I’ve Voted in Every Election in L.A. since 2016. Here are my choices for 2024
A personal list for L.A. City and L.A. County Measures this November
Over the weekend, on a video shoot with some friends, I had the opportunity to speak with Jose, the owner of Casa India, a “hole-in-the-wall” just across Grand Central Market which he and his family have run for 35 years. Among other anecdotes he shared about his tenure there, Jose told me that the last time he even saw a political figure who simply took the time to speak with restaurateurs like himself was when Antonio Villaraigosa was mayor, which was more than 12 years ago.
Jose also told me that while he initially felt good about Karen Bass’s victory for the city, he’s since let go of the idea that she might bring about transformative change for stakeholders like him and his family in downtown L.A. It’s a lost opportunity, he emphasizes to me, since even after losing many customers during the pandemic, the restaurant and bar have survived because of fierce loyalty from those who’ve known and relied on it for years, even decades. If those in power could appreciate this and work with him, he’s confident they could grow and serve another generation of night-goers in the most “Manhattanized” part of the city. Until then, he tells me, “a struggle” only begins to describe what it’s like to keep dishing out the $18,000 of rent due for the space each month.
Not far from Broadway at City Hall, L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia has spent almost a year sounding alarm bells over L.A. City Council’s woeful overspending on the LAPD, or the “LAPD Budget,” especially due to the agency’s liability settlements; but unlike the days leading up to Mejia’s victory for the Controller’s office, his graphs and informational reels for followers on Instagram and TikTok now garner a fraction of the engagement they got when he was running for the office two years prior. Maybe his account’s been shadow-banned by some powerful interests–keeping it from most of L.A.’s general populace to engage with and organize around–or maybe these platforms were never actually built for day-to-day oversight of something like L.A.’s Budget.
Either way, before it was all normalized, it felt to many voters like Mejia and his team could make far more impact at City Hall for residents like Jose. To be clear, Mejia had frequently stated that he had no control over decision-making for the budget, but just over what he and his team could say about it. Now, the argument from his office and other recently electeds is that with a stronger progressive block at L.A. City Hall featuring Ysabel Jurado for the East side and maybe even Jillian Burgos for the San Fernando Valley, transformative policies on a larger scale for the city’s working-class communities may finally be within reach. Although a lot can be made of this claim given Jose’s experience alone, I too would argue that generational challenges like those facing Casa India take generational time and resources to address, and that elections can and do play a significant part in the story’s arc.
With this said, below are a brief notes for readers on ballot measures for L.A. City Hall and L.A. County this November. Besides the quick summaries, other guides I’d recommend to read up on these items are those of L.A. Forward, La Defensx, and even that of the good ole L.A. Times, though the latter option is pay-walled.
Please also note that I’ve not been asked by any of these publications to recommend their guides, but that I’m doing so just in the interest of providing more resources for voters; likewise, bear in mind that the opinions below are entirely mine and not reflective of the views of the team at Making a Neighborhood.
Last but not least, for my recommendations on State Measures, Assembly Races, and even the head-to-head match-ups from the local to the presidential, come to my Vote By Mail Party at Bellevue Park on Tuesday, October 22nd from 6:00 - 8:00 PM, for which you can RSVP here.
L.A. City Measures
I. Yes on Charter Amendment DD, Redistricting Amendment. Speaking of generational change, guess how long it took L.A.’s all powerful City Council to figure out that gerrymandering neighborhoods in their own narrow interest is probably not the most democratic way to serve the city? (You don’t want to know.)
II. Yes on Charter Amendment II, City Administration and Operations Amendment. Among other slight updates, advocates for this measure argue that once we make the L.A. Zoo and El Pueblo Monument officially a part of L.A.’s Recreation and Parks Department, it should help us create “more park space.” Godspeed, since in 2018 Neighborhood Data for Change cited a study showing that “Los Angeles has a median of 3.3 acres of park space per 1,000 people, well below the median of 6.8 acres per 1,000 people in other high-density U.S. cities.” The study also ranked L.A. 74th out of 100 U.S. cities in terms of park space.
III. No on Charter Amendment FF, Fire and Police Pensions and Peace Officers Amendment. Please see the aforementioned notes on how settlement payouts to cover up for LAPD is actually torpedoing the L.A. City Budget for other services. Or, read this article about how L.A.’s taxpayers are on the hook to pay no less than $21 million for LAPD’s detonation of explosives in the 27th Street neighborhood in 2021.
IV. Yes on Charter Amendment ER, City Ethics Commission Authority and Operations Amendment. This measure needs no sassy line; in all honesty, I’d like to shout out the quiet but stealthy staff at the L.A. Ethics Commission over the years, whose work in creating transparency for constituents has greatly enriched the journalistic work of jimbotimes.com in particular.
VI. No on Charter Amendment HH, City Governance and Elections Amendment. The part which concerns me the most about this proposal is the line about “expanding the City Attorney’s subpoena power.” In 2021, after reporting on the LAPD’s invasion of Echo Park Lake, L.A. Taco reporter Lexis Olivier-Ray became the subject of legal harassment by then L.A. City Attorney Mike Feuer; but Feuer’s use of the city’s legal resources in what may be called retaliatory action was not a one-off. Last year, current L.A. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto sued reporter Ben Camacho, as he tells it on the Social Primate Podcast, for publishing photos handed to him by an LAPD officer. While Feldstein-Soto went on to lose her case against Camacho, for her and her predecessor’s troubling records again independent journalists of color, I’m opting to send Amendment HH back to the drawing board without expansion of the L.A. City Attorney’s power.
VII. Yes on Charter Amendment LL, Redistricting for Los Angeles Unified School District Amendment. Ah, to govern the second largest school district in the nation. Let’s definitely have more parents involved instead of board representatives hand-picking the redistricting commissioners, which of course was just aspiring to imitate the tradition at L.A. City Hall ya’ know.
VIII. No on Los Angeles Unified School District, California, Measure US, Bond Measure. Personally, my biggest gripe against not just local and state proposed bonds isn’t just the fact that it’s borrowed money, which benefits big banks, but also the fact that this basic reality is utterly omitted from the measure’s language on ballots. Loans come with interest rates and take a long time to be applied, so voters should know that this is definitely a matter of placing future generations on the hook for a budget item which should already be accounted for by the L.A. City, County, and State budget. After all, “ballot box budgeting” can easily lead a number of people to mistakenly vote and pass the toll on to future generations. There are also serious cases to cite about the lack of accountability for bond appropriations actually reaching the places they’re supposed to once “approved” by voters. At least personally, I’ve had enough of that.
L.A. County Measures
I. Yes on Los Angeles County Measure A, Sales Tax Measure. As exhausting as it may be to vote on yet another measure for homelessness which appears poised to produce little results, I agree with L.A. Forward’s note on this measure that the city has in fact staved off a far worse homelessness crisis if not for services provided by conscientious voting on initiatives like Measure H. Measure A makes the services opened by Measure H in 2017 permanent, so let’s get it done while also being only more vigilant over the appropriate use of these funds for those most in need. Ah, the “checks and balances,” they said.
II. Yes on Los Angeles County Measure G, Ethics Commission Amendment. Did you know that the L.A. County Board–which is of particular importance for unincorporated urban communities–doesn’t even have an oversight commission for best practices yet? Let’s correct that ASAP and even get four more County Supervisors to the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration for our 10 million residents while we’re at it. A win-win.
That’s it for now. Remember to RSVP to my Vote By Mail Party at Bellevue Park next Tuesday, and happy voting, Los Angeles!
J.T.