Latest news with #DavidO.Carter
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The overhaul of L.A. County government begins now
In November, Los Angeles County voters approved Measure G, which promised to transform county governance. The process that will implement its reforms begins now with the creation of the Governance Reform Task Force, and L.A. County leaders, residents and media need to be engaged because, as the saying goes, 'The devil is in the details.' For too long, the county has underserved the people of Los Angeles. With nearly 10 million residents, our county is more populous than 40 U.S. states, yet it is governed by only five supervisors, each overseeing about 2 million people. The result has been reactionary leadership that maintains the status quo when the challenges we face require speed and innovation. Read more: Editorial: Voters just passed L.A. County's most important government reform in decades At its core, Measure G is about ensuring that the county can meet our greatest challenges. After all, the design of a government shapes the behaviors of those who govern us. The Board of Supervisors will be expanded, over time, to nine members from five. And an elected county executive will provide for the separation of executive and legislative powers, and a more accountable county government. Take for example the devastating January fires. The Palisades and Eaton fires tore through the cities of Los Angeles, Malibu, Pasadena and Sierra Madre. The largest devastation in terms of deaths, homes lost and residents displaced was in the unincorporated neighborhood of Altadena. Instead of having one voice and one plan leading fire response and recovery at the county level, residents must navigate a maze of district by district bureaucracy to put the pieces of their life back together. Imagine if there was just one elected county executive guiding one regional strategy — this is the future we can create. Read more: Your guide to Measure G: Expanding the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, electing a county executive Now let's consider homelessness — the most pressing issue facing the county year after year. Despite spending billions of dollars each year, the county has yet to move the needle far enough in addressing the issue. When an audit was mandated by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, the county learned of eye-popping inefficiencies and nepotism, leading it to pull its funding from the city-county Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, and leading to the resignation of the agency's chief executive. Is this effective governance? Is this the best we can do? In their recent book 'Abundance,' Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson point to the need for proactive government in fostering innovation and breaking stagnation that places such as Los Angeles face. But ending the status quo won't be easy. So many entities will resist change — agencies that have been allowed to underperform, vendors who overcharge, nonprofit organizations whose million-dollar contracts with the county may change — because an opaque county system is working for them. Read more: Two workers fired from LAHSA had accused top executive of improper behavior Right now, the vision and continuity of the county change on an annual basis along with the rotating chair structure of the five-member board. Most actions get decided based on district preferences instead of the regional greater good. But as the founding fathers noted, government works best with checks and balances. The county supervisors, as the legislative branch, should have a healthy level of friction with an executive to keep them accountable to the people. Measure G's addition of an elected county executive establishes those checks and balances. This change is critical to the leadership needed to tackle major crises such as homelessness and emergency response. The new task force will also define the scope of a new independent ethics commission mandated by the measure. Read more: Los Angeles homeless chief to resign after the county guts her agency Measure G is not just governance reform — it's also democratic renewal. Los Angeles County's form of government hasn't changed since 1912, when our population was just 500,000 and women didn't have the right to vote. To have world class transportation countywide, to transition to a green economy, to lessen disparities between rich and poor requires innovation. As the task force begins the process to implement the voter-approved Measure G, we need the voices of all 88 cities and our hundreds of neighborhoods to help define the future of county government. Tune in for our livestreamed meetings, email your ideas to the task force and be sure to get involved as the task force develops and rolls out a community engagement strategy in the coming months. We can't afford to waste this opportunity. As a member of the task force, I welcome your participation in shaping the county we all deserve. This thrilling process starts Friday — join us. Sara Sadhwani is a politics professor at Pomona College and was appointed by Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, co-author of Measure G, to serve on the Governance Reform Task Force. If it's in the news right now, the L.A. Times' Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
The overhaul of L.A. County government begins now
