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ACCORDING TO LIZ - As most Angelenos know, Los Angeles County measures often have a more immediate impact on their taxes and quality of life than the California Propositions.
Four made the cut for November’s election and all deserve to be addressed. Plus, for a bonus, here are some thoughts on the contentious run-off for District Attorney.
All are consequential. You don’t have to take just my word for this, papers and websites (and the flyers dropping into people’s mailboxes) are filled with opinions.
Here are mine with the hope that my views can stimulate reflection and discussion as you make up your mind on how to mark your ballot.
Measure G would amend the County Charter to, hopefully, make the County more accountable, fair, and democratic. Of course, those whose autocracy is threatened are screaming bloody murder, and are couching vicious screeds against these improvements for ordinary people in voter-placating terminology.
The key points of the Measure would be to:
· create an elected County Executive
· create an independent Ethics Commission to increase restrictions on lobbying and investigate misconduct
· establish a nonpartisan Legislative Analyst to review proposed County policies
· increase the Board of Supervisors from five to nine elected members
· require County departments to present annual budgets in public meetings
A County Executive would have oversight of the County government’s purse strings… ooh, I like the sound of that.
And a Legislative Analyst would have the public’s back in assessing the real and ongoing impact of policies under consideration, not just short-term political ones.An Ethics Commission would increase accountability and oversight and reduce the chance of the County becoming enmired in the same sort of corruption that has beset Los Angeles City Hall for decades.
By expanding their numbers to nine, this Measure would dilute the power of the existing Supervisors with their five huge fiefdoms, making races more competitive and increasing public input, all using existing funding sources and not increasing taxes – what’s not to like?
Publicly presenting the budgets that affect services and are paid for out of their taxes. What an earth-shattering and constructive concept!
Of course, it’s officially opposed by two of the existing Supervisors along with the County Sheriffs… All the more reason for people across the County to support it.
YES. I’m all in on this. You should be, too.
Measure A, the much ballyhooed “homelessness services and affordable housing” ordinance, would hike already high sales taxes across the County by another half a percent.
What they promise the billion-dollars-plus this tax is expected to raise annually will provide may sound all soft and fuzzy, but previous fundraising for the same services have not delivered successful results.
Homelessness keeps increasing and, overall, the services provided seem to be deteriorating in both quality and quantity.
This measure is strongly supported by the entities that stand to benefit and, while the County doesn’t face the same budgetary woes of the City, until it proves it can spend the $45+ billion it extracts from taxpayers more effectively in all areas than it has in the past, just ask yourself one question: should we reward the bumbling crew that hasn’t delivered on measures for which it has previously appropriated our money?
Furthermore, a sales tax increase disproportionately impacts the poorest people, the very ones this is purported to protect.
Absolutely NO.
Measure E is yet another pocket-picking effort, this time through a property tax hike to improve fire protection and County emergency response and infrastructure.
Again, this sounds like it’s in the voters’ best interest but be suspicious.
Measure E is again strongly supported by the entities that stand to benefit and, until the County proves it can spend our money better and provide the services we deserve out of its existing billions…
Think twice, vote NO.
Measure US is another attempt by the Los Angeles Unified School District's to separate property owners from their money. It asks voters to approve issuing $9 billion in bonds by pulling on our heartstrings following years of their own mismanagement.
Supported yet again by those who stand to benefit including the building trades whose upgrades will need further upgrades long before the bonds are paid off.
The LAUSD’s ever-burgeoning bureaucracy is serving fewer and fewer students. They need to look at making their own operations leaner while improving outcomes before further larding our property taxes.
Another big fat NO.
The election of the District Attorney deserves everyone’s close attention.
George Gascón received 24.4% of the vote in the primary against his nearest opponent’s 16.4% despite constant criticism that drove a couple of unsuccessful recall attempts.
To a great degree this will come down to a popularity vote and have little to do with the bona fides of his opponent.
I supported Gascón in the last election and in the primary because I profoundly believe that Los Angeles County needed criminal justice reform. It still does.
It needs a man with a vision for a just society, for someone who cares.
Gascón’s initial term was fraught with the explosion of crime due to the complexities of Covid, combined with State mandates that couldn’t be managed without additional funding that never came, plus department infighting.
Caring for others is the only way to break a system that unsuccessfully recycles large numbers of Angelenos between prisons and the street.
Voters should be very wary of the numerous articles and screeds trying to capitalize on fears falsely ramped up to destroy his candidacy.
His opponent Nathan Hochman was a Republican candidate for State Attorney who dropped his party affiliation to run in Los Angeles, but once a conservative mindset is entrenched it tends to stay in a rut that only profits the status quo.
His claim that he will remove politics from prosecutorial decisions is as credible as the Supreme Court Six affirming that they are above politics. He will attract disaffected voters calling for the retributive injustice ingrained in many Americans’ psyches, an approach that has historically backfired.
I’m voting to give Gascón the chance to rise above his detractors and see, with the distractions of the pandemic and continual vituperative attacks, if he can finally achieve the improvements he promised to bring to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office.
Please seriously consider giving Gascón your own YES.
But, above all, make your voice heard, and vote.🗳️
(Liz Amsden is a contributor to CityWatch and an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.)
