The Votes Are In!
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View Winners → Politics Oct 18, 2022
Los Angeles City Hall. | Photo courtesy of the Office of the Controller
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By ERIC HE
The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to begin the process of placing a measure before voters in 2024 that would increase the number of council districts in Los Angeles.
The measure, proposed by Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, was a response to a leaked tape revealing a 2021 discussion between three council members and a top county labor official that included racial slurs and discussions over how to redraw district boundaries in their favor. The exact number of proposed new seats would depend on the population growth of the city.
Los Angeles’ population has grown from 1.2 million people in 1929 to 4 million Tuesday, but the number of council districts has stayed at 15 since 1925.
The number of council seats can only be adjusted via a charter amendment approved by the voters. O’Farrell also called for an immediate redistricting process if the measure is approved by voters.
“I think it allows for greater flexibility,” Fernando Guerra, professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University, told City News Service. “And it actually allows for smaller districts that are not going to look and be cut up as weird as they look.”
Guerra also suggested that the council also put limits on how many people each member represents.
“I am eager to move forward with this imperative, and to put before voters this opportunity to decentralize the power structure in our city,” O’Farrell said in a statement. “Even as we navigate this challenging period, today we took the first step to ensuring fairer, more equitable, more accountable representation in Los Angeles.”
Katy Young Yaroslavsky, a City Council candidate running in the 5th District, told CNS that larger legislative bodies don’t necessarily lead to better outcomes — and sought data to prove otherwise. She pointed to Chicago, which is represented by 50 aldermen but “corruption is rampant there.”
Yaroslavsky is on leave from her role as senior policy adviser for county Supervisor Sheila Keuhl, who — along with each of her four colleagues — represents 2 million residents.
“If Nury Martinez represented 80,000 people instead of 300,000 people, I don’t think it would have changed what was said on the tapes,” Yaroslavsky said.
Yaroslavsky said that currently, each council member has a diverse district and that increasing the council’s size would “Balkanize” districts into individual communities. She instead advocated for more funding for council districts so they could retain staff.
According to O’Farrell’s office, Tuesday’s action means Los Angeles could have “greater representation, an expanded number of council seats, and an accompanying redistricting process in time for the 2026 elections.”
The council also separately voted to begin the process of placing a measure on the 2024 ballot or sooner that would create an independent redistricting commission for both the city and the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Councilman Paul Krekorian, who was elected council president later in the meeting, said a fresh redistricting process would go hand-in-hand with expanding the size of the council.
“Expanding the size of the council will also allow that redistricting process to take place in a way that doesn’t pit one community against another, the way that it does now,” Krekorian said. “And it will result in truly more proportionate representation that’s reflective of the diversity of Los Angeles.”
