Los Angeles Fixed the Plumbing - The Architecture Waits
OUTSIDE VOICE - Los Angeles voters said yes to everything on Tuesday. All eight city measures led in early Wednesday returns, from parks funding at 76.9% to a fire department sales tax at 53.6%.
That sounds like a mandate for reform. Look closer. Voters approved the plumbing of city government. The architecture, a bigger City Council and ranked-choice voting, never made the ballot.
The Charter Reform Commission was formed in 2024, a delayed answer to the City Hall audio leaked in 2022. Its final report this April called for 25 council seats and ranked-choice voting. In June, the Council sent the operational pieces to voters and parked the structural ones in a committee until at least 2028.
So what did the Harbor get? Three changes matter here, and each one moves the real decision somewhere quieter.
Planning appeals leave the neighborhood
Measure PL, at 70.3%, retires the city's seven Area Planning Commissions. Ours, the Harbor Area Planning Commission, is five local residents who hear Harbor-area appeals close to home. Harbor cases often turn on things only locals know: truck routes, the bluffs, a port operation's shadow on a residential street. A single citywide Neighborhood Appeals Commission of at least seven members replaces all of them.
The charter leaves geographic representation to a future ordinance. That is the sentence to watch. If the ordinance guarantees a Harbor seat, little changes for us. If it does not, a San Pedro variance could be heard by people who have never driven the 110 south of Pacific Coast Highway.
PL also flips a default. A general plan amendment backed by the Mayor and the City Planning Commission will now be deemed approved if the Council sits on it for 75 days. Today, silence means no. Tomorrow, silence means yes. For anyone who follows land use, that shifts the burden of attention: the work moves from winning a vote to making sure the Council takes one.
The Port's promise moves into the charter
Measure PRT, at 75.5%, writes the Port's waterfront access spending into the charter. Each year the Harbor Commission must set aside "a portion" of operating income for public access projects. Practice has been 10%, roughly $28.6 million a year, and about $407 million committed since 2015, split almost evenly between San Pedro and Wilmington.
Note the word portion. The charter guarantees the program, not the percentage. The number stays with the Harbor Commission, which sets it each year in public session. If the share slips, the charter will not stop it. Only people in the room will.
PRT also requires anyone seeking a Port lease to disclose its workforce effects. Councilmember Tim McOsker framed that as a safeguard against automation, and ILWU Local 13 backed it. Good. Disclosure is a flashlight, though, not a fence.
A budget on a two-year clock
Measure LA, at 60.4%, moves the city to a two-year budget and a capital infrastructure plan. The Port, LAX, and Water and Power must submit capital and debt plans every two years. In the Harbor, the Port's capital plan shapes where trucks route, how terminals modernize, and when promised waterfront projects break ground.
A longer horizon helps. It does not reform anything by itself. CityWatch columnist Jack Humphreville wrote in March that the two-year cycle "does little to reform the City's budget process." A calendar is a container. What matters is the plan that goes in it.
Measure FD adds a half-cent sales tax for the Fire Department, about $345 million a year with no end date. It needs only a simple majority because firefighters put it on the ballot by petition. It carries one smart guardrail: the tax cannot be collected in any year the city funds LAFD below its ten-year average share of discretionary spending. That clause deserves a watchdog. Budget offices are clever.
Where to show up
Charter reform was sold as rebuilding public trust. Voters handed City Hall new tools. Whether trust follows depends on three documents nobody has written yet:
- The ordinance that decides who sits on the Neighborhood Appeals Commission.
- The Harbor Commission's first annual access allocation under PRT.
- The first two-year budget and capital plan.
Each will pass through a commission or the Council with time for public comment. Neighborhood Councils can weigh in on every one.
The ballot was the easy part. Ordinances get written in rooms with fewer people in them. Be one of the people.
(Thomas J. Norman, Ph.D., is a professor of management at California State University, Dominguez Hills, and lives in San Pedro. He serves on the Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council and as a Neighborhood Council Budget Advocate. The views here are his own and do not represent either body.
