Top City and the county elected officials sat in the ju umpire box, and the judge spoke for over an hour, encouraging what was called the Rocky Horror Photo Show for the Homeless Services in Los Angeles.
But when it was time to uncover the expected dramatic treatments in courts full of spectators, US District Judge David O. Carter paused.
He handed over Mayor Karen Bass and Chairman of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Kathryn Berger until May to fix the broken system and vowed to be “your worst nightmare” if it fails.
“As an elected official, I think you’ve taken over a very difficult job,” he told them. “And I think you came to court today thinking that hell and Brimstone would rain on you. I’m totally against it. At the end of this, I’m going to ask if there’s anything your branch can do to resolve the issues presented to you.”
The lawyers in the case urged Carter to adopt his ultimate weapon, claiming that the city had not fulfilled its settling agreement obligations.
But that prospect has often made brave judges openly reflective, and have antiminating the limits of his powers and the risks of using them to reverse decades of fraudulent control by other departments of the government.
“So unless you two can resolve this in some way, the courts will have to do it,” he told Bass and Burger. “And I don’t know what to do about it. [on appeal]I understand that. But if I don’t, I’m complicity, I’m sitting here and doing nothing. ”
His dilemma arises from a five-year-old lawsuit brought by the LA Alliance for Human Rights, a nonprofit for business owners, property owners and residents. The city and county allegedly failed to deal with the street homelessness. Through orders and settlement agreements reached the first half of the incident, the city will need to create nearly 20,000 new beds for the homeless people and remove approximately 10,000 tents and vehicles from the streets.
Another settlement requires the county to pay for services in some city beds and create 3,000 new mental health beds.
Carter’s oversight of these contracts resulted in a sharp turn last year when Alliance law firms Unhofer, Mitchell and King accused the city of non-violation and fined a judge $6.4 million.
He refused, but instead pressured the city to pay for external audits of billions of dollars in accounting spent on homeless services in place of sanctions.
The audit, released in late February, found that scattered services and poor financial management left city homeless programs sensitive to waste and fraud. However, it focuses on the lack of accountability of the Los Angeles Department of Homeless Services, a joint agency formed in the 1990s to manage homeless services in cities and counties.
Through the 2017 Measurement H Homeless Sales Tax and infusion of city and state funds, Lahasa’s budget has increased to more than $875 million today.
Calling last week’s hearing, Carter explored the impact of the audit, exploring the agency’s chief executive, VA Lecia Adams Kellum, with Bass, Barger, City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, city controller Kenneth Mejia, and Gov. I requested to attend with GavinNewsom.
The judge treated Newsom’s absence as a predictable nuisance.
“He has a blog and is busy with blogging.”
However, he lamented that Ratha is not the appointed party to the case and therefore he has no authority to force Adams Kellam, who was speaking at Harvard University. He sued the agency twice and proposed to put it under his jurisdiction.
The judge’s anger over his homelessness status was poured over an hour as he erroneously misled Lahasa due to poor accounting procedures, citing from an audit several decades ago.
“So this isn’t new,” Carter said. “This is old news for elected officials and Rahasa. There is no audit. There is no transparency. There is no accountability.”
However, his attitude became skeptical when LA Alliance lawyer Matthew Umhofer said he was planning to petition the recipient.
“What does this look like?” Carter asked pointedly. “What is the function of this receiver? What are they going to do?”
“The receiver will become, from our perspective, the homeless emperor of the city,” Umhofer replied.
“It’s going to have to be an 800-pound gorilla,” Carter said.
Umhofer said he should be Gravitas people, such as Kenneth Feinberg, the attorney who oversaw compensation for the 9/11 claim, rather than suggesting a name from the cuffs.
“Does anyone know what his fees are?” Carter asked. “i will do it.”
In an exchange about what receivers can do, Umhofer said they might include “controlling budgets for the homelessness in Los Angeles.”
Carter discovers that there is a problem. “No one was elected to court, no one elected the receiving vessel,” he said. “It could be interpreted as a true invasion of power. And I’m trying to get a solution from you, but I’m struggling to sort out what this looks like potential, so let’s listen to this drama a bit.”
Umhofer argued that the remedies “must be extraordinary as city and county failures are extraordinary.”
He said the city failed, and the recipients have the authority “became to command what is needed within the city to resolve this issue.”
“It’s really a dramatic action by the court,” Carter said. “If that is to be considered, I need to be very sure what the goals are attainable and why the legislative and administrative departments cannot achieve this.”
“They haven’t achieved that, so your honor. That’s exactly the point… because the executive and legislative departments have failed.”
Could Carter’s receiver be asked to ask Los Angeles City Councilman Traci Park to proceed with Venice’s unpopular housing project?
“If we need to overcome nymbiism to build shelters and housing, then we must absolutely have the authority to do it,” Umhofer said. “It’s the kind of force that we expect this court to exercise if we face that question.”
Carter asked as he kept pushing the issue. “Are you asking the court to take over the entire city? First of all, you’re working with a bureaucracy that’s not working because of my situation. I don’t want to work with the same people anymore. It’s destined to fail.”
Finally, he said, “Go back and think about how it works and why the courts will be more effective if you’re looking for drama from this receiver.”
At a hearing of the looming decision made by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, the $375 million Rasa in annual funds was stripped of it and not transferred to a new county office.
Carter never showed whether to view it as a positive step or a distraction.
However, in response to a question from the Times, Umhofer partner Elizabeth Mitchell later said that the move was not addressing complaints about the city, but simply “moving deck chairs around the Titanic.”
“Addressing the underlying issues requires some major structural changes. We cannot suggest anything that may be nearby,” Mitchell wrote in an email.
The company will soon submit a move to ask Carter to appoint a receiver, she said.
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