CROSSOVER: Management Matters x Governance Matters with Raphael Sonenshein: Changes, Charters and the Constitution

But for listeners who may not live and breathe local governance, at least these days, let's start and talk about local government with what is a charter and why does it matter so much?

Well, thanks for having me and for sharing the stage with Governance Matters, our podcast, and we're so honored to be on yours at the same time.

Essentially, we live in a time where everybody's kind of demoralized feeling is focused on the national government, especially when it comes to democracy and the possibility of making the Constitution work and also asking how you can ever change the Constitution if you have to.

And the answer is it's almost impossible.

So that's one way of looking at government.

But when you go out to the states, the counties and the cities, especially the counties and the cities, you find this whole kind of thriving world outside the Constitution, not mentioned in the Constitution, where people can actually affect their own form of government on a regular basis if they have this magical thing called a charter.

which is a constitution where the authority comes from the state government to allow counties, but especially cities and also counties to some degree, to basically make their own rules of governance.

And the voters have the final say.

You don't have to go to three quarters of the state legislatures to change an amendment like you do with the U.S. Constitution.

It's this vital moving thing that people don't pay enough attention to because this is where the rubber meets the road out here at the local level.

You know, at the federal level, we obviously have the U.S. Constitution, and there's this thought that change can be really hard.

But there are some examples, especially at the local level of places that have these charters, that change is not only possible, but it's happening.

So can you give us some context on your experience with charters in Los Angeles?

Certainly.

Los Angeles, about 100 years ago this year, began the charter that it has right now, although it goes all the way back to 1889 with the first charter.

It governs what the mayor does, what the council does, what other officers do.

It's basically the rules of the road.

And what happens is if the city council puts it on the ballot to change or adopt the charter, the voters have to agree to it, usually by a majority.

So in Los Angeles, we're going through this wild period over the last four years of charter change, not only at the city of L.A., but a gigantic change at the county of Los Angeles that I'm dying to tell you about.

That's great.

Well, let's get to it in a second, but I want to step back and just ask, this powerful thing called a charter, how many people that are really living under a charter, how many of them know what a charter is and what's in it and how it helps govern their daily lives?

It's a great question because I spent two years as executive director of the last charter commission in LA almost 30 years ago, and no one had any idea what we were talking about until the very end.

What we kept saying is it's your constitution.

And that actually got people's attention.

And then we would ask people who makes the decisions at City Hall.