In November, Los Angeles County voters approved Measure G, which promised to transform county governance. The process that will implement its reforms begins now with the creation of the Governance Reform Task Force, and L.A. County leaders, residents and media need to be engaged because, as the saying goes, 'The devil is in the details.' For too long, the county has underserved the people of Los Angeles. With nearly 10 million residents, our county is more populous than 40 U.S. states, yet it is governed by only five supervisors, each overseeing about 2 million people. The result has been reactionary leadership that maintains the status quo when the challenges we face require speed and innovation. At its core, Measure G is about ensuring that the county can meet our greatest challenges. After all, the design of a government shapes the behaviors of those who govern us. The Board of Supervisors will be expanded, over time, to nine members from five. And an elected county executive will provide for the separation of executive and legislative powers, and a more accountable county government. Take for example the devastating January fires. The Palisades and Eaton fires tore through the cities of Los Angeles, Malibu, Pasadena and Sierra Madre. The largest devastation in terms of deaths, homes lost and residents displaced was in the unincorporated neighborhood of Altadena. Instead of having one voice and one plan leading fire response and recovery at the county level, residents must navigate a maze of district by district bureaucracy to put the pieces of their life back together. Imagine if there was just one elected county executive guiding one regional strategy — this is the future we can create. Now let's consider homelessness — the most pressing issue facing the county year after year. Despite spending billions of dollars each year, the county has yet to move the needle far enough in addressing the issue. When an audit was mandated by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, the county learned of eye-popping inefficiencies and nepotism, leading it to pull its funding from the city-county Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, and leading to the resignation of the agency's chief executive. Is this effective governance? Is this the best we can do? In their recent book 'Abundance,' Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson point to the need for proactive government in fostering innovation and breaking stagnation that places such as Los Angeles face. But ending the status quo won't be easy. So many entities will resist change — agencies that have been allowed to underperform, vendors who overcharge, nonprofit organizations whose million-dollar contracts with the county may change — because an opaque county system is working for them. Right now, the vision and continuity of the county change on an annual basis along with the rotating chair structure of the five-member board. Most actions get decided based on district preferences instead of the regional greater good. But as the founding fathers noted, government works best with checks and balances. The county supervisors, as the legislative branch, should have a healthy level of friction with an executive to keep them accountable to the people. Measure G's addition of an elected county executive establishes those checks and balances. This change is critical to the leadership needed to tackle major crises such as homelessness and emergency response. The new task force will also define the scope of a new independent ethics commission mandated by the measure. Measure G is not just governance reform — it's also democratic renewal. Los Angeles County's form of government hasn't changed since 1912, when our population was just 500,000 and women didn't have the right to vote. To have world class transportation countywide, to transition to a green economy, to lessen disparities between rich and poor requires innovation. As the task force begins the process to implement the voter-approved Measure G, we need the voices of all 88 cities and our hundreds of neighborhoods to help define the future of county government. Tune in for our livestreamed meetings, email your ideas to the task force and be sure to get involved as the task force develops and rolls out a community engagement strategy in the coming months. We can't afford to waste this opportunity. As a member of the task force, I welcome your participation in shaping the county we all deserve. This thrilling process starts Friday — join us. Sara Sadhwani is a politics professor at Pomona College and was appointed by Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, co-author of Measure G, to serve on the Governance Reform Task Force.
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A federal judge is demanding a fix for L.A.'s broken homelessness system. Is receivership his next step?
With the top city and county elected officials sitting in his jury box, the judge lectured for more than an hour, excoriating what he called the Rocky Horror Picture Show of homeless services in Los Angeles. But when it came time to reveal the drastic remedy anticipated by a courtroom full of spectators, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter hit pause. He gave Mayor Karen Bass and Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Kathryn Barger until May to fix the broken system, vowing only then to become "your worst nightmare" should they fail. "I think as elected officials, you've inherited an extraordinarily difficult task," he told them. "And I imagine you came to court today thinking that hell and brimstone would rain upon you. Quite the opposite. At the end of this, I'm going to be asking if there's anything that your branch of government can do to resolve the problems that have been presented to you." An attorney in the case, alleging that the city had failed to meet its obligations in a settlement agreement, urged Carter to employ his ultimate weapon — appointing a receiver to run the city's homelessness programs. But that prospect led the often blustery judge to turn openly introspective, ruminating on the limits of his power and the risks of using it to try to reverse decades of mismanagement by other branches of government. "So unless the two of you can work this out in some way, the court's going to have to," he told Bass and Barger. "And I'm not sure what to do about that because then I am intruding. I've got a great chance of a reversal [on appeal], I understand that. But if I don't, then I'm complicit, I'm sitting here doing nothing." His dilemma arises from a 5-year-old lawsuit brought by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, a nonprofit organization of business owners, property owners