Update: Trial in the case has been set for Feb. 4 at 1:30 p.m. Meanwhile, in a second attempt to preserve Measure J, the Board of Supervisors added some charter section renumbering to the Nov. 3 ballot measure for an independent Ethics Commission.
This story was originally published by the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation.
A lawsuit to preserve a mistakenly repealed Los Angeles County charter amendment relies on a novel legal theory: Two wrongs make a right.
Or to put it another way, a single monumental L.A. county screw-up would have been bad, but it was followed up by a second county flub that was so sweepingly inept that it erased the first mistake.
Whether the court will buy the argument is anyone’s guess.
The double error concerns Measure J, a 2020 ballot measure that sets an annual spending floor for alternatives to incarceration and racial equity programs, and Measure G, a 2024 measure to expand the Board of Supervisors, create an elected executive, establish an Ethics Commission and make several other governance reforms.
Without judicial or voter intervention, Measure J will be inadvertently repealed in 2028 when the elected executive provisions, a key portion of Measure G, kick in.
Continue reading at the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation