This week the Council voted to place several proposals to change the City Charter on the November 2026 ballot. This came after a nearly year-long Charter Reform Commission that held countless hearings to dig into how to improve Los Angeles in the wake of corruption and ethics scandals a few years ago.
Our Charter is essentially our city’s constitution. It is a foundation with grounding principles for the structure of city government. Any changes must be approved by the voters. This work should not be taken lightly. Many of the Charter proposals are relatively minor changes that will allow your City government to work more effectively, but there were some Commission recommendations that I do not agree with or think are not quite ready for the ballot. Some of these proposals have a lot of potential and will be further vetted and refined by a newly formed ad-hoc council committee that will be able recommend measures for future voter approval — including some potentially important police reforms.
The ballot measures that were approved by Council and will appear on November’s ballot include several items to improve government efficiency and accountability. These include: a two-year budget, allowing more time for evaluation and scrutiny of City programs; increasing accountability of senior management in City Departments; removing a prohibition on the City’s commercial activities, which could allow us to generate revenue from things like the sale of asphalt from a plant we already own and operate; requiring a Capital Infrastructure Plan and strengthening the role of the Director of Public Works; and modifying contracting to allow the City to give more weight to the quality of products and services, rather than simply going with the lowest bidder.
One measure I did not support placing on the ballot would almost double the guaranteed amount of funding for the Department of Recreation and Parks. On its face, this seems like a great idea given that our parks are woefully underfunded. But because it does nothing to raise revenue and because it forces a long term decision on the voters without any context or understanding of what essential services will need to be cut as a result of that decision the measure is both financially foolish and deceptive about impact.
I am a big believer that we need to spend more on our park system and dramatically increase Rec and Park’s budget. I have spent my career working on environmental issues, investing in parks and growing open space. I spent years working for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and on the state level, I championed numerous park bonds that continue to yield results for our entire region. As a Councilmember I have opened six new parks in my district, brought millions of dollars in investments to the LA River and led multiple, massive park improvement projects for local kids and families to enjoy.
However, the step the Council took to lock in a percentage of the City’s budget for parks was a feel good/easy vote that actually harbors hidden long term detriments. It is easy to propose an increase in spending for something as popular as parks. Who wouldn’t vote for more of such a good thing? The hard part–and the question this measure ignores–is deciding what spending to cut to pay for that increase this year and every year moving forward. Locking in percentage spending by Charter presumes that today’s voters know better than future voters and that today’s voters can better predict the circumstances and needs of future generations than those future generations themselves. I view putting such a measure on the ballot as an abdication of responsibility for doing the real work of budgeting and a theft of autonomy from tomorrow's Angelenos.
Ballot box budgeting creates financial handcuffs that means that when financial circumstances change, the Council cannot adapt without going back to the voters. This is true in good times such as when alternative park funding sources become available such as a successor to Proposition K, or Olympic surplus dollars, or in bad times when the City is facing an economic crisis as we did recently with COVID. And when departments have ‘guaranteed percentage funding,’ it’s not uncommon for them to be forced to take on new responsibilities that traditionally fall under the purview of other departments that have no money. Imagine during tough times, park staff being required to put out fires, fix city buildings, or run homeless programs. This type of thing is inevitable and also highly inefficient.
The proper way to increase a department’s budget is to either do so through the budget process or find a dedicated revenue source. The Fire Department is pursuing a ballot measure to do just that. Can you imagine if instead they pursued a ballot measure asking voters to wall off 30% of the City’s revenue for Fire? The voters, without context, would pass it. Then police, animal services, etc would follow —until we surpassed 100%. Also, I imagine plenty of good sounding, potentially non-core activities would ask voters for small percentages which might seem reasonable to the voters. Who would say no to walling off 1% for health care for seniors (although the City doesn’t even provide health care) or 1% for educational grants (the City doesn’t fund education), etc. It seems free because dedicating the money doesn’t require new additional taxes and the difficult trade-offs/cuts that will happen are in the future and are hidden.
To dramatically make this important point to my colleagues, I introduced an amending motion to this ballot measure that would also lock future funding for a variety of different important departments and issues. I’d hoped it would cause folks to see the folly in the underlying proposal — but to my dismay many colleagues actually expressed support for my extreme and somewhat facetious amendment. The Council President realized that such a ridiculous amendment was gaining steam and would be detrimental for the City and immediately referred it to committee where it would inevitably die. Feel free to check out the amendment yourself here.
Unfortunately, I know all too well about the problems of ballot box budgeting having served as the State’s budget chair during rough economic times 2009-13. To balance the State’s budget given all of the State constraints and walled off funds, we had to undertake ridiculous and inefficient financial contortions. We had to classify funding as education related that shouldn’t have been, we had to make horrible cuts that could have been avoided were there more freedom to move money around more rationally.
Ballot box budgeting is not responsible government. This issue is now in your hands — the voters.