Abolish the City Council

Resignations and reform won’t fix the City Council. We should abolish it instead.

The council has never worked well — it’s little more than a machine for corruption and incompetence. And L.A. doesn’t need it. Because Angelenos can do the job themselves.

There’s a model for this, called the citizens assembly. A citizens assembly consists of everyday people who are chosen by lottery. Los Angeles could design the lottery process to select a group of Angelenos that is representative of the city by race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, national origin, class, neighborhood and just about any other factor we like. Members of this lottery-selected assembly would serve two years — and then be replaced by another lottery.

L.A. would be an American pioneer in this, but not a global one. Paris just established a permanent citizens assembly; a Belgian province also has one. Countries from Japan to Ireland have created such bodies after breakdowns in trust in public officials, to address issues from abortion to climate change.

With a citizens assembly, the games stop. There will be no redistricting process because there will be no districts. There should be no racist conflict over council elections, because there won’t be any council elections. Transparent, public meetings replace backroom discussions. And more people can participate — the assembly should have at least 200 members. This should happen fast. Good government groups should file a charter amendment now to abolish the City Council and establish a citizens assembly.

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square, where a longer version of this idea appears.