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The attorney in charge of homelessness policy at the Los Angeles city law firm has been selected as interim chief executive officer of the Los Angeles Department of Homeless Services, leading troubled institutions throughout a year’s cutback.
The agenda item posted Tuesday allows Wendy Guilliuel, chair of the 10-member Rahasa committee, to negotiate a 12-month agreement with Career City lawyer Guita O’Neill.
The vote is scheduled for Friday, when current CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum will leave the agency he has led for two and a half years. Adams Kellam announced his intention to step down shortly after the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted in March to establish a new county homeless division that oversees funds currently administered by Lahasa.
Apart from O’Neill’s monthly base salary of $30,833.30 and about $370,000 a year, Lahsa did not release any information on candidates that appeared at the top during a few months of searches. The city’s law firm did not respond to O’Neill’s request for a resume. O’Neill didn’t answer the call from the Times. According to her LinkedIn page, she worked for the city’s law firm for less than 24 years.
As interim CEO, O’Neill will be responsible for restructuring the joint city county as he loses about 40% of his $875 million budget and leaves behind a period of turbulent criticism in an inadequate contract and a series of audits for data management.
A 2024 report by Los Angeles County auditors found that the LAX accounting procedure failed to cash advance millions of dollars to contractors and pay other contractors on time, even if funds were available.
These defects were already known in January 2023 when Adams Kellam was hired with the obligation to correct them. In her defense, she argued that the county audit primarily covers the period before he took up work.
However, critics say progress has been too slow.
An audit commissioned by US District Judge David O. Carter earlier this year found that Lahasa didn’t have enough financial surveillance to provide the services offered by contractors, making the agency vulnerable to waste and fraud.
The votes for supervisors pulling back from the agency quickly followed.
The vote results in more than 700 county workers being transferred to the new agency by January 1st. Six months later, the new department will take on hundreds more employees from Rahasa.
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