A nonprofit group that delivers services to people with HIV and AIDS wants voters to force the city of Los Angeles to create its own health department, separate from the county.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a longtime critic of the county's health bureaucracy, wants the city to operate its own health agency rather than rely on the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. The foundation has begun gathering signatures for a 2014 city ballot measure to do just that.

The county department is too big and does an abysmal job of disease control, foundation President Michael Weinstein said. A smaller, city-run agency would be more effective and accountable, said Weinstein, whose foundation won passage last year of a ballot measure requiring actors to wear condoms during shooting of pornographic movies.

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