and residents. It alleged that the city and county had failed to address street homelessness. Through an order and a settlement agreement reached earlier in the case, the city is required to create nearly 20,000 new beds for homeless people and remove about 10,000 tents and vehicles from the streets. A separate settlement requires the county to pay for services at some of the city beds and to create 3,000 new mental health beds. Read more: Court-ordered audit finds major flaws in L.A.'s homeless services Carter's oversight of those agreements took a sharp turn last year when the Alliance law firm, Umhofer, Mitchell and King, accused the city of noncompliance and asked the judge to fine it $6.4 million. He declined to do that but, in place of sanctions, pressured the city to pay for an outside audit of its accounting for billions of dollars it has spent on homeless services. That audit, released late in February, found disjointed services and inadequate financial controls leaving the city's homelessness programs susceptible to waste and fraud. But it focused particularly on the lack of accountability at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a joint agency formed in the 1990s to manage homeless services for the city and county. Through the 2017 Measure H homelessness sales tax and an infusion of city and state funds, LAHSA's budget has grown more than seven times over to its current $875 million. Calling last week's hearing to explore the ramifications of the audit, Carter requested the agency's chief executive, Va Lecia Adams Kellum, to attend, along with Bass, Barger, City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, City Controller Kenneth Mejia and Gov. Gavin Newsom. The judge treated Newsom's absence as a predictable annoyance. "He has a blog, and he's busy blogging." But he lamented that he had no authority to compel Adams Kellums, who was then giving an address at Harvard University, to be present since LAHSA is not a named party to the lawsuit. Twice he suggested the agency should be sued, bringing it under his jurisdiction. The judge's outrage over the state of homelessness poured forth for more than an hour as he quoted from a handful of audits going back decades that, over and over, faulted LAHSA for poor accounting procedures. "So this isn't new," Carter said. "This is old news to elected officials and to LAHSA. There's no auditing going on. There's no transparency. There's no accountability." But his posture turned skeptical when L.A. Alliance attorney Matthew Umhofer said he planned to petition for a receiver. "What's this supposed to look like?" Carter asked sharply. "What's the function of this receiver? What are they going to do?" "The receiver, from our perspective, becomes the homelessness czar for the city," Umhofer replied. "It's going to have to be an 800-pound gorilla," Carter said. Umhofer said that he would not propose names off the cuff but that it should be someone with gravitas, such as Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer who oversaw the compensation for 9/11 claims. "Anybody know what his fees are?" Carter asked. "I do." In a back-and-forth on what a receiver could do, Umhofer said it might include "control of the budget around homelessness in Los Angeles." Carter found that problematic. "Nobody elected the court, nobody elected the receivership," he said. "That could be construed as a real intrusion of power. And I'm trying to get a resolution from you, but let's hear the drama of this for just a moment, because I'm having trouble sorting through what this would even potentially look like." Umhofer argued that the remedy needed to be "extraordinary because the failure of the city and the county is extraordinary." Because the city has failed, he said, the receiver would have authority "vested by the court to commandeer what it needs within the city in order to solve this problem." "That's really a dramatic action by a court," Carter said. "And if that was ever to be considered, I need to be very certain what the attainable goals are and why the legislative and executive branch can't accomplish this." "Because they have not accomplished it, your honor. That's exactly the point ... because the executive and legislative branches have failed." Could the receiver, Carter asked, order Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park to proceed with an unpopular housing project in Venice that she has blocked? "If we need to overcome some NIMBYism to get shelter and housing built,we should absolutely empower a receiver to do that," Umhofer said. "It's the kind of power that I would expect this court to exercise if faced with that question." When he continued to press the issue, Carter asked: "Are you asking that the court take over the entire city? First of all, I would be working with a bureaucracy that is not functioning from my situation. I don't know that I want to work with those same people anymore. That's doomed to failure." Finally, he said, "Go back and think, if you're asking for this drama of a receivership, how that really works and why the court would be more effective." No mention was made during the hearing of the looming decision made by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to strip LAHSA of $375 million in annual funding and shift it into a new county department. Carter gave no indication whether he would view that as a positive step or a distraction. But, in response to a question from The Times, Umhofer partner Elizabeth Mitchell later said the move did not address their complaints about the city, characterizing it as no more than "moving the deck chairs around the Titanic." "There needs to be some massive structural changes to address the underlying issues, and I can't see them proposing anything that will possibly come close," Mitchell wrote in an email. The firm will soon file a motion asking Carter to appoint a receiver, she said. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
A federal judge is demanding a fix for L.A.'s broken homelessness system. Is receivership his next step?
