The Brief

The FBI has been conducting a criminal investigation into the Santa Ana Unified School District's agreements with several companies that provided weekly COVID-19 testing to students and staff during the pandemic, according to documents obtained by LAist.

The contract at the center of the FBI inquiry, for the 2021-2022 school year, was among the largest pandemic-era school testing contracts in the state. It was worth well over $100 million, according to an estimate given to independent investigators in a separate wide-ranging investigation, and LAist calculations. The testing was billed by the contractor directly to the federal government and private insurance companies.

Santa Ana Unified is the second-largest school district in Orange County, with about 44,000 students and 5,000 employees.

A federal subpoena reviewed by LAist targets records from the COVID-19 testing operation dating back to Aug. 1, 2021. The documents sought included communications, billing records and contracts with businesses owned by Todd Ament, and other businesses for which he served as a contact with the district, according to the subpoena and documents obtained by LAist from the district.

Ament was a key figure in a recent, wide-ranging government corruption scandal in Anaheim.

He was a major player in Anaheim politics who led the city's chamber of commerce before he was indicted on a variety of corruption charges and pleaded guilty to several counts of fraud in 2022.

In federal wiretaps conducted as part of that previous investigation, Ament described himself as part of a “cabal” of elected officials, political consultants, and business leaders that worked covertly to influence Anaheim politics. An FBI investigator described him in an affidavit as a “ringleader” of the group.

Three months before the Santa Ana Unified school board approved a no-bid contract with a company tied to Ament, the district got 18 bids from other firms in response to a request for proposals for COVID-19 testing. The district scrapped that effort after the winning bidder sought to renegotiate some of the terms.

Then, shortly before the school year started, Anza Vang, an executive with the Orange County Health Care Agency, recommended Ament to the school district as a testing partner, according to documents obtained by LAist.

A spokesperson for the Orange County Health Care Agency, Ellen Guevara, told LAist in an email that the testing laboratory that got the contract, Diagnostic Laboratory Science (DLS), "was one of a limited number of vendors at the time that were able to offer robust COVID-19 testing.” Ament helped broker the deal with DLS, according to district documents.

Representatives of DLS did not respond to requests for comment.

Several representatives for the school district told LAist the state Attorney General's office is also actively investigating the testing operation. The AG’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Fraud and COVID-19

The investigations into COVID-19 testing operations at Santa Ana Unified are a small snapshot of potential ethical and legal problems that occurred during the pandemic as unprecedented sums of money flowed from the federal government to address the public health emergency.

Isaac Bledsoe, an investigator with the U.S. Office of Inspector General for the federal Department of Health and Human Services, told LAist the amount of money defrauded nationwide during the COVID-19 pandemic from patients and the federal government was "definitely hundreds of millions of dollars."

And it's still happening. The watchdog agency's most recent enforcement action related to COVID-19 fraud was in April of 2023.

Jodi Balma, a political science professor at Fullerton College who watches Orange County closely, said "the full report of misspending of COVID dollars has not begun to be written."

She and others told LAist that the pandemic caused many public agencies to bypass some accountability standards to rapidly respond to the changing emergency.

"We just don't have a procedure to guard against corruption, have transparency, and also go that quick," Balma said.

The Anaheim backstory

The documents LAist obtained from the district provide new details about Ament's involvement in securing a COVID-19 testing contract for his own and other businesses. Ament's company, alternately called Accurate Health Partners or Accurate Diagnostic Partners, coordinated the testing and delivered swabs to the lab for analysis.

The documents also provide insights into accusations that Ament sought to illegally profit off of the contract in the form of "kickbacks," as alleged in a recent investigation ordered by the city of Anaheim.

Ament's wife, Lea Ament, a nurse and former local hospital executive, was also involved in the school district's testing operation through her husband’s company and another company, Care One Health Partners, according to school district documents. Until recently, Lea Ament was listed as the secretary of Care One Health Partners on business documents filed with the California Secretary of State.

For years, Todd Ament played an outsized role in Anaheim politics before pleading guilty to federal criminal charges for defrauding a cannabis company, using federal COVID-19 business relief funds for personal expenses, and lying on his tax return.

