The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors have ordered the county counsel and chief executive officer to investigate and correct, by any means, an administrative error that inadvertently repealed a voter-approved measure earmarking funds for community investments and alternatives to incarceration.

Measure J, passed in 2020, required the county to dedicate at least 10% of its unrestricted funds toward youth development, job training, supportive housing and other programs furthering the county’s “Care First, Jails Last” stance. But the county failed to update the charter following Measure J’s passage and then, once again, left that language out when they put Measure G, which will expand the Board of Supervisors and reshape county government, before voters in 2024.

As a result, Measure G’s passage effectively repealed Measure J and it will now sunset in December 2028.

“The situation that has unfolded is enraging and unacceptable at every level,” Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said. “What has transpired is sloppy, it’s a bureaucratic disaster with real consequences, including the emotional trauma caused by a hard-fought, community-led effort being undone through a seismic administrative error.”

The supervisors, at their meeting Tuesday, July 15, passed an emergency motion 4-0, with Supervisor Kathryn Barger absent, directing county counsel to report back within two weeks “on possible legal actions, including the possibility of declaratory relief that would confirm the will of voters and ensure that Measure J remains in effect beyond 2028.”

Fixing the mistake could require another costly ballot measure. The supervisors ordered county counsel to prepare language for an ordinance that would quickly enshrine Measure J in law, but also to draft a potential charter amendment to present to voters next year if there is no other option.

Any ballot measure language must be solely “focused on correcting the clerical error” and should not “revisit the substance of Measure J or Measure G,” Horvath said.

“Simply operating in the spirit of Measure J is not enough,” she said. “Angelenos voted to enshrine it in our county charter and that was the expectation, mine included.”

While the supervisors can and will codify Measure J, voters sought a charter amendment to ensure it isn’t “changed or removed by future board of supervisors,” according to Supervisor Janice Hahn.

“We will do whatever we can to make sure that Measure J stays a permanent part of the LA County charter,” Hahn said.

The motion also directs staff to determine whether changes to state law are necessary to ensure Measure J continues “without the expense of a ballot measure” and to “evaluate what led to this error, what should have occurred and use that evaluation to develop policies and procedures to ensure that the County Charter is promptly updated to accurately reflect all amendments in effect and approved by voters.”

Executive Officer Edward Yen told the supervisors that his office had already started working on updating the county’s “lacking” written policies and procedures over the last four or five months, though it had not discovered the error yet.

“This failure of this magnitude is the reason why we’re doing what we’re doing, which is to review everything that we have to ensure that everything that we’re doing is based on law,” Yen said.

John Fasana, a former Duarte councilmember and member of the Measure G Governance Reform Task Force, flagged the error publicly during the task force’s July 9 meeting. Fasana, who opposes Measure G, called the error an example of the poorly written measure.

The Care-First Community Investment program, supported by Measure J, received $626.4 million in the county’s 2024-25 budget. Those funds cannot support jails or other carceral programs.

Criminal justice reform advocates at the Board of Supervisors’ meeting criticized the county’s leadership for the error, and some even accused officials of colluding with the opponents of Measure J to undermine it. The Coalition of County Unions, which includes the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, originally fought against the measure and filed a lawsuit against the county that nearly overturned it. The unions argued that Measure J would limit supervisors’ ability to decide revenue allocations, leading to budget cuts and increased crime rates.

The challenge to Measure J eventually went to the California Court of Appeals, where it was deemed legal.