The push to reform Los Angeles City Hall took a leap forward Thursday, with a City Council committee endorsing a detailed plan to establish independent redistricting but also postponing a decision on expanding the size of the City Council.

The council’s current redistricting process, which gives council members the final say over their own district boundaries, has been widely described by stakeholders across the political spectrum. Last month, state lawmakers passed overlapping bills that would force the city to pursue independent redistricting if it fails to do so on its own first.

Thursday’s committee vote was both momentous and incremental.

It was the first concrete proposal from the city council’s high-profile reform committee, which met in the wake of last year’s city hall audio leak scandal to promote reforms and restore confidence in the scandal-plagued institution.

The committee has been meeting around the city for months and extensively discussing the minutes of various reform efforts. The panel was undoubtedly under pressure to show something

theirs

work before Monday, the one-year anniversary of the audio scandal.

The proposal must still be signed by the full council, which will decide whether to place it on the November 2024 ballot for voter approval.

Meanwhile, the Reform Commission postponed for the second meeting in a row a decision on a second and more controversial proposal to expand the size of the 15-member city council. Increasing the size of the council would also be subject to a public vote, as it would require changes to the city charter, as would be the case for independent redistricting.

The idea of ​​expanding the council was proposed last year, days after the leak of a 2021 recording of a conversation about redistricting that included racist and derogatory comments about Black people, Oaxaca residents and others.

During the recorded conversation, three council members and a union leader said Ron Herrera, then head of the Los Angeles County Federation of

And

Labor discussed ways to draw district maps that would benefit both themselves and their political allies. They talked about carving up Councilor Nithya Raman’s district, with one Councilor Kevin De Len saying it should be done in a “blender.”

Herrera and then-council president Nury Martinez resigned in the wake of the scandal. By then, Councilman Gil Cedillo had already lost his bid for another term. De Len will stand for re-election in March.

The furor over the leaked tape injected new energy into City Hall’s reform efforts, fueling new calls for an independent redistricting system that would limit the City Council’s influence over drawing district boundaries and transfer those duties to a citizen commission that would be unfettered is made by tires. to special interests or other politicians.

The council is expected to spend several weeks publicly commenting on the proposal before seeking advice from City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto will draft ballot language for November 2024. At the committee’s proposal, LA would set up an independent committee with 16 voters. to vote members and four alternates.

It is unclear whether the reform commission will complete its deliberations on the expansion of the city council before the council votes on the independent redistricting measure.

Council President Paul Krekorian, who heads the reform committee, has proposed increasing the size of the council to 23 members. Councilor Heather Hutt publicly supports 25, while

Councilor Nithya

Raman said she would be open to as many as 31 people.

Near the end of Thursday’s meeting, Council Member Eunisses Hernandez told her colleagues she wants an analysis detailing how expanding the council would impact the body’s “legislative power” and how every city agency would be affected if there were 30 council members instead of fifteen.

“There’s a lot of data and information missing so I feel like I’m making the right decision,” said Hernandez, who represents part of the Eastside.

Councilor Bob Blumenfield, who is also a member of the reform committee, missed Thursday’s meeting but has called on the panel to delay a decision on the size of the council.

Blumenfield, who will be appointed in 2026, said the details of the expansion should be taken up by a new citizens commission charged with updating the city charter, the city’s governing document. He declined to say how many members the council should have, arguing that expansion should be “more modest than radical.”

The council has not seen an increase in size in almost a century, with the last expansion from nine to fifteen members coming into effect in 1925. The last time Angelenos took up the idea of ​​expansion was in 1999, when voters rejected proposals to move the council to 21 or 25 members.

Raman, a supporter of City Council expansion, said she has heard “a lot of skepticism” about the issue from her colleagues. However, she said she would also like to continue the discussion. Krekorian, who heads the reform committee, said he remains committed to efforts to add more council members. “I think it’s an important policy objective to reduce the size of our municipal districts,” he said. ‘But more needs to be done about this. We just finished part of it today.”