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San Diego County Board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer pitched a plan to reform the county charter by adding an ethics commission, fiscal watchdogs and an open budget process, while giving supervisors longer term limits and more say over senior staff.
It aims to improve what she called a “giant county bureaucracy of 20,000 people” that “doesn't seem to work for voters.”
If San Diego voters green-light it in the November election, Lawson-Remer said it would modernize county government and bring it in line with other large California counties. Los Angeles County is revising its government after voters approved a charter reform measure in 2024, while San Francisco is considering amending its charter.
Lawson-Remer argues the proposed changes would make San Diego County more efficient, enabling supervisors to better manage its $8.6 billion budget and serve 3.3 million residents. And she thinks it would position the county to respond to sweeping federal changes and budget cuts under the Trump administration, which has slashed funds for homeless programs, healthcare and food assistance.
“We have really tried to take a careful look at how to make government accountable and prioritize good government locally, because we’re nationally in a difficult situation,” she said.
Lawson-Remer said the reforms would add no extra cost to taxpayers and would instead use existing resources and modernize outdated structures to reduce “inefficiency, duplication, and waste.”
Critics say her plan goes too far and would invest the board of supervisors with inordinate power. On Saturday her colleague Supervisor Joel Anderson offered a counter-proposal; he also supports the oversight positions, but wants to limit supervisors’ authority over top administrators and apply longer term limits only to future office-holders, not the present board.
“My revised measure takes a more collegial approach: focused, transparent, and grounded in what you actually asked for: real reform, not a rushed power grab,” Anderson said in a statement.
What San Diego County’s changes would do
Lawson-Remer’s proposed charter reform has five main components. It would establish an independent ethics commission with authority over elected officials, which could examine complaints ranging from financial conflicts of interests to sexual harassment allegations. The commission would have the power to subpoena witnesses and would be required to make its findings public.
She also wants to create new positions for a nonpartisan budget analyst who reports to the board, and an independent program auditor to evaluate whether county programs in areas such as homelessness, mental health and jail services deliver the expected results.
For instance, she said, “if you’re spending money on homelessness programs, how many people are you helping per dollar, and are you getting them off the streets permanently or just for a few days?”
Her proposal also calls for county department heads to present budget requests directly to the board during public hearings, where they would explain their program needs and spending asks.
Under the existing system the county administrative officer develops the budget and submits it to the board as a finished document. Breaking it down by department would allow supervisors to weigh in earlier, and shape the budget before the spending plan is solidified, Lawson-Remer said.
She also wants to empower supervisors to hire and fire some top county officials, instead of leaving those appointments to the chief administrative officer. Under her plan the board would confirm appointments for the assistant and deputies to the CAO, the emergency services director, public health officer and public defender. It could also require the public defender to report directly to the board, instead of to the CAO.
Finally, the proposed charter reform calls for extending term limits on supervisors from two four-year terms to three, for a total of 12 years. Lawson-Remer said that would bring San Diego County in line with state legislative limits of 12 years, and other counties such as Los Angeles that allow three terms.
It would also apply those restrictions to other elected officials including the sheriff and district attorney, but only if state law is changed to permit that. Under current state law those countywide positions cannot be subject to term limits.
Lawson-Remer said 39 organizations contributed to the proposal and the final recommendations represent modest changes to increase the county’s efficiency without disrupting its existing structure.
“Some of the ideas that were on the table were pretty big changes, and those were eliminated in favor of thinking carefully, doing the smallest possible things to make moderate changes to make government work, and making government as accountable as possible to voters,” she said.
Charter reforms in other counties
Other large California counties are introducing more dramatic changes to their government structures.
For instance, in 2024 Los Angeles County voters passed a charter reform measure that introduced open budget hearings and a similar ethics commission to San Diego. But it goes much further.
The LA charter reform measure also adds an elected county executive, a sort of countywide mayor who will preside over government departments, develop the budget and lead emergency response. It expands the board from five to nine seats and creates a charter review commission that will meet every 10 years to consider additional changes.
