Can L.A. be less broken?

Good morning, it’s Tuesday, June 16 and you can expect minor clouds then major sunshine. 

How do you make the city of Los Angeles a little less broken? Or, dare we say it, well-functioning?

We’re still knee-deep in election season, which means there are plenty of sound-bite ready diagnoses and sparkly proposed solutions on offer. But one pathway that’s gotten relatively little attention — save for among a small cadre of local government die-hards —  is the long-running effort to reform the Los Angeles City Charter. 

The City Charter is akin to L.A.’s constitution: an extremely detailed governing document that dictates how the city functions. It’s deeply unsexy, eyewateringly dry and astonishingly consequential. And it can only be changed with a public vote, which — spoiler alert — is why you’ll be hearing a whole lot more about it as we head toward the first Tuesday in November. 

But the groundwork for what comes next will be determined Wednesday, when the City Council decides what possible charter changes to put on the November ballot.  

How we got here is a much longer story: The current drive for reform was largely spurred by the furor over racist leaked audio that upended city politics in 2022, along with a steady drumbeat of City Hall corruption scandals. (A staggering fact: Four sitting or former L.A. City Council members were charged with felonies in separate corruption scandals between 2019 and 2023.) 

There was a general sense that the public’s trust had been broken, people were fed up and the city was ripe for once-in-a-generation reforms. That, however, was years ago. 

The process since then has been marred by delays and minor controversies, but a citizens commission (which was convened after a lengthy council process) finished its work this spring. The commission recommended a sweeping set of rewrites, including increasing the size of the City Council to 25 from 15, bifurcating the role of the city attorney, transitioning to a two-year budgeting cycle and certain police oversight reforms, among many other topics. 

At issue at tomorrow’s meeting, in part, is whether the council will decide to hold certain issues for further study, potentially tabling them until the 2028 ballot — or maybe forever.

That’s what a powerful council committee recommended doing with some of the more controversial items, like expanding the size of the council and implementing ranked-choice voting. (Councilmember Nithya Raman, who is running for mayor, argued for putting council expansion on the November ballot and expressed frustration that they weren’t ready to move forward years after first broaching the topic; others contended that more review and information about the financial cost were needed, with Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson saying “better to do it right than do it fast.”)

Approving committee recommendations is typically the path of least resistance for the legislative body, but it’s very possible that the issue of council expansion gets reopened on the council floor tomorrow. Though given Harris-Dawson’s opposition, moving it to the 2026 ballot would be an uphill climb. 

Also under consideration is a proposal put forth by Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez to allow non-citizens to vote in local elections. The committee decided not to make a recommendation on it. 

We’ll have much more on the City Charter fights ahead in the months to come. We’ll also be zeroing in on some of the particulars for individual newsletters, so please let us know if you have questions or specific topics of interest. And in the meantime, this recent episode of charter expert Raphael Sonenshein’s Governance Matters podcast offers some good historical and political context.

When Caitlin Sullivan, co-owner of LA Grocery & Cafe in Melrose Hill, was preparing to open her store in 2023, she was intent on offering a banana that her customers would be proud to eat. And she found one: an organic, Fairtrade, fully traceable banana grown by co-ops in Ecuador and Peru, already available in the U.S. from the Bay Area to Tennessee to New York City.

But when she reached out to the supplier, she got back a shocking reply: a polite no. These elite bananas weren’t available for distribution anywhere in Los Angeles — or anywhere in California south of Solvang.

In today’s exclusive, L.A. Material contributor Vanessa Anderson peels back the layers of a local produce problem: how is it possible that, in a global megacity that worships fruit like Los Angeles, the most ethical banana isn’t on the table?

TRUMP VS. NEWSOM: Gov. Gavin Newsom accused the U.S. Justice Department of launching a politically-motivated investigation into him and his wife, with Newsom saying President Trump was “coming after me because I’m considering running for president.”

TEST MISSION TRAGEDY: Eight people are presumed dead after a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber crashed at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert Monday. 

THE POLITICS TO PIÑATA PIPELINE: In case you missed it, L.A. Material contributor Alex Zaragoza wrote about why L.A.’s piñata makers have been churning out ICE agent piñatas for the last year.

CALIFORNIA’S HOUSE MATH: Politico checks in on the state’s post-redistricting Congressional races and finds that Democrats are on pace to pick up at least four of the five districts they redrew. 

ANTISEMITIC SCION: The California Post reports that a raisin heir with a multimillion dollar home in the Pacific Palisades was arrested after allegedly waging an “antisemitic terror campaign” against the Chabad rabbi next door. 

DEFINE WELL-OFF: In Orange County, individuals earning up to $104,200 now qualify as “low income,” according to new state benchmarks. The cut-offs in neighboring L.A. County are slightly lower, but not by much. 

Last week, we shared a classic recipe for Chasen’s chili and over the weekend L.A. Material member Eric Spiegelman tried his hand at the meal — which he termed “SPECTACULAR.” Here are his recipe notes, as shared in our subscriber-only Discord server: 

AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee: "Failing and Flying" by Jack Gilbert.

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