Metro Board Chair Fernando Dutra has created a new Ad Hoc Board Composition Committee to review and consider potential changes to the structure of the agency’s governing board. The new committee has its first meeting today, Monday, Feb. 23, at 1 p.m. at Metro headquarters adjacent to Union Station.
The agenda for the Committee’s first meeting is here. Visit that same link to watch or listen to the live web stream of the meeting on Monday or an archived recording to be posted after the meeting concludes.
Some background to understand this committee’s work: since Metro’s creation in 1993, the Metro Board has been comprised of 13 voting members: the five L.A. County supervisors, the Mayor of L.A. and three mayoral appointees, and four members representing 87 other cities in the county by geographic area (North County/San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel Valley, the Southeast County/Long Beach and Southwest Corridor). In 2003, a non-voting member who represents the Governor of California was added to the Board.
If you want a deeper dive, this Metro staff report details the history of our Board composition and the rules governing it.
The new committee was established by Board Chair Dutra to examine Metro’s current Board membership and evaluate whether updates may be needed in light of upcoming changes to the LA County Board of Supervisors.
Voters in 2024 approved Measure G that in 2032 will expand the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors from five members to nine — and create an elected County Chief Executive Officer starting in 2028. Under the current Board structure, the current County Supervisors are also part of the Metro Board and Measure G expands the Board of Supervisors..
Over the decades, there has also been occasional discussion at the local and state level about the Metro Board’s composition and whether it should be changed to reflect shifting demographics.
The Ad Hoc Committee — which will consist of Metro Board Members and non-Board members (the full list is below) — will be tasked with reviewing the current composition of the Board, gathering input from stakeholders and the public, and evaluating possible recommendations regarding Board membership. The Committee will oversee preparation of a report to the full Metro Board reflecting the Committee’s recommendations by June 30 of this year.
According to Board Chair Dutra’s instructions, the Committee’s work will be transparent and locally driven — a locally lead process is crucial. We’ll be reporting on the Committee’s work in the coming months, and we urge everyone to get involved and stay informed. The Metro Board was constructed to give county residents a voice in our work to improve mobility in L.A. County – and we take that seriously.
Ad Hoc Composition Committee members are:
- Metro Board Member and Glendale Mayor Ara J. Najarian (Committee Chair)
- Metro Board Member and County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath (Committee Vice Chair)
- Metro Board 2nd Vice Chair and County Supervisor Kathryn Barger
- Metro Board Chair and Whittier Council Member Fernando Dutra
- Metro Board Member and First Vice Chair Jacquelyn Dupont-Walker
- Metro Board Member and City of Los Angeles Council Member Imelda Padilla
- Former Metro Board Member John Fasana and Measure G Governance Reform Task Force Member
- Terry Dipple, Executive Director, Las Virgenes-Malibu Council of Governments
- Tracy Hernandez, Founding CEO, Los Angeles County Business Federation
- Jeremy Oliver-Ronceros, Vice President of Operations of DoGoodery and outgoing Chair, Metro Public Safety Advisory Committee
- Ernesto Medrano, Executive Secretary of the LA/Orange County Building & Construction Trades Council
- Metro Board Member (Non-voting) and Caltrans District 7 Director Gloria Roberts
Discover more from The Source
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Interesting to see an Ad Hoc committee being formed. I wonder what changes they’ll propose for the board structure.
Metro’s board structure is weak and deficient. The people making decisions are not directly accountable to riders as transit leaders, and many of them do not depend on the system in their daily lives. It shows.
The board is made up mostly of elected officials, who tend to treat Metro as one responsibility among many, and who often treat Metro more like a venue for political priorities, social-service spillover, and patronage-style job protection than a transportation service that must be safe, clean, frequent, and reliable. Riders feel that failure every day when the system is allowed to drift from its core mission of moving people efficiently.
Metro should reserve at least some board seats for independent private-sector leaders and transit riders who bring operational discipline, customer-service thinking, and firsthand knowledge of what works and what fails on the ground. The current board does not represent riders well and the structure should be changed to address that shortcoming.
If Metro is supposed to serve the public, its leadership should include people who actually use the services and who are wholly-focused on making Metro better.