State Constitutional Amendment 12, or SCA 12, would allow California voters to amend the state’s Constitution to require that L.A. County expand its Board of Supervisors from five to seven members and create an elected chief executive position with outsize powers and no accountability to the board.That means voters all over California would get to decide the structure of the Los Angeles county leadership. The Amendment would not change things in any other county.
Currently, all legislative and executive power of the Los Angeles county government (other than whatever powers are retained by elected Department positions such as Sheriff) flows from the five-member board, and the last time an incumbent running for re-election was defeated was in 1980. Members of the board kept getting re-elected until they retired, until statewide term limits were put in place. It is those terms limits that have likely been a major inspiration for the proposed Amendment, as state legislators would very much like to have more elected positions in which to land when they are termed out of Sacramento. There are over ten million residents in the county of Los Angeles, so even if the board had two more members, each one would represent well over a million people, and there's no doubt that a new elected executive would be a Democrat staging position for Governor or President.
What caught my eye, though was that people are touting "diversity" to support and oppose the Amendment.
