Results from a county-led report expected to provide a study on the feasibility of East L.A. becoming a city or special district are now overdue.
In April, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors motioned for a study and analysis of the tax base of East L.A., among other directives, and imposed a 120-day deadline on the County CEO’s office to publish results that give residents a better idea of what incorporation would look like for the community of nearly 120,000 people.
That report should have been completed by Aug. 21.
County Supervisor Hilda Solis, who represents East L.A. in District 1, wrote in a statement last month that she was “disappointed that the deadline will not be met by our County departments,” and instructed the CEO to “do everything necessary to get the job done as quickly as possible.”
“The people of East Los Angeles have made it clear they want accountability and transparency, and that is exactly what I aim to provide as Supervisor for the First District,” Solis wrote.
Elizabeth Marcellino, a spokesperson for the County CEO’s office said in a statement to Boyle Heights Beat that the office needed more time to complete the report due to the complexity of data it needed. Marcellino gave no estimated date of completion.
The study was spearheaded by Solis and County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, largely in response to conversations that bubbled up around AB 2986, a bill that would have established a Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) task force to explore the feasibility of East L.A. becoming its own city.
The bill was critically amended in July, dropping the task force component and instead affirming two L.A. County motions that commit to conducting a feasibility study and providing East L.A. a thorough report of its tax base and of the county services that return to the region. The bill would have mandated L.A. County to report the findings of its own study to the state by March 1 of 2025.
However, the bill did not receive a final vote from the California Senate before the legislative session concluded on Aug. 31, leading state Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez to move it to the inactive file at the request of the bill’s author, Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo.
Inactive bills are dead or dormant but can be reintroduced at a later time by the bill’s author or any other member of the Legislature.
But because Carrillo is finishing her term in the state Assembly this year, it will be up to any future member of the Legislature to reintroduce the bill come the next session starting in December, according to a spokesperson from the Senator Gonzalez’ office.
Since it was introduced by Carrillo in March, the bill garnered support and pushback from East L.A. residents and local leaders alike. Solis opposed the bill from the beginning, calling it a waste of taxpayer money and an “unnecessary overreach of state authority.”
Both supporters of the bill and Carrillo have said that early conversations around the bill’s intentions motivated the county to commit to conducting its own study to provide a clearer look at the fiscal health of the mostly-Latino community.
“AB 2986 arose from the need to make the present and future well-being of East Los Angeles residents and small business owners a priority for Los Angeles County officials. The residents have sought a stronger civic voice for decades and are deserving of local government representation that will help enhance tax revenues,” the politician wrote in a statement on Sept. 1.
Along with a cityhood feasibility study, the County motions will lay out details on the costs and results of prior studies, existing tax revenues of East L.A. and offer a look at county investments in the region, something bill proponents say is a step toward a more transparent local government.
There will also be an analysis to determine the feasibility of forming a town council or municipal advisory committee to better directly represent the region, as it has no local government or elected officials.
The second county motion the bill affirms commits to providing annual reports of services and investments made in all unincorporated communities in the county with populations of more than 10,000 people, including East L.A.
Efforts to incorporate East L.A. into a city have failed in the past, with one of the latest attempts failing in 2012 when LAFCO found that the unincorporated area would not be able to financially sustain cityhood.
AB 2986 coasted through the Assembly with little opposition from state legislators and advanced through several rounds of votes from different senate committees before being designated as inactive in August.
Read the Boyle Heights Beat series on the efforts to explore East L.A. cityhood.
