An effort by Democratic supervisors to dramatically reshape San Diego County government will soon be in the hands of voters.
County supervisors voted 3-2 on partisan lines Tuesday to place a measure on the November ballot that would, if passed, overhaul the structure of county government and consolidate more power with supervisors.
The proposed rewrite of the county’s charter, effectively its constitution, includes provisions to create new budget and auditor offices responsive to supervisors, allow supervisors to confirm and remove top county officials and establish an ethics commission.
The ballot measure would also extend term limits for supervisors from the current limit of two four-year terms to three. Term limits would be imposed on four other elected countywide offices — district attorney, sheriff, treasurer and assessor — only if state law changes to allow them.
Republican Supervisor Joel Anderson, who voted against putting the package to voters, called it “the biggest thing” the Board of Supervisors has voted on in his more than five years as a supervisor.
“This is huge,” Anderson said, adding the package “fundamentally changes” the direction of county government.
Republican Supervisor Jim Desmond joined Anderson in voting against the ballot effort.
Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer has masterminded the charter rewrite, promoting it as a way to make county government more transparent and accountable to the public.
To make that case, she points to how it would create new budget analyst and auditor offices. Those offices would be able to make independent reports on the county’s finances and how effective its programs and services are.
Labor unions, nonprofits and advocates have long complained that the county’s budget and programs are difficult to understand. Unions also object that the public gets only a limited view into how the county hires for top jobs.
In response, the package would expand the number of positions supervisors must vote to confirm, including top executives and the county’s public health officer, public defender and emergency services director.
San Diego County Supervisors listened to public comment on a proposal to overhaul the county charter at the County Administration Center on Tuesday, April 21, 2026, in San Diego. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
In Lawson-Remer’s telling, the structure of county government has not kept up with the needs of a growing region. She says community leaders and other outside groups have often found the county “opaque” and “a little bit hard to access.”
“County government has not kept pace with our responsibilities, and it is a really important moment to present to residents and voters some options to strengthen transparency, accountability and oversight of the county,” she said.
Many speakers at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting agreed.
“Clear oversight measures build public trust: these charter reform measures are exactly that,” said Mel Katz, a prominent local businessman and executive officer at Manpower.
Many others who spoke in support of the measure backed the idea of extended terms for supervisors.
“We have so many promising ideas, but we need this continuity and extended term limits to carry them out,” said Summer Ismail, a UC San Diego student and an organizer with CAIR San Diego.
Members of local unions, a major force in San Diego-area Democratic politics, also filled the Board of Supervisors chambers on Tuesday to back the ballot measure.
“In a county this large, serving millions of people and managing billions of public dollars, transparency and accountability cannot be optional,” said Greg Sowizdrzal, president of IATSE Local 122, which represents entertainment workers.
San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond criticized his colleague’s proposed county charter overhaul at their meeting on Tuesday, April 21, 2026, in San Diego. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
The panel’s Republican members did not share their enthusiasm about restructuring county government.
Desmond called the ballot measure merely a ploy to extend term limits for supervisors, likening the rest of the package to an effort to feed a pet medicine by hiding it in a snack.
“Transparency, accountability, independent oversight — we all want those things, and that’s being used to sugarcoat and cloud the basic item of extending the term limits,” Desmond said.
He also took aim at the package’s plan to create an ethics commission, noting that each supervisor would pick one commissioner and that county counsel, who is appointed by supervisors, would appoint the other two.
“To me, that does not sound independent at all,” Desmond said.
Before voting against putting the package on the ballot, Anderson said he was amenable to backing it but worried his constituents hadn’t had enough time to review it and its potential impact.
On term limits, Supervisor Paloma Aguirre stressed that the power to extend them will now lie with voters, not supervisors.
“This vote does not extend anyone’s term today,” Aguirre said. “All we’re doing is simply giving the voters to opportunity to decide what they what.”
The ballot language proposed by Lawson-Remer asks voters to approve term limits for county supervisors, DA, sheriff, treasurer and assessor “where allowed by law.”
It does not explain what the law currently allows, and it does not tell voters what supervisors’ term limits currently are. Instead it asks them to “set term limits to three terms for members of the Board of Supervisors.”
The ballot measure will come before supervisors again next month for a second reading. It will need support from only a simple majority of voters to pass in November.