By Jose E. Navarro, MBA | The Navarro Report | October 18, 2026
LOS ANGELES. Los Angeles County voters approved a $288.3 million annual set-aside in 2020, then approved a governance overhaul in 2024 that, by the county’s own account, would erase it. Nobody intended that outcome. Measure E, on the November 3 ballot, is the repair. It also does something larger: it asks voters to write an independent ethics commission into the county charter. The two goals travel together on one ballot line, and voters deserve to understand both the fix and the failure that made it necessary.
How a set-aside went missing
Measure J, approved in 2020 with 57.12 percent of the vote, requires the county to direct at least 10 percent of its locally generated, unrestricted general fund revenue to community investment and alternatives to incarceration. The county’s analysis puts the fully phased-in figure at $288.3 million a year. The money cannot go to the Sheriff, the District Attorney, the courts or Probation.
The measure then ran a gauntlet. A court struck it down in 2021, and an appeal reinstated it in 2024. Meanwhile, according to the Los Angeles Times, its language was never added to the charter document after the election. When county lawyers drafted Measure G in 2024, the governance overhaul that creates an elected county executive in 2028, they worked from a charter that did not contain Measure J. The county has said Measure G would therefore repeal it effective December 2028.
John Fasana, a former Duarte councilmember serving on the county’s governance reform task force, found the problem and raised it in June 2025. “Someone goofed,” he said at a public meeting. County counsel attributed the error to an earlier executive office administration and said it was working to ensure future charter amendments are codified on time. That is an adequate promise. It is not a control. A control would be a written checklist, a named owner and a public record showing that every voter-approved amendment actually reached the charter.
What Measure E does
Measure E restores the 10 percent requirement as a duty of both the Board of Supervisors and the future county executive. The Board could reduce it by a four-fifths vote in a declared fiscal emergency. Without Measure E, county counsel says the Board and the executive “will not be required” to continue it once the executive takes office. A 2025 county ordinance also sets the money aside, but the Board can amend an ordinance without a public vote.
The second half of the measure makes the Ethics Commission and its office a single independent department. The commission would have seven members, authority to investigate, audit and subpoena, and power to fine violators up to $15,000 per violation, adjusted for inflation, or three times the amount involved, whichever is greater. Its rules would take effect unless two-thirds of the Board vetoes them. Starting in fiscal 2027-28, the charter would guarantee a minimum budget of $14.3 million a year, rising annually, unless the Board skips an increase by a four-fifths vote.
Independence is the substantive point. Without a charter change, the Board would hire the commission’s compliance officer, and county counsel would advise both the commission and the officials it polices. The task force that designed the commission recommended writing its independence into the charter, which only voters can approve.
The questions voters should ask
The Los Angeles Daily News editorial board opposes Measure E. It calls the ethics changes “plausibly fine” but objects that they are bundled with what it calls a “really bad policy,” the restoration of Measure J. The Sheriff’s deputies’ union spent more than $3.5 million opposing Measure J in 2020. Supporters include Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Holly Mitchell, the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles County and Common Cause. No formal opposition argument was filed. Voters can reasonably weigh the merits differently, and a single vote on two subjects does limit that choice.
The fiscal analysis carries its own caution. The Auditor-Controller reports that the Measure J portion continues an existing allocation and changes no current revenue or spending. For the commission, however, the county “will need to identify additional revenue sources, reallocate funding from existing programs or services,” or both, and fine revenue cannot be predicted. The $14.3 million floor is roughly five percent of the Measure J figure, a modest price for independent oversight, but it is still a new obligation without a named source.
A pragmatic standard
Whatever the outcome on November 3, three controls are feasible. First, publish a public ledger showing every voter-approved charter amendment, the date it was filed and the date it was codified. Second, require county counsel to certify, before any charter measure goes to print, that it reconciles with all existing amendments. Third, report Measure J spending annually, by program, so the public can see what $288.3 million actually buys.
Voters will be asked to trust a county that lost track of its own charter to oversee itself more closely. The way to earn that trust is to show the work, starting now.
Jose E. Navarro, MBA, is a financial and operations professional with more than 20 years of experience across the nonprofit, healthcare, legal and government sectors, and the publisher of The Navarro Report, an independent fiscal-accountability news outlet.