How to take part in Friday's first-ever meeting of LA County Ethics Commission

The Los Angeles County Ethics Commission meeting on Friday is a milestone in a couple of ways.

It’s the first time the largest county in the nation has had an independent watchdog commission to oversee campaign financing, lobbying, conflicts of interest and governmental ethics. The city of L.A. has had one since 1991.

It’s also the first in a bundle of county reforms approved by voters through Measure G in 2024, which include expanding the Board of Supervisors from five to nine members, creating an elected county executive role and a legislative analyst position.

“Ethics commissions aren't that sexy,” said Rob Quan, an organizer with Unrig LA, a watchdog group focused on money and politics.

But, he says, they’re crucial for making the relationship between money and elective offices transparent, which is often the root of political corruption.

“It's really important to have these kinds of resources to be able to make connections, follow money, and hold people accountable,” he said.

But Quan says having the first meeting is an important basic step, to establish “a centralized place where people can turn to, whether that's with a whistleblower [complaint] or just trying to get stuff changed,” he said.

A diverse makeup

The Friday meeting underlines the extent to which the commission is in its infancy, as not all seven members of the commission have been appointed.

So far three have been chosen, one each by the chair of the county Board of Supervisors, by the county assessor and by the Governance Reform Task Force, the body that’s guiding the implementation of Measure G. Members will serve staggered five-year terms. They include:

• Wilma Franco, head of community development group Southeast Los Angeles Collaborative (SELA)
• Amanda Susskind, former Anti-Defamation League Regional Director
• Michael Woo, former L.A. City Councilmember
  

The remaining four seats are still to be filled. They’ll be picked by those commissioners from a pool of members of the public who applied to be on the commission in July. That application window is now closed.

It’s an important change, a nod to taking influence away from elected officials, who are often in the position of appointing people to oversee their own ethical compliance. For example, elected officials pick all five members of the city of L.A.’s Ethics Commission.

The governance task force has forwarded 376 applications to the three commissioners. At Friday's meeting, they'll be discussing the best way to pick the remaining four members to ensure a wide range of backgrounds.

Members of the public can weigh in with their views either in person or online. You can find the agenda here.

Constraints

Despite all these steps taken to create the new ethics oversight agency, some people have concerns.

“I am doubtful that the ethics commission is going to have a lot of power," said Henrik Minassians, a professor in the department of urban studies and planning at California State University, Northridge. "The reason is because [of] the funding sources, and there are serious constraints with that.”

Both those issues may be helped by the Nov. 3 election. Measure E on the L.A. County ballot would guarantee $14.3 million in annual funding for the commission, adjusted for inflation, and give the commission the power to compel officials to testify through subpoenas and issue fines of up to $15,000 per violation.

A study out last month from the Rose Institute of State and Local Government said the reforms in Measure G are a “high-stakes experiment” whose success is far from guaranteed. But others say the reforms may bring a model of representative government that’s only been talked about so far.