In long-term impact, the most significant measure on California’s Nov. 5 ballot may be one that, if passed, would overhaul governance in Los Angeles County, home to a quarter of the state’s nearly 40 million residents.

Dan Walters

CalMatters

Opinion

The proposition would expand the county Board of Supervisors from five to nine members and make the county executive, now appointed by the board, an elected position with substantial authority — essentially a county mayor.

“It’s time to expand the board so it is more representative of the beautiful diversity of Los Angeles County,” Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, one of the proposal’s originators, said during one of the board’s extensive debates on the issue. Horvath, Janice Hahn and Hilda Solis voted to place the measure on the ballot while Kathryn Barger and Holly Mitchell said the idea needed more study.

The five-member board now wields virtually all governing authority in a county that’s more populous than most states. The measure would apportion legislative power among more elected officials while creating an executive position that arguably would be second only to the governor in power and prestige.

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San Francisco’s Unique Governance Challenge

If the recipe for improving governance in Los Angeles is more diffusion, in San Francisco it may be more consolidation.

Superficially, the City and County of San Francisco is governed by an elected mayor and an 11-member Board of Supervisors — roughly the same structure that the Los Angeles ballot measure would adopt.

However, much of the real power in San Francisco is in the hands of more than 100 boards, commissions and advisory bodies that supposedly oversee the city’s bureaucracies and/or wield direct authority over particular issues, one being development projects.

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The Call for Reform in San Francisco

For years, reformers have declared that the structure is essentially a mechanism for making it extraordinarily difficult, and sometimes impossible, to get anything meaningful done in the city while subjecting ordinary San Franciscans to a Kafkaesque nightmare of bureaucratic footdragging.

In June San Francisco’s civil grand jury, in a report titled “Commission Impossible?” counted 115 commissions, saying that it had to assemble the list on its own because it’s nowhere to be found in City Hall. The grand jury recommended creating one more commission that would recommend which of the 115 should be retained and which should be abolished.

“The rich irony of recommending a new commission to reduce the number of commissions is not lost on us,” the grand jury conceded. “The system needs significant reform which includes fewer commissions, centralized oversight, consistent standards, and performance assessments.”

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Competing Ballot Measures for Reform

“In true San Francisco fashion, however, even proposed solutions to this problem are dysfunctional,” San Francisco Chronicle columnist Emily Hoeven – a former colleague at CalMatters.org – noted. “Instead of our leaders coming together to fix things, they’re forcing voters to do the dirty work of choosing between two complicated, competing commission streamlining ballot measures in November.”

Proposition D, sponsored by an ideologically moderate group called TogetherSF Action, would retain 22 commissions dealing with vital public services, such as those overseeing the airport, planning and police, but the other nearly 100 would be abolished unless specifically renewed with a cap of 65 bodies. It also would strip legislative and rule-making power from commissions, making them advisory bodies, and strengthen the mayor’s role in appointing commission members and overseeing city departments.

Proposition E, backed by four of the most left-leaning members of the Board of Supervisors, would establish a task force to recommend ways to “modify, eliminate or combine” boards and commissions.

The civic and political leaders of Los Angeles County and San Francisco are at least trying to improve their governance systems. Maybe it will rub off on the antiquated structure of California’s state government.

About the Author

Dan Walters has been a journalist for nearly 60 years, spending all but a few of those years working for California newspapers. He began his professional career in 1960, at age 16, at the Humboldt Times.

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more columns by Dan Walters, go to calmatters.org/commentary.

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