By Jose Navarro, MBA
Mail ballots go out to Los Angeles voters this week, and Measure LA asks for one yes-or-no vote on six separate charter changes. Some are overdue. Others shift oversight of billions of dollars in public works spending. The city’s own fiscal statement says it cannot put a price on most of them.
What one vote would do
The measure would move the city to a two-year budget, with the mayor submitting it by April 1 and the council acting by June 1. It would require a long-term capital infrastructure plan. It would revive the post of Director of Public Works, with authority over project construction, contract administration and street permits, and eminent domain subject to council approval. It would let the council, by ordinance, change or eliminate the Board of Public Works. It would add competitive-bid exceptions for software bought from manufacturers and for “critical infrastructure,” and allow minor bid errors to be corrected. And it would repeal two Charter bans: one on city “business enterprises,” the other on mortgaging city property.
What deserves credit
Two-year budgeting and a capital plan are pragmatic ideas. Riverside, Oakland and San Luis Obispo already budget on two-year cycles. Annual appropriations would still require a council resolution each year, so yearly review survives. Supporters, including City Controller Kenneth Mejia and former Controller Ron Galperin, are credible, and the measure says substantive errors on ethics forms cannot be waived. A city that waits years to repave a street needs better planning. The measure’s rebuttal adds that the new director would report to the mayor and council and stay subject to the independently elected Controller. That is a real safeguard, and it works only if the Controller’s audit reach is spelled out.
Where oversight moves
Today the Board of Public Works reviews contracts in public meetings. The measure says the board keeps its power to approve contracts, but it also lets the council reshape or abolish the board by ordinance. The board’s decisions are made in public meetings under California’s open meeting laws. The ballot materials do not say who would approve contracts, or where the public could be heard, if the board disappeared. A single appointed director cannot hold a public hearing the way a board does.
Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez, the only filed opponent, makes a pointed observation: a capital plan can be adopted without amending the Charter. If so, the budget and planning provisions are the easy part of the package, and the governance changes are the substance. That is where voters should look hardest.
A second pattern is evident in the text. Several of the new powers arrive “by ordinance.” The Charter would grant permission, and the council would write the rules later: what counts as critical infrastructure, which bid errors are minor, how the board is reshaped. Voters would approve the authority before seeing the limits.
What the cost statement leaves out
The City Administrative Officer estimates $4 million to $6 million in one-time costs for the two-year budget and the capital plan. For everything else, the statement is explicit: the financial and revenue impacts of “contracting changes, property mortgages, and business enterprises” cannot be quantified at this time.
Those are not small items. The examples reported for business ventures are modest: public-private partnerships on underused land, gift shops, intellectual property licensing, even asphalt sales. The Charter language, though, is not limited to them, and the mortgage power is described only as subject to state law. Mortgaging city property means pledging public assets as collateral. Business enterprises means the city taking commercial risk, with taxpayers carrying any loss. Bid exceptions mean some contracts would skip the lowest-bidder test. In my own work reviewing public contracts, items that cannot be priced are exactly the ones that deserve a limit written down in advance.
Five questions for City Hall
Before November 3, the measure’s backers and the council could answer these in plain English:
1. If the Board of Public Works is eliminated, who approves contracts, and in what public forum?
2. How will the council define “critical infrastructure,” and what reporting follows any no-bid award?
3. Which city assets could be mortgaged, what is off limits, and who must approve?
4. What revenue does the city expect from business enterprises, and who absorbs the losses?
5. Will the Controller receive explicit audit authority over each new power?
Better budgeting and long-term planning are worth supporting. But a package that pairs them with changes to oversight, and then asks for a single answer, forces voters to accept the unpriced parts to get the sensible ones. Measure LA may deserve a yes vote, and Election Day is November 3, so the answers are due now. Angelenos are entitled to know what the oversight trade costs before they cast it.
Jose Navarro, MBA, is a financial controller and public finance analyst with 20+ years in public finance, nonprofit management, and government contract compliance. He is the founder of The Navarro Report.
This article was produced through Human-Directed AI Journalism: the author directed the research, framing, and editorial judgment, and AI assisted with research and drafting. All facts were checked against public sources.