Divisions Take Shape Over LA County’s Bid to Expand Board, Hire CEO

Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath at a Project Angel Food event in Los Angeles on Aug. 3, 2023. (Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images for Project Angel Food)

Despite unanimously agreeing to create an independent ethics commission, Los Angeles County supervisors remained divided at a July 23 meeting over a much larger governance reforms package that, if approved by voters in November, would expand the board from five to nine members and add an elected chief executive position.

The historic charter reform motion, which was advanced on July 9 by a 3–0 vote, came up this week for a second review, with Supervisors Lindsey Horvath, Hilda Solis, and Janice Hahn again voting in favor, and Supervisors Kathryn Barger and Holly Mitchell, who had previously abstained, voting against. Pending a final board vote, the measure will be placed on the November ballot.

But the disagreements among supervisors—over whether the reforms will increase representation or hinder it, empower voters or shut them out of decisions related to how the board spends its $43 billion budget—are now beginning to take shape among stakeholders.

Labor unions, businesses, and black community leaders are questioning hidden costs and a “rushed” timeline—meaning the placement of the proposal on the upcoming ballot—while others, including Asian American elected and community leaders, as well as progressive organizations, say that board expansion is long overdue as a way to increase representation for those who have historically been excluded.

‘Rush to Divide’

Proponents frame the proposed expansion of the board as a practical reform in a county where a diverse population has far outgrown its original governing structure, with five supervisors now representing more than 10 million people. The five-member board was established in 1852, when the county’s population was less than 10,000.

Other major metropolitan centers tend to have more county supervisors or commissioners representing populations that are a fraction of Los Angeles County’s.

Members of Hang Out Do Good Los Angeles, a progressive activist organization aligned with the California Democratic Party and anti-racist groups, said that expanding from five to nine districts would “allow more diverse voices to reflect the makeup of Los Angeles County” and that an elected executive would “finally” give the public a say in how the $43 billion is spent.

But not everyone agrees that more government will mean better representation.

Several representatives of black community organizations appeared at the July 23 meeting to voice concerns over unanswered questions and what they said was a rushed process.

Pete White, of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, an organization that advocates for low-income and homeless Angelenos downtown and in South Central, said his organization opposed board expansion.

“Why the rush to divide communities? Why acknowledgments the proposal is flawed but promises to fix it later?” he asked.

“No community knows better the impact of failed or deliberate policy,” he said, pointing to how redlining and the war on drugs have affected African Americans.

“We must get it right the first time. Second chances are nonexistent.”

In social media posts, the organization has suggested the proposed ordinance, “driven by polling rather than community needs,” could “leave Black Angelenos behind.”

Regina Martin, of Black Women for Wellness, pointed to “unclear and hidden” potential costs.

“L.A. residents need assurance that essential county programs won’t lose funding due to this hurried and flawed proposal,” she said during public comment at this week’s meeting.

Union leaders representing thousands of county employees expressed similar concerns at the meeting.

“Because this motion has been rushed we’ve not been able to go through our democratic process within the union movement to properly analyze the various components of this,” said Derek Hsieh, Executive Director of the Association for Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriffs, which represents more than 8,000 members.

Mr. Hsieh suggested that, due to the timeframe, other much larger labor coalitions have not had time to take a position on it. The measure was introduced after a holiday weekend, leaving little time to analyze it before supervisors cast the first vote on July 9.

Nella McOsker, president and CEO of the Central City Association, which represents 300 business, nonprofit, and trade organizations in downtown Los Angeles, cited “critical unknowns” and a process that bypassed public input, in a July 22 letter to Ms. Horvath.

“We believe this substantial, complex undertaking deserves additional process and more robust public engagement,” she wrote, asking the board to work with residents to shape a “thorough and comprehensive” initiative for the 2026 ballot.

Businesses and developers may also have more practical concerns. Measures currently require three votes to pass, but would require five votes if the board is expanded.

Meanwhile, with nine districts, labor unions could be looking at an 80 percent increase in election spending.

