The six charter amendments change how city government operates. Measure EE reduces City Council meetings from three per week to one, increases penalties for campaign finance violations, increases the authority of police and fire department oversight offices, raises the number of signatures required for ballot referendums and bars ethics commissioners from running for local office for five years after their terms. Measure LA moves the city from a one-year to a two-year budget cycle, allows the City Council to eliminate or change the Board of Public Works and gives the Public Works director more power. Measure PL consolidates the city's seven Area Planning Commissions into a single Neighborhood Appeals Commission. Measure PRK doubles the parks department's minimum budget over the next 10 years. Measure PRT adds new members to the Board of Airport Commissioners who live near LAX and Van Nuys Airport, updates lease rules for the Airports Department, Department of Water and Power and Harbor Department, and adds transparency requirements for Harbor Department leases. Measure SC applies the same campaign finance rules as mayoral elections to LAUSD school board elections, with a few exceptions, removing duplicative language.
The two fire-related measures also appear headed for passage. Measure FD, supported by the firefighters' union, would increase the citywide sales tax by 0.5%, adding an estimated $345 million to a new dedicated fund for Fire Department staffing, facilities, equipment and other core functions. Measure TE cancels the city's "mansion tax" for Palisades Fire victims who sell their residential property, applying to properties owned as of Jan. 7, 2025 and sold until Jan. 6, 2030.
The six charter amendments originated from the Los Angeles Charter Reform Commission's recommendations to the City Council. Diego Andrades, who served as a Charter Reform commissioner, welcomed the results. "Last night was a phenomenal Election Day for charter reform," he said, adding that the public input in the process had driven the recommendations. He cited Measure PRK, saying it was "purely recommended by the public": "That was something we weren't even looking at. Everything that we recommended to the City Council was driven by who we were serving."
Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, said none of the measures saw much coordinated opposition and called the amendments "non-controversial, but important." He pointed to Measure LA, which allows the council to eliminate or change the Department of Public Works, something he said the council tried to do more than 30 years ago. "They were not ideological charter amendments; they were administrative charter amendments," he said, "but they allow the city to do things that they haven't done before."
City Council members voted in June to leave some of the commission's more controversial recommendations off the ballot, including proposals to expand the City Council and implement ranked-choice voting. Andrades said more is likely to come. "The charter amendment process is not finished," he said. "We will see these reforms on the ballot, and when they are ready, I think we will see voters pass them."