I’ve experienced those power dynamics directly. When racist and homophobic conversations among sitting LA City Councilmembers leaked in October of 2022, it was revealed that the Councilmembers were conspiring to manipulate the redistricting process to support their own re-election, and to significantly undermine my electoral prospects. In the end, my district was the only one that was significantly altered – the explicit goal of the people on those recordings.

As a political outsider who ran for office in 2020 because I believe in the potential for positive change at the local level, I feel a powerful obligation to try and restore faith in city government. That task is made more difficult with each new scandal, but it’s essential for the future of Los Angeles – if residents disengage from the process of policymaking, we cannot move transformative change forward, and City Hall will continue to be captured by special interests.

Fortunately, there are straightforward steps we can take to reform LA’s local governance. By setting an individual example in our campaign, advancing major policy changes in my first term, and laying the groundwork for more reforms, we’re doing the work to clean up City Hall and bring transparency and honesty to local governance.

Here’s some of what we’ve done:

• Run a 100% clean money campaign. Just like in my first campaign in 2020, I’m not accepting money from any corporations, any developers, or any oil and gas interests. I’m seeking to be the first incumbent Councilmember to be re-elected with a 100% clean money campaign – and I believe this kind of commitment should be standard operating procedure for any campaign in our city.

• Implementing a truly independent redistricting process for LA. After the conclusion of a rocky redistricting process in 2021, I proposed creating a truly independent redistricting system for the city that prohibited political intervention. Prior council leadership stalled that effort for a year, but after it was revealed in 2022 that Councilmembers had actively conspired behind the scenes to manipulate redistricting, I was able to successfully navigate an independent redistricting proposal through a full Council vote, in partnership with the new Council President Paul Krekorian. Because amending the city’s charter requires the approval of the voters, the proposal to create a truly independent redistricting process for the city will now be on the November 2024 ballot.

• Wrote the motion to create the City Council’s Ad Hoc Governance Reform Committee. After tapes leaked showing Councilmembers had conspired to manipulate redistricting for political gain, I submitted legislation to create a committee that would focus entirely on much needed governance reforms to help restore the public’s faith in city government. I now serve as Vice Chair of that committee, which designed the independent redistricting proposal that will come before voters in 2024 and is considering other policy changes like reducing the size of City Council districts, strengthening the Ethics Commission, and more.

• Live Spanish interpretation at committee meetings. In a city where more than half of residents speak a language other than English at home, our city government should be working hard to eliminate language barriers to participation. But when I took office, only the main Council meetings offered translation – not the many committee meetings where much of the substantive policy discussions take place. Thanks to a motion I authored, the City now offers simultaneous translation in Spanish in every meeting, including all Committee meetings.

One piece of significant structural change to LA city government is headed to the ballot in 2024, with more still on the table. I’m committed to move forward whatever policy I can to reduce opportunities for corruption and build a more transparent, efficient system for the people of LA.

If I’m elected to a second term, here’s what I believe we can accomplish together to reform local governance:

• Reducing the size of City Council districts. LA has the largest City Council districts in the country, because the number of seats hasn’t grown since 1925 when our population was a fourth of what it is now. We have more than a quarter-million constituents in each district! I strongly believe we need more council districts. Even though it would reduce our own individual power as Councilmembers, I believe that our districts have become too large for Council offices to serve effectively, and that the small number of seats also leads to underrepresentation for many communities in our diverse city. I continue to be the most vocal proponent on the Council for reducing the size of the districts by increasing the number of seats, and support placing this change on the ballot along with independent redistricting in November of 2024.

• Making significant updates to the Municipal Lobbying Ordinance (MLO). The MLO was passed in 1994, and has since not been updated, despite the fact that the Ethics Commission has reviewed it thrice since then and offered comprehensive suggestions for updates to the Council. In response to multiple incidents of misleading testimony from lobbyists in public meetings such as those at Neighborhood Councils, my office has led the work to update the Municipal Lobbying Ordinance for the first time since its adoption to require higher levels of disclosure for individuals paid to lobby elected officials.

• Reducing corruption by reducing individual Councilmember discretion over land use. Control over land use has historically been the biggest source of power for LA City Councilmembers. Because so many of our community plans are decades out of date, much of our new construction requires parcel-level variances from the outdated zoning regulations – and the Councilmember of the district where the project is located has discretion over whether those variances are granted. Council offices sometimes use their discretionary power over projects to negotiate community benefits from developers, such as construction of public parks or street safety improvements. However, this discretion has also led to the most outrageous recent instances of corruption in City Hall, where developers bribed LA city elected officials to ensure that projects would be approved. In partnership with Council President Krekorian and Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson, the Chair of the Planning and Land Use Management Committee, I am working to implement policy that would reduce Councilmember discretion over individual parcels. This change would both reduce incentives for corruption and speed up the construction of new housing – an urgent need for a city that has been completely incapacitated by its housing shortage. I am engaged with the effort to reduce parcel-level discretion over land use through multiple policy pathways, including the 2024 update of the Housing Element, updates to our Community Plans, the city-wide adaptive reuse policy, the affordable housing overlay, and other reforms to our planning code.