None of those crimes appear to be connected to the Santa Ana Unified contracts. Todd Ament’s guilty pleas in the Anaheim probe pre-date subpoenas in the FBI’s Santa Ana inquiry.

The initial criminal complaint against Todd Ament in the Anaheim case was filed in May 2022 and noted that he had begun cooperating with the federal government. He has yet to be sentenced.

Todd Ament did not respond to multiple calls and emails requesting comment for this story. Daniel Silva, who is listed as Ament's lawyer in recent court filings, also did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Reached by phone, Lea Ament declined to comment.

Providers set up to test students and staff of Santa Ana Unified for COVID-19 during the 2021-2022 school year.

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Santa Ana Unified, as part of a public records request

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Where the Santa Ana Unified inquiry stands

It's unclear where the investigations by the FBI and the California Attorney General’s office stand. Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office, which subpoenaed the records, said the agency could not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation. A spokesperson for the FBI also said they could not comment and could not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation.

Lawyers, administrators, and current school board members for Santa Ana Unified said they could not comment because of the investigations.

The documents LAist obtained through a public records request reveal details behind allegations made during an independent corruption investigation ordered in 2022 by the Anaheim City Council. That investigation came in the wake of a federal probe and included allegations of potential improprieties in the award and administration of the lucrative COVID-19 testing contract with the Santa Ana Unified School District for the 2021-2022 school year.

In their final report, released in late July of 2023, the Anaheim investigators included portions of interviews with sources alleging that Todd Ament used "behind the scenes" influence to obtain a COVID-19 testing contract with Santa Ana Unified and then sought kickbacks from the deal for him and his wife, Lea Ament.

Eric Morgan, a representative of Diagnostic Laboratory Science (DLS), which initially held the school testing contract, told the investigators the contract was worth an estimated $128 million. Morgan estimated Todd Ament made $20-30 million from the district testing operation.

According to the new documents obtained by LAist, as well as testimony cited in the Anaheim corruption report, Todd Ament helped broker a no-bid contract for weekly COVID-19 testing of students and staff for the 2021-2022 school year on behalf of DLS, an established local laboratory.

The documents show that companies headed by Todd Ament and Lea Ament organized and oversaw the ordering and collection of saliva and nasal swabs for COVID-19 testing, and the delivery of those tests to the lab for analysis.

An internal memo from the school district, written two days after Todd Ament was charged with unrelated federal crimes, described his role as "a 3rd party COVID testing vendor and laboratory contact for DLS and MEDLAB2020." MedLab2020 succeeded DLS in analyzing COVID-19 tests for the district.

How the documents intersect with the Anaheim investigation

The independent corruption investigation commissioned by the Anaheim City Council in August 2022 and released in late July 2023 included allegations by people involved in Santa Ana Unified’s COVID-19 testing operation regarding Todd Ament’s role in securing and administering the contract.

In their final report, investigators noted that Todd Ament "seemed to vanish" from the Anaheim political scene around the beginning of 2021. Witnesses told investigators that he saw lucrative business opportunities in COVID-19 testing as businesses and schools began to reopen, according to the corruption report.

Two brothers, Firas and Moe Tamary, told investigators that they hired Todd Ament as a consultant for DLS for about three months at the beginning of 2021. Both Tamarys are listed as agents for DLS with the California Secretary of State.

They told investigators that Ament then quit his consulting job with them to start up his own business, Accurate Diagnostic Partners (previously known as Accurate Health Partners). According to the report, Accurate Diagnostic Partners administered COVID-19 tests and collected swabs to be delivered to DLS for testing.

Firas Tamary told investigators that Todd Ament claimed to have an "inside connection" at Santa Ana Unified and assured them they would get approval for a COVID-19 testing contract from the district's board of education.

Firas Tamary also told investigators that he and his brother agreed with Ament on a fixed price they would pay him per swab collected, based on the Medicare reimbursement rate. Tamary told investigators that at one point Todd Ament asked for a higher rate, but the Tamary brothers told him that would be considered “a kickback” and was against the law, according to the report.

