The highest city and county elected officials sat in his jury box, and the judge spoke for more than an hour, showing what he called a rocky horror picture show, Los Angeles homeless service.
But when revealing a drastic remedy for a court full of audience expectations, U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter paused.
He gave Mayor Karen Bass and Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Kathryn Barger until May that the broken system would not be repaired until they failed to become the “worst nightmare.”
“I think you have inherited a very difficult task as an elected official,” he told them. “And I think you came to court today and thought hell and sulfur would rain on you. Instead. At the end of this, I’m going to ask your government branch if there is any problem that can solve the problem that comes to you.”
Attorneys in the case alleged that the city failed to fulfill its obligations in the settlement, urging Carter to hire its ultimate weapon – appoint a receiver to run the city’s homeless plan.
But this prospect has led the often bold judge to openly introspectively, reflecting on his power limitations and the use of it to try to reverse the risk of decades of mismanagement of other branches of the government.
“So unless you two can solve this in some way, the court will have to do that,” he told Bass and Bagh. “And I’m not sure what to do. reverse [on appeal],I see. But if I don’t do that, I’m accomplice and I sit here and do nothing. ”
His dilemma comes from A 5-year-old lawsuit Nonprofit organizations, business owners, property owners and residents brought by the LA Alliance for Muman Prize. It claims the city and county have failed to address the problem of homelessness on the streets. pass Order and Settlement Agreement The case has previously arrived and the city had to create nearly 20,000 new beds for homeless people and remove about 10,000 tents and vehicles from the streets.
one A separate settlement requires the county Pay services in certain city beds and create 3,000 new mental health beds.
Carter’s oversight of these agreements changed dramatically last year, when Alliance law firms, Umhofer, Mitchell and King accused the city of non-compliance with violations and demanded a fine of $6.4 million from the judge.
He refused to do so, but instead of sanctions, forced the city to pay for external audits to cover its billions of dollars in accounting for homeless services.
That review, Released in late February, disconnected services were found, and financially undercontrolled, leaving the city’s homeless program vulnerable to waste and fraud. However, it is particularly concerned about the lack of accountability for the Los Angeles Homeless Services Bureau, a common agency founded in the 1990s to manage homeless services in the city and county.
By measuring H’s homeless sales tax and injections to city and state funds in 2017, Lahsa’s budget has grown more than sevenfold, surpassing its current $875 million.
Carter called on last week’s hearing to explore the consequences of the audit, asking the agency’s CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum to attend with Beth, Bagh, City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, municipal controller Kenneth Mejia and Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The judge saw Newsom’s absence as a predictable annoyance.
“He has a blog and he’s busy with it.”
But he lamented that he had no right to force Adams Kellums to speak at Harvard because Lahsa was not the designated party for the lawsuit. He twice suggested that the agency should be prosecuted and placed it under its jurisdiction.
The judge’s anger at homelessness surged for more than an hour A few reviews After decades of back trip, defending Lahsa over and over to achieve bad accounting procedures.
“So it’s not new,” Carter said. “This is old news for elected officials and Raha. No audit. No transparency. No responsibility.”
But when LA Alliance attorney Matthew Umhofer said he planned to petition the receiver, his posture became skeptical.
“What should this look like?” Carter asked keenly. “What is the function of this receiver? What are they going to do?”
“From our perspective, the receiver becomes The homeless tsar for this city,Umkhov replied.
“It has to be an 800-pound gorilla,” Carter said.
Umhoff said he would not raise the name of the cuff, but should be a person with gravity, such as Kenneth Feinberg, whose lawyers oversee the compensation for the 9/11 claim.
“Does anyone know how much he costs?” Carter asked. “I do.”
Umhofer said while talking back and forth about what the receiver can do, it could include “controlling the budget around the homeless people in Los Angeles.”
Carter found this problem. “No one elects the court, no one elects the takeover,” he said. “This can be interpreted as a real power intrusion. I’m trying to get a solution from you, but let’s hear the drama of the matter because it’s hard for me to sort it out, and it might even look.”
Umhofer argued that such remedies needed to be “extraordinary, as the failures of cities and counties were extraordinary.”
He said that since the city failed, the recipient would have “a court-given authorization to direct what is needed within the city to resolve this issue.”
“It’s really a dramatic action from the court,” Carter said. “If I want to take that into account, I need to be very sure what is achievable goal and why the legislation and the executive cannot achieve it.”
“Because they didn’t finish, your honor. That’s the point… because the executive and legislative departments failed.”
Carter asks recipients to order Los Angeles City Councilman Traci Park to conduct an unpopular housing project in Venice?
“If we need to overcome some flexible asylumism to build shelters and housing, we should absolutely empower the recipients to do that,” Umhofer said. “If faced with this, this is the kind of power I want the court to exercise.”
As he continued to ask the question, Carter asked, “Are you asking the court to take over the entire city? First, I will work with the bureaucracy where my situation is not working. I don’t know I want to work with these people. It’s doomed to fail.”
Finally, he said, “Go back and think about how that really works if you’re asking for this takeover drama and why the courts are more effective.”
The hearing, in a looming decision by the board of supervisors on Tuesday, did not mention depriving Lahsa of $375 million of its annual funding and transferring it to the new county department.
Carter showed no sign of whether he would think it was a positive step or a distraction.
However, in response to the Times question, Umhofer partner Elizabeth Mitchell later said the move did not resolve their complaints about the city, rather than “moving deck chairs around the Titanic.”
“Some large-scale structural changes are needed to solve the basic problem, and I can’t see them coming up with anything that might be close to,” Mitchell wrote in an email.
She said the company will soon file a motion to ask Carter to appoint a recipient.
