LA County Measure J – Permanently Allocate Local Funding to Community Services – YES
LA Forward strongly recommends a YES vote on Measure J which would amend the LA County Charter to permanently allocate at least 10% of unrestricted, locally-generated tax revenues to community-serving programs like mental health services, affordable housing, job creation, youth programs, and alternatives to incarceration in Black, brown, and low-income communities across LA.
When discussing Measure J it’s important to have some context about the County budget and what Measure J does and does not do. At $35 billion annually, LA County manages the second largest local budget in the country. Over 85% of the overall budget, or $30 billion annually, is fixed and non-flexible spending that’s difficult to adjust from year to year. The remaining 15% of the budget, about $5 billion in 2020-21, is discretionary and can be shifted around by County officials each year. Measure J targets only this $5 billion of annual discretionary spending, and would require that 10% of that amount — up to about half a billion dollars in the current budget — be spent on community programs and alternatives to incarceration. That would more than double what the County currently spends on such programs.
Los Angeles County runs the largest jail system in the world, and the county spends more than 40% of its annual discretionary budget on law enforcement. If voters were building a new county budget from scratch, there is no way they would spend such staggering sums on policing, courts, and jails at the expense of everything else. This disproportionate spending on punishment comes at the expense of programs that address the root causes of poverty, inequity, and violence — not just the symptoms. The LA County Sheriff’s Department alone receives over $3 billion dollars annually, while programs focused on economic development, affordable housing, small businesses in Black and brown communities, mental health services, diversion and re-entry, and other alternatives to incarceration receive only a fraction of that.
Measure J was only added to the ballot in August 2020, after a motion co-authored by County Supervisors Sheila Kuehl and Hilda Solis (“Re-Imagining L.A. County: Shifting Budget Priorities to Revitalize Under-Resourced and Low-Income Communities”) passed 4-1 among the County Supervisors. Being added to the ballot only three months before the election has meant that many voters have not had the chance to learn about Measure J, which is unfortunate because it is one of the most ambitious efforts to rethink local budget priorities anywhere in the country.
Measure J is alternatively known as Reimagine LA, which is also the name of the broad coalition of local nonprofits, social justice leaders, community groups, labor unions, and progressive politicians supporting it. It is the culmination of years of organizing by Los Angeles community groups and social justice advocates. It shares many of the same organizers and endorsements as other recent community-driven initiatives to address the harm that the criminal legal system has inflicted on Black and brown communities, including Measure R (“Reform L.A. Jails”), which increased civilian oversight of the Sheriff’s Department and required the development of a county-wide plan to reduce the jail population and invest in alternatives to incarceration. Despite strong opposition from the Sheriff’s Department and local law enforcement, Measure R passed overwhelmingly in March 2020 with the support of nearly 73% of LA County voters. Much of the research, planning, and organizing that Measure R helped set into motion is now represented in Measure J, and voters would be wise to vote for it with similar enthusiasm.
Opponents of Measure J deploy two general arguments. The first, advanced most aggressively by Sheriff Alex Villanueva, is that public safety would be compromised by any decreases in law enforcement budgets. The second, cited by LA County Supervisor Kathryn Barger (the only County Supervisor against Measure J), is that mandating 10% of the discretionary budget on community programs would tie the hands of local politicians and endanger essential services. Both arguments appeal to voters’ fears — Villanueva literally tweeted an image from Mad Max and said it was what LA County would become if Measure J passes — and both are misleading and factually inaccurate.
Supervisor Barger’s argument is rebutted by her four colleagues on the Board of Supervisors and by the substance of Measure J, which makes clear that the 10% requirement can be eschewed in the event of budget emergencies that threaten the county’s essential programs. Sheriff Villanueva’s argument relies on a narrow conception of public safety that ignores the impact of poverty, trauma, and generations of disinvestment in communities most impacted by violence. It also ignores the systemic racism and violence inflicted primarily on communities of color by law enforcement, and assumes that crime is something “bad people” do and will always do. Rather than making long-term investments in building healthier, more resilient communities with less violence, it demands massive and never-ending spending on policing and carceral systems that do not actually make us safer. Just compare the violent crime rates in the U.S. to other developed countries with far fewer police and much lower prison populations.
Budgets are statements of our values, and the county’s current budget allocates obscene levels of spending on enforcement and punishment with few resources leftover to invest in building the kind of communities and society we want. Passing Measure J would shift hundreds of millions of dollars each year away from carceral systems and into restorative and rehabilitative ones. It is a modest first step toward a more rational and humane county budget, and we give it our strongest possible recommendation.
We enthusiastically urge a YES vote on Measure J.
Join our campaign to let voters know why Measure J is so important: https://www.mobilize.us/laforward/event/338374/