LA’s charter reform effort was started in response to the corruption scandal that shook our city in 2022. Unfortunately, none of the most impactful changes, such as council expansion and police accountability, are moving forward. Here’s what happened.
"You may have seen some headlines this week about how charter reform collapsed. Let me tell you what happened in city council. So in 2022, those infamous tapes leaked where city council elected leaders were caught using racist language and discussing how to redraw the lines of city council districts to make sure that they were reelected. After that, there was a real push for governance reform in Los Angeles, including changing the charter, which is like the constitution of the city of Los Angeles. This week in city council, we were finalizing which changes we were actually gonna put in front of voters. There was a number of changes that people were really excited about. Finally, after about a hundred years, the city was talking about expanding the city council, having more council members in smaller districts so representatives could be more responsive to their constituents. We were talking about changing how we voted, ranked choice voting, in order to make sure that people could actually have real choice and real democracy. City council already punted or killed so many of the changes that I was the most excited about. There was still one more change that was really important, real police accountability, making sure that our police department would be responsive to the needs of our voters and of our elected representatives. Unfortunately, the political establishment pushed back and not a single one of these critical reforms that would have changed the power dynamics in city hall are moving forward. You won't have a chance to vote on these in November. I'm determined to make sure that we continue talking about these into the future and that we can really improve governance in Los Angeles, but we can't do that without a city-wide movement to make sure that people are looking at the city and asking for change. So get involved and stay involved."
💬 Discussion
LA’s charter reform effort was started in response to the corruption scandal that shook our city in 2022. Unfortunately, none of the most impactful changes, such as council expansion and police accountability, are moving forward. Here’s what happened.