Los Angeles City Council members, who are paid close to a quarter-million dollars annually, are seeking to reduce how often they are required to meet, even as the city continues to grapple with major challenges.
The council, where base salaries begin at $245,255 and can reach $270,389, voted 12-0 on June 30 to advance a proposal for the November ballot that would lower the City Charter’s minimum meeting requirement.
Monica Rodriguez, one of the 15 council members, left the meeting in protest before the vote, while two other members were not present.
Katy Yaroslavsky, among those supporting the change, argued that council members’ responsibilities extend well beyond formal meetings, saying she is working whether at City Hall, in her district or even at home while “doing dishes and vacuuming.”
The proposal quickly drew criticism. Rodriguez accused her colleagues of avoiding their responsibilities and predicted the public would strongly oppose the move.
Council meetings serve as the venue where many of Los Angeles’ most consequential decisions are finalized, including votes on billion-dollar budgets, police spending, homelessness initiatives, housing plans and large-scale developments.
At present, meetings can run from roughly two hours to as long as eight hours, depending on the agenda, and they provide residents with a public forum to question and pressure elected officials.
“The idea that members of this council would ask the public to grant them less days of showing up for work for council meetings is tone deaf,” Rodriguez told The California Post.
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She argued that packed schedules demanded better management, not fewer required meeting days.
“A lot of that just is born out of good planning, proper planning as a committee chair. I do believe the public expects us to conduct these meetings,” she said.
“What the people want are elected officials who want to do their work, especially when they’re getting paid a quarter of a million dollars and they have a $2 million staff.”
She added: “Anyone who finds the meetings inconvenient should perhaps think about other employment opportunities.”
The idea surfaced in early 2024, when Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez suggested scaling back to one meeting a week and pointed to the LA County Board of Supervisors, which meets regularly on Tuesdays, as a possible model.
At the time, Yaroslavsky and Councilman Tim McOsker formally proposed asking voters to reduce the Charter minimum from three regular meeting days a week to one.
Yaroslavsky described herself as “restless and frustrated,” and argued fewer mandated meetings could free members for other work.
“I’m working all the time,” Yaroslavsky said at a council meeting. “I’m either working here, I’m working in my district, I’m doing dishes and vacuuming at home, and all I want to do is be more efficient in this space.
“And that’s why I’m willing to take some of the blowback that may come from what some in the public may perceive as us shirking our responsibility when, in fact, I think it would actually allow us to be more effective.”
Sophie Gilchrist, a spokesperson for McOsker, told The Post the move is aimed at modernizing the charter.
“This proposal is about updating the LA City Charter requirement, not reducing the Council’s workload,” Gilchrist said, arguing that committees would continue meeting and the same volume of business would still move through City Hall.
She pointed to other major governments with less frequent full council meetings, including New York City and Chicago.
“The amount of work before the City Council doesn’t change. What this likely means is that we will have longer Council agendas, not fewer Council actions,” Gilchrist said.
Gilchrist added that McOsker supports longer meetings that could stretch into the late afternoon or evening, potentially giving working Angelenos more opportunities to participate.
The proposal lands as Los Angeles struggles to dig out from some of the biggest crises in its history.
In Pacific Palisades, thousands of residents have spent 18 months fighting to rebuild after the January 2025 fire destroyed roughly 6,800 structures.
“We didn’t vote our City Council in for one day per week,” Palisades fire survivor Jeremy Padawer told The Post.
Padawer, a prominent California toy executive and collector, lost his home and valuable collectibles in the fire.
His frustration reflects a recovery that has exposed how slowly Los Angeles can move when residents need government most.
“It’s already glacially slow to get urgent issues resolved. For instance, we’re 18 months post-fire in Palisades and it took most of that time to get permitting more streamlined,” he said.
“Also with holidays, I wonder how many of those weeks are already zero-meeting workweeks. They literally may be voting 35 days per year.”
Small businesses across LA are also fighting to survive under layers of red tape, permits and government approvals.
“With the state of affairs in Los Angeles, where decades of government overreach has made doing any business nearly impossible without constant interaction and approval by all manner of municipal bureaucrat, agency, committee, board or commission, absolutely none of which are incentivized to provide any customer service, having a City Council that meets less is a decidedly unwelcome development,” said George Francisco, board chair of the Westside Council of Chambers of Commerce and co-chair of the Los Angeles County Business Federation’s Responsible Governance Committee.
“LA needs more action and more activity, and it is very often only achieved through the attention and efforts of our elected officials pushing through the stagnation and disinterest of the layers of bureaucracy,” he added.
“Less Council meetings is only a good idea if it is accompanied by a massive reduction in the redundant layers of boards, committees, commissions, appeals and approvals.”
City Hall’s recent record shows how quickly work can pile up when meetings disappear.
Just weeks ago, a California Post investigation found the council committee overseeing homelessness and housing had repeatedly canceled meetings while major proposals involving hundreds of millions of dollars and oversight of the city’s homelessness system awaited action.
Councilwoman Nithya Raman, who chairs the committee, canceled four of eight meetings after launching her mayoral campaign in February, records reviewed by The Post found.
At one point, the committee went five straight weeks without meeting.
Raman’s office rejected claims at the time that homelessness work had stalled, blaming budget season and scheduling conflicts.
Her office argued that three of the five committee members also served on the Budget Committee, creating clashes and problems reaching a quorum, the minimum number needed to legally conduct business.
Voters will now get the final say on Nov. 3, when the proposal heads to the ballot alongside a broader package of Charter reforms that could reshape how Los Angeles City Hall operates.