“This is the second most expensive media market in the [United States]. Campaigns are ridiculously expensive here. It’s like running a congressional campaign,” Matt Klink, a Los Angeles-based political consultant, told The Epoch Times.

Omar Gonzales, representing the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, said during the recent meeting that expanding the board from five to nine seats after a 2021 redistricting is a “significant change” that deserves more analysis.

“We urge the board to provide comprehensive data and analysis to support this expansion. Transparency and public engagement are essential especially with the November election approaching,” Mr. Gonzales said.

Power blocs

To some extent, it’s a familiar divide in Los Angeles politics, between older power blocs and newer, ultra-progressive coalitions represented by leaders such as Ms. Horvath.

Organizations representing historically black communities such as those in Ms. Mitchell’s Second District, which has seen demographic shifts in recent years due to gentrification and redistricting, may worry their representation will be further diluted.

The Second District has the largest black citizen voting age population of any district, around 29 percent, while the First and Fourth Districts are half Latino by the same metric, with around 51 percent and 50 percent, respectively.

Arguing in favor of board expansion, Supervisor Hilda Solis pointed to the need for increased representation of Latinos and Asian Pacific Islander communities.

“Latinos now make up close to 50 percent of Los Angeles County. There’s only one voice here [that’s] Latina, and it’s been like that since my predecessor, Gloria Molina, also advocated expansion of the board,” she said.

She added that the ordinance would extend representation to other groups, namely Asian Pacific Islanders, who “have not had a voice at this table.”

In 1991, Ms. Molina became the first Latina elected to the board, which had been dominated by white men for decades. And there has never been an Asian American supervisor in the board’s history, a fact community leaders point to in their support for expansion.

Andrew Chou, a Diamond Bar city council member, suggested expansion would benefit diverse communities currently lumped together in the five districts.

“The needs of Diamond Bar, for example, on the eastern end of the county are very different from downtown L.A., obviously,” Mr. Chou said. “So as the population grows and diversifies, we must innovate and reevaluate how we can best meet residents’ changing needs, to ensure we’re delivering the support they need as inclusive, transparent, and equitable communities,” he said.

Diamond Bar, in Ms. Solis’s First District, has the county’s largest Asian population by citizen voting age, at around 26 percent.

“Democracy is hard, it can be messy,” Ms. Solis said. “But I think the biggest barrier we face is when there is fear. And there are a lot of people who are afraid that they’re going to lose power.”

‘More Politicians’

While public comment during the July 9 meeting was overwhelmingly in favor of advancing the ordinance, new faces showed up on July 23 to offer a counternarrative, challenging the idea that an elected CEO and more supervisors will improve governance.

Ms. Solis, former U.S. secretary of labor, appeared to preempt that challenge.

“For our unions, who I know are in the house, we definitely want to hear from you,” she said, calling the ordinance “a work in progress” that would not be “decided completely and cemented” but rather incrementally achieved with stakeholder input over the next six years.

If approved by voters, charter reforms would be implemented over the next several years—with offices for county executive director, director of budget management, and county legislative analyst established by 2028, and new supervisors elected in 2032.

Cookie Lommell, a representative for AFSCME Local 685, which represents the county’s deputy probation officers, spoke against “politicizing” the county executive office by making the position an elected one.

“Local 685 does indeed support the promise of improved transparency at the County of Los Angeles. However, we do not support making the county executive and director of budget management decisions subject to politics,” she said.

Managing a budget of more than $43 billion and overseeing a workforce of 116,000 employees, as well as services for more than 10 million residents and millions of visitors, “is a job for a career professional—not a politician,” she added.

At the July 23 meeting, Ms. Barger attempted to add an amendment that would eliminate the elected CEO position from the proposed reforms, arguing such a position would give too much power to one individual, but the board voted against it, 3–2, with Ms. Barger and Ms. Mitchell in favor.

