that individual would need 20 years of service and could receive regular retirement benefits starting at age 50, said Sgt. Marshall McClain, president of the Los Angeles Airport Peace Officers Association.
The difference in disability benefits between the two plans is also dramatically different. McClain described a scenario in which two officers could be injured while riding in the same LAPD vehicle. If one officer is enrolled with LACERS and the other is with LAFPP, their disability payouts would be starkly different, he said.
The official ballot argument in favor of the measure states that it “would give all peace officers employed by the City the opportunity to be covered by the same pension plan, regardless of what department they work for. All of these peace officers must meet the same training and licensing requirements, perform similar functions, and face similar risks. They should be eligible for the same benefits.”
The argument is signed by Mayor Karen Bass as well as four council members – Bob Blumenfield, Paul Krekorian, John Lee and Traci Park. McClain and the city’s chief park ranger also signed on to the argument.
But the measure, if enacted, would come at a cost to the city.
According to City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo, there would be an estimated one-time cost of $109.5 million, plus annual costs of about $6.3 million, to the city, to transfer over several hundred employees to the LAFPP pension plan.
Most of the money would come from revenues generated by the Port of Los Angeles and Los Angeles World Airports, though approximately $23 million in one-time payment and $1 million annually are expected to come from the city’s general fund.
This comes at a time when the city is already facing a multi-year budget deficit forecast. And just this month, Blumenfield, who chairs the council’s budget committee, warned that the city’s fiscal situation is “dire” after having committed more than $183 million for liability claims in just the first four months of the fiscal year.
The city had initially set aside $100 million in this fiscal year’s budget for such payouts.
McClain said most of the costs will be borne by the city’s airport and ports departments, which generate their own revenues. In addition, if the measure passes, the affected employees who are working for the Airport Police have agreed to forego their raises in 2025 and 2026 to help offset some of the costs to the city, McClain said.
“This isn’t something that’s going to bankrupt the city,” he said of the proposal.
McClain noted that it was representatives for the city, and not the union, that suggested the ballot measure during labor negotiations – in part due to a desire to get all sworn officers under the same pension plan.
No one submitted a ballot argument opposing Charter Amendment FF.
However, City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez recently indicated in an Instagram post that she opposes the measure. Requests were made through Hernandez’s spokesperson for a comment from the councilmember about her position, but those messages were not returned.
Charter Amendment HH: City Governance, Appointments and Elections
Of the six city measures on the Nov. 5 ballot, two – Charter Amendments HH and II – are a hodgepodge of items to revise the city charter, the document that lays out the structure, responsibilities, functions, processes and powers of L.A.’s city government.
The charter can only be changed if a majority of voters approve the amendments.
Amendment HH aims to update and clarify items in the charter having to do with city governance, political appointments and elections.
Some changes to the city charter if HH passes include:
- Requiring those who are appointed to commissions to file their financial disclosure forms before they can be confirmed. In the past, some appointments were made before these forms are disclosed which identify potential conflicts of interests.
- Clarifying that the city controller has authority to audit city contractors, including accessing the records of contractors and subcontractors that receive or manage city funds. This issue came up earlier this year when City Controller Kenneth Mejia began investigating a city vendor and sought information from the vendor but ran into resistance and questions about his authority to issue a subpoena.
- Expanding the city attorney’s subpoena power to include the authority to subpoena witnesses, administer oaths and affirmations, and requiring that records be produced when investigating potential violations of state or local law – though it wouldn’t include the ability to investigate city offices, departments, officers or employees. (The city’s police chief or another designated officer would issue subpoenas in those cases.)
- Requiring at least two of the five members on the Board of Harbor Commissioners, which oversees the management and operation of the Port of Los Angeles, to reside in the Harbor area. One of those members shall live in San Pedro and the other in Wilmington. The intent – to ensure that residents who live near the port and are most directly impacted by it – are adequately represented on the board. This issue was raised recently after a board member from San Pedro was not reappointed, leaving just one member on the board from the Harbor area.
- Giving the City Council 30 days to review the financial impacts or other impacts of an initiative or referendum initiated by members of the public before deciding whether to adopt or repeal it or to place it on a ballot for voters to decide.
Councilmembers Paul Krekorian, who chairs the council’s governance reform ad hoc committee, and Tim McOsker, who represents the Harbor area, wrote the ballot argument in support of Charter Amendment HH.
Charter Amendment II: City Administration and Operations
Like Charter Amendment HH, this measure is a mishmash of items intended to bring the city charter more up-to-date by cleaning up language in the charter and making other changes to improve the efficiency and operation of city departments.
Charter Amendment II would, among other things:
- Clarify that city departments may sell concession items, such as merchandise or food, to raise money for the department.
- Clarify that the El Pueblo Historical Monument and Los Angeles Zoo remain park property even though they were removed from the control of the Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners.
- Allow the Department of Recreation and Parks to lease sites to the Los Angeles Unified School District for the construction and maintenance of buildings consistent with public park uses. Supporters say this will allow kids in underserved communities to have access to more recreational spaces.
- Clarify the Board of Airport Commissioners’ authority to set fees, rules and regulations regarding transportation and other commercial services at airports.
- Allow “Los Angeles World Airports” to be used as the official name of the city’s airport department.
- Require all zoning rules and regulations to be available for public inspection in accordance with the California Public Records Act.
Councilmember Paul Krekorian, who chairs the council’s governance reform ad hoc committee, wrote the ballot argument in support of Charter Amendment II, stating that this measure would update the city charter to make city services more efficient, transparent and accountable.
