Endorsement: Yes on Measure J. Fund treatment, not punishment

Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, center, with supervisors Janice Hahn, Nury Martinez, member of the Los Angeles City Council, and Mark Ridley-Thomas during a Dec. 2016 news conference. Should the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors devote a healthy chunk of its annual revenue to community-based youth development, affordable housing, restorative justice, job training and similar programs? One of the county’s core functions is to serve residents in the greatest need, and for too long it has met those needs the wrong way — with arrests, when mental health treatment is critically lacking, and jail, when addiction treatment or supportive housing would bring better results. So does that mean the Los Angeles County Charter should be amended to require the Board of Supervisors to allocate at least 10% of its locally generated revenue to those programs? That’s a somewhat different matter — and it’s the question that voters face on their ballots as Measure J, which proponents call “Reimagine L.A. County.” In July, the Times editorial board criticized the supervisors for even putting the measure before voters because there was so little time to shape the details and analyze the possible consequences.