With the top city and county elected officials sitting in his jury box, the judge lectured for more than an hour, excoriating what he called the Rocky Horror Picture Show of homeless services in Los Angeles. But when it came time to reveal the drastic remedy anticipated by a courtroom full of spectators, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter hit pause. He gave Mayor Karen Bass and Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Kathryn Barger until May to fix the broken system, vowing only then to become 'your worst nightmare' should they fail. 'I think as elected officials, you've inherited an extraordinarily difficult task,' he told them. 'And I imagine you came to court today thinking that hell and brimstone would rain upon you. Quite the opposite. At the end of this, I'm going to be asking if there's anything that your branch of government can do to resolve the problems that have been presented to you.' An attorney in the case, alleging that the city had failed to meet its obligations in a settlement agreement, urged Carter to employ his ultimate weapon — appointing a receiver to run the city's homelessness programs. But that prospect led the often blustery judge to turn openly introspective, ruminating on the limits of his power and the risks of using it to try to reverse decades of mismanagement by other branches of government. 'So unless the two of you can work this out in some way, the court's going to have to,' he told Bass and Barger. 'And I'm not sure what to do about that because then I am intruding. I've got a great chance of a reversal [on appeal], I understand that. But if I don't, then I'm complicit, I'm sitting here doing nothing.' His dilemma arises from a 5-year-old lawsuit brought by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, a nonprofit organization of business owners, property owners and residents. It alleged that the city and county had failed to address street homelessness. Through an order and a settlement agreement reached earlier in the case, the city is required to create nearly 20,000 new beds for homeless people and remove about 10,000 tents and vehicles from the streets. A separate settlement requires the county to pay for services at some of the city beds and to create 3,000 new mental health beds. Carter's oversight of those agreements took a sharp turn last year when the Alliance law firm, Umhofer, Mitchell and King, accused the city of noncompliance and asked the judge to fine it $6.4 million. He declined to do that but, in place of sanctions, pressured the city to pay for an outside audit of its accounting for billions of dollars it has spent on homeless services. That audit, released late in February, found disjointed services and inadequate financial controls leaving the city's homelessness programs susceptible to waste and fraud. But it focused particularly on the lack of accountability at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a joint agency formed in the 1990s to manage homeless services for the city and county. Through the 2017 Measure H homelessness sales tax and an infusion of city and state funds, LAHSA's budget has grown more than seven times over to its current $875 million. Calling last week's hearing to explore the ramifications of the audit, Carter requested the agency's chief executive, Va Lecia Adams Kellum, to attend, along with Bass, Barger, City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, City Controller Kenneth Mejia and Gov. Gavin Newsom. The judge treated Newsom's absence as a predictable annoyance. 'He has a blog, and he's busy blogging.' But he lamented that he had no authority to compel Adams Kellums, who was then giving an address at Harvard University, to be present since LAHSA is not a named party to the lawsuit. Twice he suggested the agency should be sued, bringing it under his jurisdiction. The judge's outrage over the state of homelessness poured forth for more than an hour as he quoted from a handful of audits going back decades that, over and over, faulted LAHSA for poor accounting procedures. 'So this isn't new,' Carter said. 'This is old news to elected officials and to LAHSA. There's no auditing going on. There's no transparency. There's no accountability.' But his posture turned skeptical when L.A. Alliance attorney Matthew Umhofer said he planned to petition for a receiver. 'What's this supposed to look like?' Carter asked sharply. 'What's the function of this receiver? What are they going to do?' 'The receiver, from our perspective, becomes the homelessness czar for the city,' Umhofer replied. 'It's going to have to be an 800-pound gorilla,' Carter said. Umhofer said that he would not propose names off the cuff but that it should be someone with gravitas, such as Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer who oversaw the compensation for 9/11 claims. 'Anybody know what his fees are?' Carter asked. 'I do.' In a back-and-forth on what a receiver could do, Umhofer said it might include 'control of the budget around homelessness in Los Angeles.' Carter found that problematic. 'Nobody elected the court, nobody elected the receivership,' he said. 'That could be construed as a real intrusion of power. And I'm trying to get a resolution from you, but let's hear the drama of this for just a moment, because I'm having trouble sorting through what this would even potentially look like.' Umhofer argued that the remedy needed to be 'extraordinary because the failure of the city and the county is extraordinary.' Because the city has failed, he said, the receiver would have authority 'vested by the court to commandeer what it needs within the city in order to solve this problem.' 'That's really a dramatic action by a court,' Carter said. 'And if that was ever to be considered, I need to be very certain what the attainable goals are and why the legislative and executive branch can't accomplish this.' 