A shift to another lab shortly after district approval

According to the final report of the Anaheim investigation, the Tamarys said that Todd Ament claimed to have a better offer from another lab and tried to pressure DLS to pay him more. Firas Tamary said they declined, telling Todd Ament that paying him above the set reimbursement rate would violate several state and federal laws.

That's when, Firas Tamary told investigators, Todd Ament "basically stole" the Santa Ana Unified contract from DLS and "found a different lab to work with," according to the report.

LAist reached out to Moe Tamary, Firas Tamary and Eric Morgan via phone and email to request comment on this story. They did not respond to multiple requests.

Shortly after the district's school board approved the COVID-19 testing contract with DLS, documents obtained by LAist show that Todd Ament began work to get the contract reassigned to a different lab: MedLab2020, whose CEO is Matthew Collins, according to business documents filed with the California Secretary of State. Collins did not respond to multiple requests for comment from LAist for this story.

Firas Tamary signed the reassignment agreement on Sept. 17, 2021, the district records show.

According to the criminal complaint filed against Todd Ament for his role in the Anaheim corruption scandal, Ament started cooperating with the FBI on Sept. 14, 2021.

On Sept. 28, 2021, Todd Ament wrote to the district's head of risk management, Dr. Sara Nazir, saying he wanted to discuss a revision to the contract that would assign all rights and responsibilities for COVID-19 testing of students and staff to MedLab2020. He also included a new paragraph in the contract that would officially list his company, Accurate Diagnostic Partners, as a subcontractor for the first time, according to school district records.

LAist was unable to find any record of the Santa Ana Unified school board approving the contract reassignment. An LAist review of board meeting agendas through January 2022 did not turn up any items related to the contract reassignment.

John Palacio, the former Santa Ana Unified trustee who was on the school board at the time, told LAist he was unaware of the contract reassignment. "And that is of serious concern to me as a board member because they [district staff] have an obligation to inform the board, especially about something as significant as that contract," Palacio said.

Palacio also said he had never heard of Todd Ament, or his involvement in the testing contract, until contacted by LAist for this story.

District emails obtained by LAist show Palacio questioned district administrators about why the district hadn't gone out to bid for the contract, how testing companies would be paid, and whether the district had a budget for supporting the testing operation with staff and other logistics.

He told LAist that district administrators told him at the time that the contract was no-cost and therefore didn't need to be put out for competitive bidding, and that testing would be paid, as the contract states, through private insurance or through the federal CARES Act. Palacio said his other questions went largely unanswered.

Fermin Leal, a spokesperson for the district, told LAist that current school board members and staff could not comment on the matter because of the ongoing investigation.

The roles of Lea Ament and others

Morgan, the DLS representative, told the Anaheim investigators that Care One Health Partners was in charge of ordering the COVID-19 tests that were administered to Santa Ana Unified students and staff. Documents obtained by LAist show that Care One Health Partners also acted as an intermediary between insurance companies and students and staff to help troubleshoot billing problems.

Lea Ament identifies herself in district documents obtained by LAist as the chief operating officer of Care One Health Partners, even though documents filed with the Secretary of State during the time of the contract identify her as the secretary of the company.

In emails obtained by LAist, Lea Ament also identifies herself as president of her husband's company, Accurate Health Care, which was coordinating testing for the district. She is not listed as an officer of the company on records filed with the Secretary of State.

Lea Ament was previously executive director of cancer services at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, but she left in 2021, according to a hospital spokesperson.

Dr. Albert Lai, a pain medicine doctor based in Placentia, is listed in records filed with the Secretary of State as the chief executive officer of Care One Health Partners. Lai did not respond to messages seeking comment left at his office and other phone numbers listed for him.

Morgan told Anaheim investigators that approximately 1 million tests would be ordered under the contract and Care One Health Partners would charge approximately $68 per test. He told investigators that Lea Ament would receive half of the money from every test.

