But why? In Los Angeles, and the rest of the state’s major cities, the public sector has become the city’s dominant political force, drowning out the votes and priorities of everyday citizens. With this imbalance making local politics an often-forgone conclusion, it’s time to consider a possible reform that could restore the competitive opportunity for real, effective change.
When the broader city’s governance has failed and been wholly captured by self-perpetuating interest groups, communities must be allowed to govern themselves by establishing their own local city governments — a freedom that is currently de facto prohibited by state law.
Before the 2025 fires, Los Angeles failed to maintain basic infrastructure: the Pacific Palisades’ 117-million gallon Santa Ynez reservoir — built to provide extra water for fires — sat empty for cover repairs while hydrants ran dry, and maintenance cuts left 15% of its fire fleet inoperable.
Since the fire, building permits have been issued for just 10% of Palisades, leading President Donald Trump to issue an executive order pre-empting state and local permitting and allow self-certification for structures being rebuilt with federal assistance.
While many say better leadership can save the city, they are mistaken. A competent manager like Rick Caruso as mayor could have mitigated many of this year’s disasters, but would only be a temporary reprieve from the city’s ills — the root of which is its 235 annexations of surrounding, distinct and often self-sufficient communities who are now tied together by little more than their shared dysfunction.
As with California’s other megacities, what should be dozens of self-governed communities are shackled to a single political machine. Special interests, government employees and quasi-governmental organizations control funding, policies and candidates, treating the wealthy as piggy banks and the poor as vote banks. The result is a fragmented city where ballooning resources serve only to strengthen this political apparatus rather than improve residents’ lives.
The Los Angeles city budget has grown 43% faster than inflation, rising from $5.3 billion in 2004-2005 to $12.9 billion for 2024-2025 as the city’s population has slightly declined to about 3.9 million. Yet services aren’t improving for any residents, rich or poor, especially compared to its neighbors who resisted annexation.
Beverly Hills, for example, advertises a 2.4-minute police response time. In Los Angeles’s Pacific Palisades, I remember a neighbor running to my childhood home in a towel as he waited over an hour for LAPD to respond to a possible break-in.
For education, which represents the future of the city, things are even bleaker. Los Angeles Unified School District spent over $47,000 on each of its 398,487 students in the 2025-2026 school year, yet only 27.3% of students met basic science state standards. Compare that to neighboring La Cañada Flintridge, which spent $66.2 million, or under $17,000 per student, and 74.9% of students met science standards. LAUSD is a separate entity, but the same principles apply.
Combining services into larger entities might seem efficient, but in practice larger entities have more bloat per dollar and wield disproportionate power over citizens.
When the government becomes the biggest game in town, everyday citizens lose their voice. While a determined Beverly Hills resident could get on City Council by talking to enough of the city’s over 30,000 neighbors on weekends, in Los Angeles — with over 2-million voters and council districts of 140,000 people each — citizens can’t win office without bending the knee to wealthy or powerful patrons.
To restore effective, accountable and civic governance, the citizens of big cities like Los Angeles have no choice but to take back their communities. That means reforming arcane state rules that have prevented the detachment and incorporation of new cities.
Under state Local Agency Formation Commission rules, new cities must prove financial viability, win approval from both their own voters and those in the city they’re leaving, and pay decades of what amounts to alimony to their former municipality.
The current rules, updated in 2000, successfully blocked San Fernando Valley’s 2002 bid for independence. A narrow majority of San Fernando Valley residents voted for independence and $127 million annual “alimony” payments to Los Angeles for 20 years, but over 80% of Los Angeles voters decided to hang on to the territory.
By effectively prohibiting new endeavors in self-governance that could allow distinct communities to best advance their distinct interests, California state law condemns communities to dysfunction. To bring about a renewed era of local democracy, it’s time to stop allowing a host city to bind communities that want to leave, and end the “alimony” payments that make independence too costly — communities have already paid more than enough through the consequences of unaccountable dysfunction, accompanied by ever-rising taxes and fees.
At the local level, where Democrats and Republicans alike simply want safe streets, good schools and responsive government, smaller communities could even help bridge the national partisan divide.
Should the threat of independence weigh heavy over the Los Angeles political machine, governance might improve enough to keep the city largely whole. Otherwise, Los Angeles risks losing not just its communities, but the soul of its democracy — failing the fair land and people of Southern California who are, aside from their poor governance, some of the most blessed in the world.
