Push to Expand LA City Council
An opinion piece in CalMatters is proposing that Los Angeles voters should decide whether to expand the City Council. Proponents argue that adding more council districts would improve representation for the city's large and diverse population.
The Los Angeles City Council has operated with 15 members since 1925, a structure established when the city's population was less than 600,000. At that time, each council member represented roughly 38,000 residents. Today, with a population of nearly four million, each of the 15 council members represents approximately 265,000 people. This gives Los Angeles the largest population-to-councilmember ratio of any major city in the United States. For comparison, New York City has 51 council members, each representing about 173,000 people, while Chicago's 50 alderpersons each represent around 55,000 residents. A city charter reform commission recently recommended that Los Angeles voters consider expanding the council to 25 members. Such an expansion would reduce the number of constituents per district to about 160,000. This is not the first attempt at reform; in 1999, voters rejected two separate ballot measures that would have increased the council's size to 21 or 25 members. The recent push for expansion gained significant momentum following a 2022 scandal involving a leaked recording of three council members making racist remarks, which prompted renewed calls for structural governance changes. Any modification to the council's size requires an amendment to the City Charter, a change that must ultimately be approved by voters at the ballot box. The current City Council would first have to vote to place the expansion measure on the ballot.
