LA charter reform could reshape city politics. Instead it's mired in delays and infighting

Nearly four months after an already delayed start, L.A.’s Charter Reform Commission is “still at square one,” according to one commissioner.

With six months remaining before the commission’s recommendations are due, several commissioners, city officials and good government advocates told LAist they have concerns about transparency and independence. Some say they doubt the commission is in a position to accomplish a fraction of what it first set out to do.

The commission was formed after a series of scandals in City Hall and has been given the enormous task of crafting revisions to the city charter — the city’s version of a constitution — that could eventually make their way to voters and have far-reaching effects.

City officials have recommended the commission weigh in on topics like expanding the City Council, switching to a ranked-choice voting system for city elections, setting standards for the removal of city officials indicted on criminal charges and allowing the mayor to submit a budget that covers two years instead of the current one-year budget cycle.

Some worry city officials will use the commission as either a “rubber stamp” to forward Mayor Karen Bass’ political agenda or an excuse to kick reforms further down the road.

Raymond Meza, who chairs the commission, told LAist the commissioners are “ extremely independent.” He acknowledged the abbreviated timeline may force the commission to make hard choices about the topics it covers.

“ I just want to be honest with the public,” Meza told LAist. “I think they would understand that considering the amount of time that we have, I know that we are going to absolutely do our best.”

A late start

When the commission was first approved by the City Council and Bass in July 2024, city officials decided the mayor would appoint four members and both the president and president pro tempore of the City Council would appoint two members each.

Those eight appointees then would nominate another five members themselves through an open application process.

According to a schedule drafted by city analysts in 2024, all 13 commissioners were expected to be appointed by the end of last year. That would mean at most 15 months to debate, draft and send their recommendations to the City Council.

Two members now sitting on the commission were appointed by former Council President Paul Krekorian in September 2024, but the commission couldn’t begin its work until eight months later, when Mayor Bass appointed her four commissioners in May 2025.

In the time between, one commissioner resigned and left a vacancy to be filled by Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, as Council president pro tempore. That position still is empty after Blumenfield’s recommended appointee, Dennis Zine, withdrew his nomination.

Zine was vice chair of the previous Charter Reform Commission in the 1990s and represented the West San Fernando Valley on the City Council from 2001 to 2013.

He wrote in August that he “would not be able to work or communicate with such a hostile and anti-LAPD body of elected officials” in the City Council. Two city hall insiders have told LAist the Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee would not schedule Zine’s confirmation vote.

Committee chair Marqueece Harris-Dawson did not reply to LAist’s requests for comments about Zine’s nomination process.

The first commission meeting was held June 10 with the initial seven confirmed members. Some commissioners already were concerned about how much they could hope to accomplish in less than a year, they told LAist.

By the end of June, the commission had added five more members from an open application process and were one step closer to beginning to look at the charter.

'Still at square one'

LAist reached out to all 12 members of the Charter Reform Commission, and five talked with us about their experiences so far. Most commissioners who spoke with LAist requested we not share their names due to concerns they would be removed from their positions or excluded from commission work for speaking plainly with the media.

One commissioner told LAist they were told by commission staff not to speak with the press and that all media requests were to go through the chairperson, Meza. Meza and Justin Ramirez, the commission’s executive director, denied that staff told any commissioners not to talk with the press and said it is their right to do so.

A common concern shared by most commissioners who talked with LAist was a lack of real progress so far.

For example, one commissioner questioned how far the group has gone toward addressing the size of the city council.

“I say nowhere — still gathering data,” the commissioner told LAist.

The commissioner said the same was true for addressing corruption, another top priority of the commission.

Instead, much of their time has gone to discussions of ranked-choice voting, the commissioner said, which the commission member considered a far lower priority than ensuring accountability for the mayor’s office.

“ I want to get to the things that will help the city run better,” the commissioner said, “and I don't think ranked-choice voting is any panacea.”

While the commissioner expressed hope that they would pick up speed, they said there is a long way to go to get to meaningful charter recommendations.

“Basically, we're still at square one,” the commissioner said.

Commission chair Meza told LAist that the amount of time left poses a challenge, and there will likely be some hard choices on which topics the commission will be able to cover.

“The committee structure that was voted on and approved by the commission already narrows the subject areas,” Mesa told LAist.  ”Over the next few months, the commission may have to narrow that even more.”

Mesa said he is proud of the work the commission has done so far and expects that the recommendations will still be somewhat expansive.

The mayor’s office told LAist in an email that “Mayor Bass’ nominations were a result of careful consideration and the Commission is on track to submit their recommendations to the City Council in early 2026.”

Calls for greater transparency

Some commissioners, city council members and good government advocates have raised red flags about the perceived independence and a lack of transparency around the commission.

Aside from one commissioner telling LAist that staff had told them not to speak with the press, other commission members say they also have been limited from speaking publicly.

The Rev. James Thomas is on the commission and is a pastor, political science professor at Cal State L.A. and the president of the San Fernando Valley branch of the NAACP.

Thomas repeatedly has called attention to what he sees as a lack of consideration of Black Angelenos from city government.

“ I don't see anybody speaking, really, directly to our issues,” Thomas told LAist in an interview. “The fastest growing Black population in Los Angeles is in Skid Row, and nobody is saying anything.”

