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Last November, voters approved a vast overhaul of the LA County government.
They also didn’t realize they were abolishing the county’s groundbreaking criminal justice reforms.
Eight months later, county officials now realize they have unconsciously committed a long-standing administrative mess.
Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Janice Hahn co-authored Measurement G. This changed the county charter to expand the five-member board and elected new county officers.
However, no one seems to notice that the new charter language will abolish Measure J. It was approved in 2020 to dedicate hundreds of millions of people to services that provide alternatives to imprisonment.
“We can confirm that Measurement J was not placed on the county charter after passing in 2020 due to careless administrative errors due to previous executive officer management,” the county lawyer said in a statement. “As a result, when voters passed Measurement G, they abolished Measurement J in December 2028.”
This mistake appears to be attributed to the failure of the county executive to renew the county charter with Measure J after it was passed in 2020. County attorneys were unable to include the Measure J language when drafting the 2024 voting measure.
So, when voters approved Major G, they accidentally abolished Measure J, according to the county.
The screwing was first discovered by former Duarte City Councilman John Fasana, sitting in the county’s Governance Reform Task Force, tasked with implementing government overhauls. He said he first raised the issue in the county in early June.
“Someone went goofing,” Fasana said. He was appointed to the task force by director Katherine Berger. “When I saw it, I couldn’t believe it.”
Reimagine La Coalition coordinator Megan Castillo said he pushed Measure J to the poll in 2020, saying last week he was prevented from knowing that the results of years of advocacy would soon be wiped out by accident.
“Just because people are in a hurry to make policy decisions shouldn’t be undermined,” Castillo said. “We know that more voters target Measure J than Measure G. It’s disrespectful to people’s will that this can happen unintentionally.”
Measurement J requires that 10% of locally generated unlimited LA County funds spent on social services such as housing, mental health treatment and other prison detour programs be spent on social services. The county is prohibited from spending money on physical systems, including prisons, prisons and law enforcement agencies.
Castillo said he was worried that the abolition would lead to a “deep economic fallout” for these programs. County money could be diverted to costs required by Measure G, such as the salaries of new politicians and their staff. County measurement counties mean that this money must come from elsewhere in the county budget.
Castillo said he first brought the issue to Haan and Jorvas’ agents last week to attention.
“They are shocked too,” Castillo said.
Supervisor Lindsey Horvas, who led the charges at Major G, said in a statement that a proposal would come to correct “an error in county officials related to Measurement J.”
“This measure is the result of a community-led effort in a fierce battle that I have sincerely supported and I am still deeply committed to maintaining,” Horvath said. “This situation reveals why Measurement G is so urgently needed. …If there are five people in charge, no one is in charge. This is a classic example of what that means.”
Superintendent Katherine Berger, who opposed the county charter overhaul, saw it a little differently.
“It also reinforces one of the important concerns I had about Measure G from the start. If major changes to the county charter move forward without sufficient time for analysis, public input and transparency, mistakes are more likely. “This error can be caught before voters are asked to make a decision.”
Director Hilda Solis said he was “surprising and worried” to learn about the error, but he is confident that the funds Measuring J is assuming will not be affected.
The Times reached out to two other supervisors, but have not yet received a response.
The county attorney said in a statement that he has worked with the executive office to “address this situation” and ensures that the executive office will ensure amendments to the “timely codification” charter going forward. They emphasized that despite the looming abolition of Measure J, the county will continue to coordinate its budget with the targets of the measure.
Derek Hesey, head of Asun. For Los Angeles deputy sheriff and members of the Governance Reform Task Force, the mistake was called a “cluster-.”
“Voters and county employees would like to know that the Board of Supervisors knew about this mistake and what they intend to do to fix it,” Hsieh said.
The union representing the sheriff’s deputies spent more than $3.5 million on advertising on television and social media to fight J, the union joined other county unions and challenged the action in court.
“There is absolutely no question both by the will of the voters and the decision by the California Supreme Court that J is the law of the land,” Hsieh said.
The screw in was released Wednesday night at the task force’s second meeting. Fasana told fellow members gathered at Bob Hope Paytrick Hall in downtown that he had found a “big problem.”
The news created something like a fuss at the meeting. Some members said they wanted to wait to discuss it until everyone has explained what he was talking about.
Others said they didn’t understand how they could talk about other things.
“There’s a problem, so all the work we’re trying to move forward at the stop, it’s important and fundamental,” said Derek Steele, appointed by manager Holly Mitchell.
“In fact, we may need to bring the Measure G back to people,” Steele said. “We need to make sure we resolve this.”
Both Mitchell and Burger opposed the Measurement G, claiming it was hurriedly put together, and that it gave too much power to the unclear county enforcers.
Sara Sadhwani, appointed to the task force by Horvath, said she discovered that the accidental abolition of Measurement J was “incredibly concerned,” but she has discovered how the news of the task force was “intrusted.”
“It raises so many questions for me and raises concerns about who is operating in good faith in this task Forcem,” Sadhwani said. “If this was a sincere effort, then we wouldn’t have discussed this issue rather than dropping bombs that people don’t know about.”
The task force sought a report from the county attorney for the next meeting.
Jaclyn Cosgrove contributed to this story.
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