Sunday, July 5, 2026

Public Can Weigh In July 8 on L.A. County’s Measure G Government Overhaul

Los Angeles County residents will have another chance on Wednesday, July 8 to weigh in on the biggest restructuring of county government in more than a century, when the panel overseeing those changes holds a public meeting in San Fernando.

The Governance Reform Task Force will meet at 5 p.m. at the San Fernando Recreational Park and Aquatic Center, 300 Park Avenue, with public comment accepted in person and online, the Altadena Chamber of Commerce announced.

The 13-member Task Force advisory body has been deliberately holding meetings around the county — its last session, on June 24, was at the Altadena Community Center — to reach residents far from downtown Los Angeles.

The task force advises the Board of Supervisors on carrying out Measure G, the charter amendment county voters approved in November 2024. It is the first major change to the county’s governing charter since 1912, when the county’s population was roughly 500,000; today it is close to 10 million, spread across the most populous county in the nation.

Measure G phases in sweeping changes through the 2030s. It expands the Board of Supervisors from five members to nine, to be seated through elections beginning in 2032 after a new citizens redistricting commission redraws district lines using 2030 census data. It creates a directly elected county executive — a first for California outside San Francisco — beginning in 2028, and establishes an independent ethics commission and an office of ethics compliance. It also lengthens the public-posting period for most county legislation to 120 hours from 72 and requires departments to present their budgets in public meetings.

For Altadena, an unincorporated community governed directly by the Board of Supervisors, the outcome is not abstract: the board that sets its policies, oversees its sheriff’s and fire services and is steering its recovery from the January 2025 Eaton Fire is the body being remade.

The measure passed with support from Supervisors Lindsey Horvath, its chief author, Janice Hahn and Hilda Solis, and the Los Angeles Times. It drew opposition from Supervisors Kathryn Barger and Holly Mitchell and from the county’s fire and sheriff’s departments. Barger, whose Fifth District includes Altadena, called the elected-executive provision a “Trojan horse” for concentrating power in a single office and argued that residents of unincorporated areas could feel less represented, not more, as county resources are split among more districts. Mitchell questioned how the county could add supervisors, staff and a new executive office from its existing roughly $46 billion budget without new costs; supporters counter that the measure bars new taxes and requires using existing funds, though the county auditor-controller has said it would likely bring additional future costs.

Since convening in 2025, the task force has adopted bylaws and, in December, recommended changes to make the county’s budget hearings more accessible, which the board adopted in January. A clerical error in Measure G’s drafting also inadvertently deleted Measure J, a 2020 measure directing county money toward alternatives to incarceration, a wrinkle county officials and community groups have been working to address. The task force is scheduled to complete its work by December 2028.