By Anthony Moon, Guest Columnist
This year’s deadly fires made one truth impossible to ignore: Los Angeles, both city and county governance structure, is so dysfunctional that its failures have become predictable.
The problem is simple: when a house sits on a bad foundation, it eventually collapses. LA was built on relentless expansion driven by power and greed, resulting in a structure too large for it to govern.
So, if California is redrawing lines, lines that erode democracy, cost taxpayers, and have an uncertain impact, then it’s time to draw a line that can reinforce democracy and make a direct impact. A line that creates a new county. South Bay County.
A county that can help reduce LA’s responsibilities to a manageable scale, and strengthen local representation, and finally provide focused stewardship for the coastline that defines the region’s identity and economy.
And who better suited to safeguard our treasured coastline than the communities that live along it, South Bay County, stretching from El Segundo to Long Beach, including the harbor communities LA swallowed a century ago, Catalina Island, and San Clemente Island.
I always knew about LA’s dysfunction, but moving to San Pedro made it impossible for me to ignore. I’ve lived across Southern California and the nation, yet nowhere have I seen a community so consistently neglected by the very government that claims to represent it.
San Pedro is a vibrant, diverse, culturally rich, and proud working-class community that should be thriving and deserves better. I needed to know why this was the case and ended up down a rabbit hole of LA’s history and structure, and the reason became clear: sheer size is LA’s greatest liability.
Think about it. How can one governing body adequately represent 10 million people spread across deserts, mountains, islands, and 70 miles of coastline? Just look at what’s breaking:
Justice system: So overwhelmed that equal protection under the law is an aspiration, not a reality. For example, crimes under $2,000 often go unprosecuted because the system has no capacity to pursue them.
Homelessness: Multiple agencies, overlapping authorities, billions in spending, and still no measurable improvement.
Infrastructure: More roads, bridges, flood channels, and storm drains than any county in the nation. And it shows, breakdowns outpace repairs every single year.
Environmental oversight: Repeated refinery violations, recurring sewage spills that shut down beaches, chronic air quality, and enforcement so thin it may as well be optional.
The Port: We allow one of the most valuable economic assets in the nation to be overseen by a municipal structure with long-established histories of corruption and inefficiency under an untenable arrangement: a divided port, managed by two different cities, with overlapping regulations, competing interests, and constant dysfunction.
Representation: Each LA County Supervisor represents more than two million people, more than the population of several U.S. states. Democratic representation, more like administrative triage.
The list goes on.
And the problem isn’t money. LA’s GDP is larger than many countries, and its revenue base per capita historically outperforms most regions in America. Nor is it a lack effort or intention, Igenuinely believe most of LA’s civil servants want to do right by their communities. It’s just structurally impossible.
No amount of money, new “task forces,” or “oversight panels” will fix this. These are justexpensive band-aids on a structural fracture. When a system becomes too large to function, you don’t keep patching it.
You rebuild it.
It’s time for California’s leaders to acknowledge that LA is too big to succeed. The state has the authority and obligation to create and adjust counties when an existing system can no longer meet the needs of its residents. South Bay County isn’t a radical departure from tradition; it’s a practical, long-overdue correction.
So, let’s not fear the substantial challenges involved in creating a new county, let’s embrace it and demonstrate to the nation that California can modernize its governance structures while leading the way to protect and expand democratic representation.
Anthony Moon is a business student at USC, a former Sergeant in the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), and a San Pedro homeowner.