These reforms strengthen representation, cut backroom power, and modernize how the city makes decisions.

Key changes:

• Expand the Los Angeles City Council, ideally to 31 members, to restore representative balance and reduce corruption and patronage risks.

• Require automatic resizing after each census (starting with 2040) so no council district exceeds 125,000 residents, so representation keeps pace with population.

• Clarify that the City Council is a purely legislative body, not quasi administrative. This reduces micromanagement of departments and restores real separation of powers.

• Strengthen mayoral executive powers so there is clear responsibility for running the city and coordinating departments.

• Implement ranked choice voting for citywide and council elections to improve representation, reduce polarization, and give voters more real choices.

• Mandate Charter Update Commissions every 10 years so the city’s foundational document keeps up with current needs.

These reforms unlock housing, remove artificial barriers to density, and let LA grow upward and inward in a way that supports culture and affordability.

Key changes:

• Require General Plan updates every six years so citywide planning reflects real growth, climate, and infrastructure conditions.

• Integrate Planning, Housing, and Public Works into one growth oriented structure for coordinated land use, infrastructure, and permitting.

• Commit structurally to pro housing, pro density policies, aligned with the state mandate for about 94,000 new homes per year.

• Reorient capital and infrastructure budgeting toward growth enablement, not just maintenance.

• Ensure planning decisions are data driven and transparent, tying infrastructure investment directly to density, sustainability, and mobility outcomes.

• Remove building height and density limits from the City Charter and move them to ordinance or plan level policy, where they can be updated as needs and technology change.

• Establish a borough style governance model with regional boroughs (for example Downtown, the Valley, the Harbor, the Westside, Northeast LA, the Eastside, Central LA):

  • Borough councils would handle local land use incentives, street closures, event programming, nightlife regulation, local capital improvement planning, and livability decisions.

  • Citywide policy would stay unified, while boroughs make context specific choices closer to residents.

A modern city needs modern financial oversight. These reforms give Los Angeles a stronger fiscal backbone and more independent watchdogs.

Key changes:

• Designate the City Controller as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) to consolidate fiscal leadership and citywide financial strategy.

• Provide the Controller with an independent, protected budget, modeled after the Ethics Commission, to safeguard oversight independence.

• Clarify the Controller’s audit authority to explicitly include all city programs, even those run by other elected officials.

• Authorize the Controller to hire outside counsel when there is a conflict with the City Attorney’s office.

• Charter protect the Fraud, Waste, and Abuse Unit, currently created by ordinance, so it cannot be quietly dismantled.

• Adopt staggered budgeting cycles:

  • Two year operational budgets in odd years.

  • Two year capital budgets in even years.
    
    This supports long term fiscal planning and project continuity.

These changes modernize the city’s workforce systems so LA can actually hire, retain, and support the people who make the city run.

Key changes:

• Modernize civil service and personnel systems to prioritize performance, efficiency, and flexibility instead of slow, rigid processes.

• Increase professional management capacity within departments, reducing reliance on political appointments and patronage.

• Align personnel systems with charter reform goals so hiring, promotion, and evaluation reflect measurable performance outcomes.

• Codify merit based hiring standards and leadership development pathways for department management.

• Empower the city’s Personnel and Management functions to lead reform initiatives on recruitment modernization, workforce planning, and digital efficiency.

These reforms coordinate the city’s physical backbone: streets, sanitation, capital projects, and the systems that make daily life work.

Key changes:

• Reform the Board of Public Works to improve transparency, accountability, and performance.

• Integrate Public Works more directly with Planning and Housing, so zoning, infrastructure capacity, and project approvals are synchronized instead of siloed.

• Create a unified infrastructure planning process that links capital improvement priorities to long term housing and transportation goals.

• Place all sanitation and street-cleanliness functions under one department rather than dispersing them across multiple agencies, improving efficiency and accountability while preserving all current worker protections.

• Consolidate all street maintenance and right of way service divisions into a single Department of Streets and Sanitation, with all existing union contracts fully grandfathered. This:

  • streamlines service delivery

  • simplifies accountability

  • eliminates overlapping jurisdictions

  • preserves every worker’s current protections, seniority, and bargaining rights

Taken together, these reforms do more than tweak rules. They reset how Los Angeles works at its core.

Big picture goals:

• End LA’s stagnation in growth and infrastructure renewal.

• Build a city that is structurally capable of meeting state housing and climate goals.

• Restore functional separation of powers, so each branch of government can do its job.

• Make planning, finance, and personnel systems proactive, not reactive.

• Embed efficiency, transparency, and growth orientation into the Charter itself, so reform is a permanent feature, not just a temporary fix.

Bottom line:
Fix the rules, and we can unlock a Los Angeles that works for working people, gives young people a real future here, and actually delivers on the promise of this city.