A year from now, voters in Los Angeles will get to decide if they want an independent redistricting commission to draw the lines that create City Council district boundaries — or if the City Council will retain its long-held authority to set its own district boundaries, an often politicized process without voter approval.

The City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to place on the November 2024 ballot a question asking voters if they would prefer to have an independent body, free of council influence, to redraw the council district maps every 10 years.

“Unfortunately, in the 100 years that this city has had council districts, we have never had independent redistricting,” City Council President Paul Krekorian said during a news conference ahead of the council vote. “It’s been the council that has drawn its own districts. And the system that we have right now is frankly the worst of all worlds.”

The council vote followed months of debate and discussion by a council committee assigned to look into local government reforms for Los Angeles.

Calls to end the City Council’s power over redistricting, which occurs every 10 years when the 15 council district boundaries are redrawn, began even before last year’s audio leak scandal, in which a secret recording released to the public revealed that three current or former councilmembers met privately to discuss how to redraw council district lines to benefit themselves or their allies.

The scandal upended City Hall and put a spotlight on the potential for the city’s long-standing redistricting process to be tainted. Under the existing system, the politically appointed commissioners who make recommendations about district boundaries are handpicked by city elected officials, and the City Council has the power to override their recommendations.

Next November, voters in L.A. will decide if they want an independent commission to redraw council maps, or stick with the status quo. If voters decide to switch to independent redistricting, the district maps drawn by an independent commission would be final, meaning councilmembers would have no power to veto the commission’s decision.

Councilmember Nithya Raman and Krekorian called for an independent redistricting process after the City Council redrew its district boundaries in 2021. Raman said during Wednesday’s council meeting that independent redistricting would be a critical first step toward restoring the public’s faith in elected representatives at City Hall.

“For this city to be governed in the best interest of the people of Los Angeles, we actually need to step back from the powers that we have in our own hands and to give those back to the people of Los Angeles,” said Raman, who, along with Krekorian, serves on the council’s governance reform committee.

Kathay Feng, vice president of programs for Common Cause, a national nonprofit that advocates for representative government, said Wednesday she’s confident voters will support independent redistricting, which is aimed at restoring the public’s confidence in their government.

“This is not a small thing for the legislative body itself to put forward this level of independent redistricting proposal before the people, that doesn’t have strings attached or secret mechanisms, that would give power back,” Feng said.

The independent panel would be made up of 16 commissioners and four alternates.

Three amendments were made to the proposal before the council voted Wednesday to request that the city attorney draft an amendment to the city charter, which would appear on the November 2024 ballot, calling for an independent redistricting commission.

The amendments call for increasing from three to five years the time that someone who serves on the redistricting commission must be a resident of L.A.; instructing future commissioners that they “should” (not just “may”) consider local economic assets when redrawing the lines; and decreasing from four years to two the time a former city employee must have ended city employment before being eligible to serve on the commission.

The amendments were voted on before the council took public comment, which drew criticism from members of the public.

The governance reform committee will meet to discuss the following:

• An independent budgeting process and apolitical funding source for the ethics commission.

• A review of best practices for an ongoing review of charter reforms.

• A discussion about changing the number of council districts in L.A.

There appears to be broad consensus that L.A. should increase the number of council districts, though what that number should be is under debate. Angelenos have 15 representatives on the City Council, and each one represents nearly 265,000 residents on average.

By comparison, New York City has 51 councilmembers, who each represent fewer than 173,000 people on average, and Chicago has 50 councilmembers who represent about 55,000 residents each.

Alongside that debate, the council in the coming months will consider ways to strengthen the city’s ethics commission to pursue further reforms at City Hall.