Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger says she will not run for the powerful new elected county executive office that voters created two years ago, and she wants her colleagues to delay decisions on specific Measure G implementation recommendations. The Board of Supervisors voted 4-0-1 on Tuesday to continue Item 18 for 90 days, delaying decisions on how much authority the future executive, a new budget and management director, and an independent legislative analyst will actually hold.
The vote, detailed by Pasadena Now, continued item 18 from the board's October 6 meeting rather than resolving it outright. Barger, who represents Pasadena and the surrounding area, used the occasion to publicly pledge she won't seek the new post and to urge fellow supervisors to make the same promise, arguing the reforms should not be shaped to benefit supervisors who might later run for the job themselves. She also asked county counsel and the county's new ethics commission to examine potential conflicts of interest in the process.
A Six-Figure Office With No Guardrails Yet
Part of what's driving Barger's caution is the sheer scale of the job itself. Based on county human resources figures and recent adjustments, Barger estimated the elected executive's total annual compensation at roughly $558,000, with pension eligibility attached, according to the same Pasadena Now report. The county charter requires the executive's salary to sit at least $1 above any other county elected officer's pay, and the office as designed carries no term limits and no required professional qualifications.
Measure G, approved by voters in November 2024, calls for the first election of a county executive in 2028. That officer would submit county budgets, appoint department heads subject to board confirmation, and direct emergency response, while the Board of Supervisors retains legislative authority and control over appropriations. The measure also expands the board itself from five members to nine, with the larger board's elections beginning in 2032 — the first structural overhaul of county government since the current charter, which set up a five-member board, was adopted in 1912, according to Wikipedia.
Cost Estimates And A Blank Check Warning
Barger's objections centered heavily on money. The October 20 agenda had called for the new legislative analyst's office to be operating by October 1, 2027, but Barger criticized that timeline for lacking a firm cost estimate. Adopting the task force's recommendations without one, she said, would amount to signing a blank check — something she called irresponsible and not transparent governance. She said she supports waiting until January 2027 before acting on recommendations from the Governance Reform Task Force, the 13-member body that advises supervisors on implementing the voter-approved changes.
That task force isn't working for free. The Board of Supervisors approved 13 dedicated ordinance positions and meeting stipends ranging from $125 to $375 per meeting in March 2026 to compensate its members, according to county records. Barger also questioned whether the broader reform process has had sufficient public participation, and she stressed that any delay in considering the task force's recommendations would not repeal Measure G or change the voter-approved charter provisions already set to take effect in 2028 and 2032.
Unincorporated Altadena Looms Over The Debate
Underlying the fight over timelines and org charts is a basic question: who gets to decide how services reach unincorporated communities once an elected executive and a bigger board are splitting power with the current supervisors? Barger warned the new structure could make county services less responsive in places like Altadena, which sits in her district and depends directly on supervisor oversight, and she pointed to the area's ongoing recovery from the Eaton Fire as a reason to get the division of authority right.
That fire killed at least 11 people, damaged thousands of structures, and burned over 14,000 acres in January 2025, according to the Los Angeles Times. Barger later championed the creation of the Altadena Wildfire Recovery Infrastructure Financing District in October 2025 to support rebuilding. The stakes remain immediate: Barger and Supervisor Lindsey Horvath co-sponsored a motion Tuesday requesting a report within seven days on possible stopgap services for 400 to 500 cases that may require continued case management as federally funded disaster case management approaches its October 31 expiration. The report would assess costs, review potential funding sources, and determine how many households risk losing help; approval of the motion would initiate planning, not immediately provide replacement funding, as reported by Pasadena Now.
Not Everyone Wants To Wait
Horvath, who championed Measure G from the start, has described the reform as a way to make county government more representative, accountable, and transparent — a framing that puts her at odds with Barger's push to slow things down. The disagreement over pace, rather than over the reform's underlying goals, appears to be what the 90-day pause is really about.
The reform rollout has already produced its share of complications. An administrative oversight discovered months after Measure G passed revealed that its charter language had inadvertently repealed 2020's Measure J, which required setting aside at least 10% of locally generated, unrestricted revenue, roughly $288 million in fiscal year 2025, for community investment and alternatives to incarceration. That mistake is why supervisors placed Measure E on the November 3, 2026 ballot, to restore the Measure J mandate and, separately, to require the board to appropriate a minimum annual operating budget of $14.3 million for the Ethics Commission and Office of Ethics Compliance starting in fiscal year 2027–2028, according to California Choices.
Progress on at least one piece of the Measure G framework has kept moving even as the structural debate stalls. The Board of Supervisors appointed former Los Angeles City Councilmember Michael K. Woo to the county's new independent Ethics Commission on September 29, joining commissioners Wilma A. Franco and Amanda Susskind to complete the panel's initial three members, who are now tasked with recruiting four more to fill out the full seven-seat body, per the LA County Ethics Commission.
