controller.lacity.gov
Official account of the 20th LA City Controller, Kenneth Mejia, CPA
controller.lacity.gov
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2) Consult with an Attorney:
• Document and preserve information related to police misconduct, including officer badge numbers and names.
• Consult with an attorney who has experience with police misconduct, excessive force, civil litigation, etc.
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We've ALSO been asked a lot about what people can do if they want to file a Liability Claim. 🧑⚖️
1) File A Claim with the City (City Clerk / City Attorney), more information can be found here: cityattorney.lacity.gov/claims
OR...
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Six cases have been tried before a jury (City won two & lost four).
Those 4 cases relate to Less Lethal Munition injuries including:
• $3.75 Million: laceration to finger
• $1.3 Million: bruising in the side
• $1.2 Million: head laceration
• $860 Thousand: head injury
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This has come up due to concerning videos of LAPD's use-of-force in response to these protests.
In 2020, the City of LA received 55 lawsuits stemming from protests including the murder of George Floyd:
• 28 have been settled for $13,162,000
• 21 have not been resolved
and...
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Read the audit:
bit.ly/ah-audit
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While it’s true that mold/infestation issues are the jurisdiction of LA County, federal regulations require the City to address these issues for federally funded affordable housing.
LAHD should work with the City & County to get the authority to cite mold/infestations.
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Our Audits/Assessments
Completed:
- Affordable Housing Oversight
- TAHO
- Pathways to Permanent Housing
- LAPD Military Equipment
- LAPD Helicopters
- Interim Housing
In progress:
- CARE/CARE+
- Unarmed Response
controller.lacity.gov
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Affordable housing is meant to make housing accessible to everyone.
It’s extremely important that the City watch over it effectively.
Our audit is a step toward making sure affordable housing is habitable, financially stable & reaches those who need it most.
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📚Recommendations
LAHD should strengthen its oversight & ensure compliance with federal regulations.
This includes stronger enforcement, financial oversight & habitability oversight, and developing ways to help financially distressed projects & ways to address mold/infestations.
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❌LAHD doesn’t sufficiently monitor/oversee affordable housing projects’ financial health
❌LAHD does little to address rent- and income-limit violations
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More findings:
❌LAHD is not fully complying with federal regulations for habitability oversight and financial oversight
❌13% of affordable housing properties did NOT follow requirements for rent- & income-limits in 2023 (Plus, 20% didn’t even submit the required info for this)
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About affordable housing:
🏙️City’s Housing Dept (LAHD) oversees it
🏙️Mostly privately owned
🏙️Often, properties have both market rate & affordable units
🏙️Properties get benefits for having affordable units
🏙️City needs 400k+ units, but only has closer to 50k units
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BIG THANKS to our FWA unit!
We only have FIVE investigators for the ENTIRE CITY and we received over 700 claims last year.
Unfortunately, we are not sufficiently resourced/funded to investigate all the FWA claims we receive.
📝 LA City has:
- 40+ departments
- 40K+ employees
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It’s crucial for LADOT to:
- Issue tickets correctly
- Proactively identify problematic tickets
- Provide people a fair process for contesting problematic tickets
📝Learn more about contesting a citation: ladotparking.org/adjudication-division/contest-a-parking-citation
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Parking tickets should be for deterring parking violations– NOT creating revenue.
While the City DOES need more $ in our current budget crisis, parking tickets should NOT be considered a revenue source. Ticketing must NOT be incentivized.
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We recommended that LADOT improve its oversight of parking enforcement:
- Conduct audits
- Create an accessible database of traffic officers’ curb maintenance requests
- Assess its Initial Review process
- Develop metrics to identify outliers of contested citation data
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We also found instances where people contested their citations & they should have been canceled, but LADOT upheld them:
In 2 contested citations, LADOT's initial findings upheld that curbs were red when they actually weren’t, & LADOT wrongly deemed the citations “Valid”.
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The offending officer claimed inadequate training BUT acknowledged they were provided the necessary materials.
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We did a targeted sample of red zone tickets by the offending officer, focused on places where the officer ALSO reported the curb needed repainting. (If a red zone isn’t visible, a ticket would likely be unenforceable.)
95% of tickets sampled turned out to be unenforceable.
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Traffic officers are NOT supposed to issue tickets when red curbs aren’t sufficiently visible (or when street signs for red zones aren’t legible).
They’re also required to be as accurate as possible about locations of parking violations. They’re NOT allowed to make locations up.
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Our Fraud, Waste & Abuse (FWA) Unit received a hotline tip alleging fraud & found that an LADOT traffic officer improperly issued 163 parking tickets for red curb violations.
LADOT has now canceled & refunded all the tickets.
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bit.ly/labudget-fy2026 (the first six slides were created to shed some light on what might remain for potential filled position eliminations)
Ask your Department Leadership, the CAO, and/or the CLA for more concrete details.
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bsky.app/profile/cont...
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This was understandably a demanding effort w/ a pressing deadline & we appreciate the Mayor's support in helping us push for this.
I'd also like to thank my Controller staff who worked tirelessly the past three weeks to pull payroll data & perform a preliminary true-up analysis.
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Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time and support from the LAFPP Board to exclude non-pensionable payroll contributions and to perform a true-up for this fiscal year.
However, they did approve looking into the possibility of a true-up in future years.
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Paying more now or paying more later when certain payroll does actually become pensionable does not and would not change the City's contractual or moral obligation to fully fund pensions owed to LAFPP members.
It's all a matter of timing.
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Unfortunately, making these contributions earlier than we need to has come at a high cost to the City's General Fund & during one of the City's worst financial crises.
That's why I requested that the Board approve a true-up of current fiscal year's actual pensionable payroll.
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However, the City (unbeknownst to many of us elected officials), decided to make pension contributions on these non-pensionable salary increases and bonuses anyway.
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In Aug 2023, the City negotiated a new labor contract (MOU 24) w/ police officers (Lieutenant and below).
The first three years of salary increases would be NON-pensionable.
In addition, retention bonuses would be NON-pensionable for officers with less than 20 years of service.