"Todd's wife somehow, even though there were doctors' names on everything, worked out where she got fifty percent of all the profits for Care One and obviously, he [Todd Ament] owned Accurate, so he was dipping into multiple places," Morgan told investigators, according to their report.

Lai did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Kris Murray, a former member of the Anaheim City Council who runs a consulting firm, was also involved in the testing operation at Santa Ana Unified. Murray developed FAQs about the testing program and communicated with students and staff about insurance problems on behalf of the Aments' companies and the district, documents show.

Murray did not respond to LAist's requests for comment. It was not immediately clear who hired her to do the work and how much she was paid.

The end of the lucrative contract

On May 16, 2022, the federal government filed a criminal complaint against Todd Ament, detailing allegations that he defrauded a cannabis company, used federal COVID-19 business relief funds for personal expenses, and falsified tax returns.

Two days later, on May 18, 2022, Santa Ana Unified staff sent an internal memo informing district administrators of the charges against Todd Ament. They also stated that Collins, the CEO of MedLab2020, told the district he had bought Accurate Health Partners from Todd Ament the week prior, and that Todd Ament would not have a role in the company going forward.

In the Anaheim corruption report, Morgan, the DLS representative, told investigators he heard Collins had bought Todd Ament's company for $10 million.

The district signed a new contract with MedLab2020 in the spring of 2022 to provide weekly COVID-19 testing to students and staff in the 2022-2023 school year. This time, the district was responsible for paying the company for staff testing, according to the contract obtained by LAist, but not for student testing, which would continue to be billed to students' insurance companies or to federal pandemic relief programs.

At the start of the 2022-2023 school year, Santa Ana Unified dropped its mandate that all students and staff be tested weekly for COVID-19, instead making the testing voluntary.

MedLab2020 provided voluntary testing until the district received the federal government's subpoena on Feb. 6, 2023. In an email sent the next day, Nazir — who headed the school district's risk management department and oversaw COVID-19 testing for the district — advised that she was suspending MedLab2020 from conducting further COVID-19 tests on campus.

Fermin Leal, the district’s spokesperson, told LAist that the district gradually shifted from in-person testing to providing at-home testing kits to students and staff during the 2022-2023 school year. Leal said those who wanted in-person testing were referred to community providers.

By then, vaccines were widely available and the chaos of the early pandemic days were behind school administrators.

LAist reviewed details of the Santa Ana Unified COVID-19 testing agreements with Jose Moreno, a former Anaheim city council member. Moreno has criticized the influence of Anaheim's business elite — which has often been behind closed doors — over public policymaking in recent years.

"It's not surprising," Moreno said of Todd Ament's involvement in the highly lucrative no-bid contract.

"Anytime there's public dollars that are supposed to help people, we see the same pigs at the trough," he said.

Liability payments have cost the City of L.A. an average of 35% more each year since 2022, a new city report shows, growing faster than other large cities like New York and Chicago.

The City Council asked the city attorney and city administrative officer to look into ways to reduce liability risks back in October 2024, and their findings were presented to the Budget and Finance Committee last week.

The full City Council received the report Wednesday and approved recommendations from the Budget and Finance Committee to do additional research on options to bring down costs. The options to be researched include obtaining liability insurance for the city, setting up incentives for departments to reduce their risk and improving the planning and oversight of liability costs.

Slide from L.A. City Administrative Officer and City Attorney presentation to the Budget and Finance Committee on April 13.

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City of Los Angeles

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City Controller Kenneth Mejia found in June that liability costs — bills from legal settlements or lawsuits where the city was found liable — totaled $287 million last fiscal year and were the primary reason for the city’s budget deficit. The biggest source of those costs is the LAPD, which racked up $152 million in liabilities, followed by $44 million from the Bureau of Street Services. The controller updates the city’s liability costs by department on a public dashboard.

City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo told the Budget and Finance Committee last week that the city is on track to spend $207 million on liabilities this fiscal year, which ends June 30.

Slide from L.A. city administrative officer and city attorney presentation to the Budget and Finance Committee on April 13.

