The Los Angeles County panel advising the Board of Supervisors on sweeping governance changes picked Michael K. Woo for the new Ethics Commission late Wednesday evening.
The former Los Angeles City Councilmember, college dean and urban planner was one of six applicants publicly interviewed by the 13-member Governance Reform Task Force.
Under rules recommended by the Task Force and adopted by the Board of Supervisors as ordinances, Woo (if confirmed by the board) and two other ethics commissioners will select four others for an inaugural seven-member board. One of those four must be a resident of an unincorporated Los Angeles County community.
On Tuesday, the board confirmed board chair Hilda Solis' nominee, Wilma Franco, executive director of the Southeast Los Angeles Collaborative, and Assessor Jeffrey Prang's nominee, attorney and nonprofit leader Amanda Susskind.
If voters approve Measure E in November, the county Ethics Commission will be independent, in the sense that it will have the ability to hire and supervise its own director of enforcement and can be advised by an attorney other than county counsel. If Measure E is rejected, the commission will essentially report to the elected officials whose conduct it is supposed to be scrutinizing.
An independent ethics commission "to increase restrictions on lobbying and investigate misconduct" is one of the mandates of Measure G, the county charter reform voters approved in November 2024. It must be in place this year.
The measure also requires a directly elected county executive in 2028 and an expanded, nine-member Board of Supervisors in 2032.
In the midst of studying how to launch the commission, the Task Force learned earlier this year that despite Measure G, it simply could not create a body that is "independent," as that term is generally understood – not without yet another charter reform. The Task Force recommended the amendment that became Measure E, and the supervisors put it on the ballot.
Selecting a member of the Ethics Commission was not within the Task Force's original scope of work. But for ethics appointment purposes it is stepping into the shoes of the county executive, who won't be elected until 2028. The executive will appoint someone to the seat for a term beginning in January 2029. The other appointing authorities are the board chair and the assessor.
The Task Force and ultimately the supervisors rejected appointment power for the district attorney and the sheriff, despite the fact that District Attorney Nathan Hochman is a former president of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission.
Prang's predecessor as assessor, John Noguez, is being prosecuted on bribery charges.
The Task Force recommended the unusual public interview process and whittled down the six finalists from an applicant pool of 374. The others were former Carson Public Works Director Maria Williams-Slaughter, Los Angeles City Charter Reform Commission member Carla Fuentes, attorney and former Los Angeles City Ethics Commission President Jeffrey Daar, early childhood program developer Leticia Casillas-Sanchez, and California Common Cause official Sean McMorris.
Interviews took place at a public meeting at the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration beginning at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday. Members then deliberated in closed session for nearly six hours – interrupted by a brief public discussion and vote to send the supervisors recommendations on the new county executive position – before selecting Woo after 10 p.m. on a 9-2 vote.
The five who were not selected remain part of the applicant pool available to Woo, Franco and Susskind to select four more commissioners.
Woo was elected to the Los Angeles City Council in 1985. He headed an ethics committee that played a leading role in developing Proposition H, a successful 1990 ballot measure to create a city ethics commission.
He is currently president and project director of the 1871 Memorial Project to create a memorial of the notorious massacre of 18 Chinese men. He was a member of the Los Angeles Planning Commission.