“People are frustrated with the status quo,” said Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who spearheaded the charter reform drive. “They’ve lost faith in government, they see corruption and they want accountability.”
Reform was long overdue, Horvath said.
“We haven’t changed our model of government since 1912, when there were more cows than people and when women didn’t have the right to vote. We know 2026 reality is substantially different than the last time the county took a look at the governance model.”
The voter-mandated changes are being phased in over a decade. Los Angeles County launched open budget hearings last year, and is starting the second round now.
“The budget process here was historically rather opaque,” Horvath said. Now, “It’s a much more rigorous, robust public process,” in which department heads present their programs and staffing needs over several days of public hearings.
Los Angeles County is creating the ethics commission now and will introduce the county executive position in 2028.
In 2031, following the next redistricting cycle, Los Angeles County will be divided into nine districts, and elections for those offices will begin on a staggered basis starting in 2032.
The fact that supervisors called for diluting their own authority has been a source of wonderment to some observers; the civic organization Zócalo Public Square highlighted that paradox in a commentary entitled: “Miracle in L.A.: Politicians Seek to Reduce Their Own Power.”
Horvath maintains the extra seats are necessary to ensure that supervisors can adequately serve their districts, which now number around 2 million people each in the county of 10 million. She thinks adding a county executive position “creates healthy checks and balances.”
By contrast San Francisco, which operates as a consolidated city-county, is considering changes which would concentrate power in the mayor’s office. Mayor Daniel Lurie said those reforms would streamline government, arguing that the current system “locks in bureaucracy, diffuses accountability, and protects the status quo.”
One provision would give the mayor sole authority to hire and fire most city department heads and appoint deputy mayors to oversee some policy decisions. Another would give the city administrator authority over changes to the city's purchasing laws. Under a third measure the signature requirement for citizen initiatives would increase from 2% to 8% of registered voters.
San Diego County counter-proposal
Public speakers at a San Diego County Board of Supervisors meeting last month were divided on the merits of charter reform.
Some speakers applauded the supervisors’ goals of transparency, accountability, and independent oversight, but said empowering the board to hire and fire watchdogs and other top county leaders would undermine that. Critics objected to extending term limits for supervisors, saying two terms is enough time to get the job done.
Others argued that the county charter is broken and needs updating. Courtney Baltiyskyy, with the Tijuana River Coalition, said inefficient county systems have hindered efforts to fix toxic sewage pollution in the Tijuana River.
“For too long, there's been uncertainty about the health impacts about who's responsible and about how to actually move solutions forward,” she said.
The three Democratic supervisors - Lawson-Remer, Paloma Aguirre and Monica Montgomery Steppe - voted to approve the charter reform measure, which will return to the board for a second reading on May 19.
Republican Supervisors Joel Anderson and Jim Desmond opposed it.
Desmond, who terms out of office this year and is running for Congress, chastised the measure as a “self-serving action to put an extension of term limits on the ballot to the benefit of these current board members sitting here today,” arguing that the rest of the proposed reforms were included “to bury and sugarcoat the term limit extension from two to three terms.”
Lawson-Remer called that interpretation “very conspiracy-minded.” She’s expecting a baby in a few weeks and said whether to run for re-election in 2028 is not top of mind.
“You know what would be really self-serving is if I had a job that had maternity leave,” she said.
Anderson, who terms out in 2028 but is running for San Diego County Treasurer-Tax Collector this year, said he wanted to approve the measure, but objected to applying the extended term limits to sitting supervisors. And he disagreed with authorizing the board to confirm or remove senior staff.
Anderson introduced a competing charter reform proposal that the board will also consider Tuesday, which would also delete potential term limits on countywide officials such as the sheriff and district attorney.
The Board of Supervisors will consider both those motions next week, and vote on whether to place San Diego County charter reform on the November ballot.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
