This commentary was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
San Diego County voters will see a measure on their November ballot that looks at first blush a lot like the sweeping overhaul passed two years ago by their Los Angeles County neighbors.
It won’t go quite as far. Its primary mover, Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer, considered including an independently elected executive in her proposal, like L.A.’s 2024 Measure G did, but decided against it because there wasn’t enough support for so much change. Nor will the measure expand the five-member Board of Supervisors, as L.A.’s did.
But it will add new oversight positions, including an independent budget analyst and a program auditor.
And an ethics commission.
The primary purpose of ethics commissions is to build confidence in government by promising to root out official misconduct, or at least campaign finance violations.
Lots of California cities have ethics commissions, but among counties they’re rare. San Francisco has one, but it’s a city as well as a county. Orange County has one. Los Angeles County’s is the newest and is currently under construction. San Diego County may become the fourth.
Lawson-Remer is part of a new-ish Democratic majority on San Diego County’s officially nonpartisan Board of Supervisors. She and Nora Vargas flipped the board from its decades-long Republican majority in 2020 with the help of an earlier charter reform that introduced term limits, ousting entrenched incumbents (although Lawson-Remer’s successful campaign, rather than term limits, ended her predecessor’s tenure).