“If the ordinance is passed by voters as is, it will consolidate and politicize power under one single individual without term limits. This deeply concerns me,” Ms. Barger said in a statement following the vote.

The supervisor also suggested that constituent concerns in remote regions of the county could be “written off” by a countywide elected executive and questioned whether a CEO would lead to budget staff turnovers each election cycle, causing the loss of “critical institutional knowledge,” or affecting various county labor negotiations already underway.

Responding later to concerns that an elected CEO would politicize the office, Ms. Horvath said, “That’s one way to look at it, if that’s how you look at direct democracy,” and framed it as a question of whether Los Angeles County voters “deserve the opportunity to decide” on the matter.

Rather, she said, making the CEO an elected position would ensure it is accountable to the public in the same way supervisors are.

The board also voted unanimously on July 23 to add fiscal analyses of countywide measures to sample ballots, which would presumably mean the charter reform package itself—a point of contention, with proponents arguing it will not impose any additional costs on taxpayers, and opponents warning it could affect crucial services.

The measure states that implementation “may only use existing county funding sources, and there are not to be any additional costs to or taxes imposed on taxpayers,” but both supervisors and members of the public have questioned the claimed “cost neutrality,” arguing it could affect spending, especially for services such as homelessness and mental health.

Ms. Horvath said the measure does not propose cutting any services or adding costs but will require a “restructure and reallocation” of the budget. Until a task force engages the public “in a transparent vetting of costs,” she said, “it’s hard to determine exactly where those sources of funding are at this moment.”

“I want to be very clear this ordinance does not propose service cuts of any kind,” she said.

Mr. Klink, the political consultant, suggested that the reforms might be a hard sell without additional clarity on these issues.

“Even if they don’t raise taxes, it will require cuts in other parts of the county government to fund it, because the board only has space for five offices,” Mr. Klink told The Epoch Times.

“This really boils down to how do we get better representation and what’s it going to cost, because I don’t think Los Angeles County voters are willing to pay more for more politicians.”

In an interview with The Epoch Times, former Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich said expanding the county bureaucracy at a time when there are already deep, unfilled needs would not improve public service.

“Spending tens of millions of dollars for new offices, new employees, new pensions—those dollars are better spent in increasing public safety, funding the Sheriff’s Department, the Fire Department, [and] children’s services including our emancipated youth and foster children,” Mr. Antonovich said.

He added that electing a CEO with no term limits who appoints department heads would further hinder the county’s ability to respond to district needs.

“You’ll have what Los Angeles city has—the mayor does all the appointments, and the council members are just the tail of the dog,” he said.

Los Angeles County Federation of Labor (LA Fed) President Yvonne Wheeler, who represents 800,000 union members, and Traci Velasco, executive board member of SEIU Local 721, which represents 55,000 county employees, spoke in favor of adding fiscal analyses to countywide ballot measures, arguing for increased transparency during a time of heightened political scrutiny.

But a representative for LA Fed later said in an email to The Epoch Times that it is currently not taking a position on the proposed ballot initiative, board expansion, or the elected CEO position.

Meanwhile, former Santa Monica Mayor Mike Feinstein, representing the Los Angeles County Green Party, suggested that the board “ideally” expand to 13 members to achieve even “broader and deeper representation.”

Ron Collins, representing the Los Angeles Black Worker Center, said his organization supports a possible expansion of the board but not without due diligence “and a true community engagement process and adequate study.”

“We envision a world where black workers thrive in equitable conditions, and that cannot be done when our communities are not fully included in decisions that deeply impact us,” he told the board.

There have been multiple state legislative and ballot measures over the past half century to expand the board and introduce an elected county executive, but all have been rejected by voters.

The ethics commission approved on July 23 by the board would oversee the conduct of county officials and their potential conflicts of interest—government and land-use developer contracts, lobbying, campaign finance, post-government employment, and financial disclosures—as well as a public data portal to keep track of campaign finance transactions.

That motion is expected to return to the board after a 30-day review by the county’s attorneys.