Thomas told LAist that he began to have concerns he was being silenced after he was told about a press conference held by the commission chair only after the fact, making him wonder why he wasn’t given a chance to weigh in.

Then, a virtual town hall was held for the commission, and he was told he could not join the meeting or listen to the live stream. Meza and Ramirez told LAist that there needed to be fewer than half of all members at the town hall for it not to be governed by the Brown Act, which they said would have limited the commission’s ability to have two-way conversations with the public.

Thomas said he was never asked to participate and wasn’t given a clear answer when he tried to find out why.

“ They want me to shut up,” Thomas told LAist, “and I'm not going to shut up.”

In response to questions about transparency concerns around the commission, Bass’ office told LAist the mayor “believes in transparency and absolutely encourages commissioners to engage with the public in order to make accurate recommendations for charter reform.”

Who gets to represent Angelenos?

Thomas said he has growing concerns that the public will not be able to see the commission as independent.

“ The bottom line is that the three people who are in leadership of the commission, the chair and the vice chair and the second vice chair ... they're all mayoral appointees,” Thomas said. “ We cannot look like an arm of the mayor because we get nowhere if we do that.”

Thomas said he is not accusing the mayor of wrongdoing, but when LAist asked whether he sees bias on the commission toward any individual government officials, he said in his eyes, it doesn’t look good.

“ They say that they're not [acting on behalf of the mayor],” Thomas told LAist, “but there's nothing that I am seeing that doesn't suggest that to me.”

Staff members Justin Ramirez and Max Podemski, the executive director and deputy director of the commission, also were appointed by Bass and Harris-Dawson. Ramirez told LAist the role of the staff is to help the commission execute the outreach and engagement plan, schedule presentations for the commissioners on potential reforms and conduct research to provide the commission.

Ramirez said staff also reviewed and narrowed the pool of over 200 commissioner applicants before sending 20 applications for the initial commissioners to make their appointments, leading some commissioners who talked with LAist to wonder who was left out and why.

Rob Quan, a good government advocate with Unrig LA, said transparency has been a “huge issue” and pointed to the relationship between commissioners and staff as especially troubling.

“ The biggest flaw in this commission and this process is that the mayor and council president chose the staff,” he told LAist. “The commission ultimately doesn't have real authority over the staff that is supporting them.”

One commissioner echoed this concern to LAist, saying staff “ calls me periodically to tell me what to do, which is actually highly inappropriate.”

Meza, who placed commissioners in their committees and was one of Bass’ appointees, told LAist that the commission is organized to provide “ a very high level of transparency for the public.”

He said that most commissions in the city are made up entirely of appointees nominated by elected officials, and the rare ability to have commissioners select some of the members themselves provided more independence. The initial commissioners also were able to carefully consider gaps in diversity, Meza said, making sure the commission represented  a “broad cross section of Los Angeles.”

City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez has a more skeptical view of the commission’s structure, saying that even though the commission selected some of its own members, five of those seven initial commissioners were appointed by either the mayor or Council president. She said she is concerned that in effect, this concentrated the commission’s power under the direction of just two people.

“I've asked people, 'How would you feel if the president of the United States and the speaker of the House of Representatives decided to appoint a handful of folks to propose amendments to the Constitution?' Well, that's the equivalency of what we are living with today,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez and Councilmember Imelda Padilla introduced a motion in the City Council in August to require disclosure of all communications between commissioners and elected officials and their staff that happen outside public meetings.

So far, the motion has been sent to the rules committee and has not been scheduled for a vote. Harris-Dawson, who chairs that committee and schedules its votes, has not responded to LAist’s questions asking why there has been no action.

Meza said he has not spoken to the mayor since before he was appointed and welcomes city officials to come and speak to the commission.

“ If they have any thoughts on any of the recommendations, they are welcome to come before the commission to express those thoughts in public because that's where they should be shared,” he told LAist.

Meza also has expressed some disagreement with Bass and the City Attorney about the powers of the city controller, which are now under the consideration of the commission.

Bass told federal Judge David O. Carter at a March court hearing that she would not agree voluntarily to an audit of city homeless services under her Inside Safe program.

“I do not agree to it because it is not consistent with the charter,” Bass told the court, “and because I fundamentally don’t think it is right for one elected official to audit another.”

Meza told LAist that he believes the controller does have that authority after the commission heard from leaders of the last charter reform process in 1999 who said they intended to give the controller that power.

It is an issue Meza says the commission should “clarify.”

What’s next?

Meza outlined the path forward.

The commissioners now are hearing from stakeholders, academics, experts, and city department heads about the issues in committee meetings, then the full commission will start taking votes on charter change recommendations toward the end of the year.

The first quarter of next year will be used finalizing the language of those recommendations, which need to be sent to the City Council no later than April 2, 2026.

Once they are sent to the City Council, the Council will then consider the recommendations before deciding what proposed charter changes they will send to voters on the November 2026 ballot.

Meza emphasized the importance of the commission and public participation in the coming months.

“ The charter may seem like some esoteric document, but it's not,” he said. “It is related to how fast your pothole gets filled or how fast your  street light gets repaired to how clean and safe your parks are, and so these are issues that matter to every single Angeleno.”

Meza said that if people want to get involved, they can join the commission’s social media channels, sign up for their newsletter or go to their website.

If you want to attend a meeting in person or online, you can find the meeting schedule here.