'Because they have not accomplished it, your honor. That's exactly the point ... because the executive and legislative branches have failed.' Could the receiver, Carter asked, order Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park to proceed with an unpopular housing project in Venice that she has blocked? 'If we need to overcome some NIMBYism to get shelter and housing built,we should absolutely empower a receiver to do that,' Umhofer said. 'It's the kind of power that I would expect this court to exercise if faced with that question.' When he continued to press the issue, Carter asked: 'Are you asking that the court take over the entire city? First of all, I would be working with a bureaucracy that is not functioning from my situation. I don't know that I want to work with those same people anymore. That's doomed to failure.' Finally, he said, 'Go back and think, if you're asking for this drama of a receivership, how that really works and why the court would be more effective.' No mention was made during the hearing of the looming decision made by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to strip LAHSA of $375 million in annual funding and shift it into a new county department. Carter gave no indication whether he would view that as a positive step or a distraction. But, in response to a question from The Times, Umhofer partner Elizabeth Mitchell later said the move did not address their complaints about the city, characterizing it as no more than 'moving the deck chairs around the Titanic.' 'There needs to be some massive structural changes to address the underlying issues, and I can't see them proposing anything that will possibly come close,' Mitchell wrote in an email. The firm will soon file a motion asking Carter to appoint a receiver, she said.
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Court-ordered audit finds major flaws in L.A.'s homeless services
Homeless services provided by the city of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority are disjointed and lack adequate data systems and financial controls to monitor contracts for compliance and performance, leaving the system vulnerable to waste, an audit ordered by a federal judge has concluded. The audit by the global consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal found that the city was unable to track exactly how much it spent on homeless programs and did not rigorously reconcile spending with services provided, making it impossible to judge how well the services worked or whether they were even provided. Contracts written by LAHSA were vague, allowing wide variations in the services provided and their cost, it said. Those findings echoed a November report by the Los Angeles County Auditor-Controller that found lax accounting procedures resulted in the failure to reclaim millions of dollars in cash advances to contractors and to pay other contractors on time, even when funds were available. The audit, posted on the website of U.S. District Judge David O. Carter on Thursday arose from a 2020 lawsuit filed by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, a group representing business owners, residents and property owners, which alleged that the city and county were failing in their duty to provide shelter and services for people living on the streets. Both the city and county reached settlements providing for thousands of new shelter beds and additional mental health and substance use treatment. But under continuing monitoring of that settlement, Carter repeatedly said that he wanted more transparency for homelessness spending and insisted that the city also fund an outside audit. An attorney for the plaintiffs, Elizabeth Mitchell, said the audit validates the core allegations in the lawsuit, reinforcing the urgent need for systemic reform. 'These finding are not just troubling — they are deadly,' Mitchell said. 'The failure of financial integrity, programmatic oversight, and total dysfunction of the system has resulted in devastation on the streets, impacting both housed and unhoused. "Billions have been squandered on ineffective bureaucracy while lives are lost daily. This is not just mismanagement; it is a moral failure.' Alvarez & Marsal, which said it could conduct the audit for$2.8 million to $4.2 million, was selected from among three bidders. The city originally agreed in April to pay for the audit but limited its contribution to $2.2 million. That amount has since been increased as the scope expanded. The audit was initially set to include not just shelters the city committed to create under the settlement, but Mayor Karen Bass' Inside Safe program, the city's controversial anti-camping law and the street cleanups by the Sanitation Bureau's CARE+ teams. The audit was later expanded to include LAPD homeless-related activities and county services to city shelters, while enforcement of the anti-camping law was dropped. In follow-up hearings, representatives of Alvarez & Marsal reported to Carter that it was having difficulty obtaining records necessary for its work from the city, the county and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. In October, Diane Rafferty, an Alvarez & Marsal managing director, described "heart-breaking" experiences in field visits to shelters and street encampments. "Every day that goes by there's people on the street that are not receiving the services that the city is paying for," Rafferty said in court. She described one shelter resident with a traumatic brain injury who frequently missed the meal cutoff time and "was prostituting themselves on the street to get food." One shelter budgeted for four case managers had only two on site for 130 clients. After street visits, she said, she was concerned about her team having post traumatic stress disorder. "The emotion that came out seeing what they were seeing and how these people are living, with all the money going to the service providers was heart-breaking." Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
