Why this matters
Changes to San Diego County’s charter sound wonky, but they can determine who holds power and how they wield it, directly impacting essential services that residents rely on every day.
Early results show a razor thin lead to pass a sweeping package of changes to San Diego County’s charter — the foundational document that sets the rules for how the county can be governed.
The first round of unofficial results released shortly after polls closed Tuesday night showed 50.7% voting yes on Measure A. It’s just a roughly 9,000-vote lead.
Thousands of additional votes, including mail-in ballots, still must be counted in the coming days.
Supporters of the measure say it will increase transparency and modernize governance for a county that spends $8.6 billion annually and serves 3.3 million residents.
The measure will establish independent oversight offices, require disclosure of spending data and extend term limits for the county Board of Supervisors, increasing the number of terms from two to three.
But a less talked about, often glossed over portion of this measure will significantly expand the Board of Supervisors’ power over some of the county’s most consequential public servants.
With Measure A’s approval, supervisors will have the power to confirm the top administrator’s appointments of an assistant and deputy, as well as the county’s public health officer and the director of the Office of Emergency Services. They would also be able to remove any of those officials, with or without cause, with a four-fifths vote.
That same power will also extend to the county’s chief public defender — a position whose independence from political influence, defense attorneys argue, is essential to the role and baked into the constitution.
Unlike the other officials covered by the proposal, a county’s chief public defender leads an office whose attorneys stand opposite the government in court, routinely taking adversarial — and sometimes unpopular — positions on behalf of clients who can’t afford to put up their own defense.
Critics fear it’s a change that could make officials who are supposed to exercise independent judgment more vulnerable to the “whims” of politicians.
The county Board of Supervisors is a five-person nonpartisan elected body, meaning each candidate for office appears on the ballot without party affiliation. In practice, however, party politics influence the board and its decisions as supervisors set policy and decide how taxpayer dollars are spent. The county’s top administrator, on the other hand, is appointed by the board and responsible for carrying out policy decisions and overseeing day-to-day operations, including the hiring and firing of most department heads.
The board ultimately voted along party lines — three Democrats voting yes, two Republicans voting no — to put the question before voters.
Measure A also gives the Board of Supervisors the option to establish the public defender as an officer appointed directly by the board — rather than the top administrator. To make that happen, though, supervisors would first have to pass a new law, requiring two majority votes during public meetings.
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