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City of Los Angeles

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What LA might do

“We already know that we have a serious liability as it relates to sidewalks and curb ramps and ADA compliance,” Szabo told the Budget and Finance Committee last Monday. “We know we have serious liability as it relates to the condition of our streets for both drivers, pedestrians and cyclists. We know what we need to do.”

He said actually reducing the risk of dangerous city infrastructure, though, would take a multi-year plan.

Mayor Karen Bass established a committee to write such a plan in October 2024. The committee was tasked with laying out the funding options and steps required to fix streets, sidewalks and other public infrastructure years in advance. The committee has not yet delivered a comprehensive plan.

The Charter Reform Commission recommended earlier this month that a capital improvement plan be required by the city, and if the City Council gives its approval, voters could make that a reality in November.

Along with better planning, Szabo told the Budget and Finance Committee there may be ways to stabilize costs through using liability insurance “in areas of predictable, ongoing liability.”

Insurance might help to reduce large swings in cost from year to year, according to the report from the CAO and city attorney but would likely increase the city’s total spending toward liabilities.

“No insurance company would provide this coverage to the city,” the report said, “unless the payment that it received exceeded the amount that it was required to pay in costs and payouts over a period of time.”

One option the city could consider to actually bring those costs down, Szabo said, would be to hold departments accountable for their own liabilities.

That could mean that departments that overspent their liability budget would have less to spend on other things, he said, but the City Council would need to weigh how that could change necessary city services.

Councilmember Bob Blumenfield said at the Budget and Finance Committee meeting that this strategy “makes a lot of sense” but might have some unintended consequences for certain departments.

“If we hold an infrastructure department liable, then that just means less infrastructure for the city,” he said. “Or if we hold the police liable, then we end up with less police, which doesn't hurt that department as much as it hurts the general public.”

Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky said she doesn't want liability issues to be something the city keeps “punting down the road.” She said she hears often from constituents who are concerned about the dangerous state of L.A. sidewalks and wants to find solutions the city can act on.

“Let's start the conversation about really tackling each of these specific issues,” she said.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

The friendship that developed between billionaire Stan Kroenke and Inglewood Mayor James Butts helped bring the NFL back to Los Angeles and spark the construction of venues now scheduled to host some of the world’s most-watched events — at least, that’s how the mayor has often told the story. 

But in July 2025, a company that operates Inglewood’s 300-acre Hollywood Park development — home to SoFi Stadium and owned by Kroenke — sued the city of Inglewood, trying to stop the installation of more than 100 digital billboards near the stadium and several other event venues.

“Dear Stan,” Butts responded in a letter, telling the largest landowner in America he was “greatly surprised” by having been recently served.

“I would have expected a call from you personally and not just a lawyer’s letter and a lawsuit,” Butts wrote.

Peppered among repeated requests to sit down man-to-man and work it out, Butts wrote that he would do whatever it takes to fight Kroenke’s legal challenges to the city’s billboard program.

Butts would later make a bombshell argument: that the very contract the stadium was built on was void.

Kroenke isn’t the only billionaire Butts has been legally feuding with. A business owned by Steve Ballmer, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers and the Intuit Dome, has also sued to stop the city from moving forward with its billboard network.

At the heart of each case is a looming conflict over advertising territory — who gets to control what millions of gamegoers see and who gets to cash checks from brands eager to hawk their products to people attending the upcoming World Cup, the 2027 Super Bowl and the 2028 Olympics. 

The legal flexing between Butts and the billionaires — recounted in court filings and interviews by The LA Local — threatens to go beyond billboard advertising and undo the public-private partnerships that built one of the nation’s premier stadium and venue hubs. As the conflict grows, so do the hazards to the city’s financial prospects, its residents’ quality of life and Butts’ campaign for a fifth term as mayor. 

Butts declined to comment for this story after being contacted multiple times. John Quinn, a lawyer for Hollywood Park, told The LA Local that the claims made by the mayor and his administration raise fundamental questions about whether the city is a reliable place to do business.

“That kind of uncertainty doesn’t just affect this project, it makes it harder for anyone to trust long-term agreements with the city, which could deter future investment and limit opportunities for residents,” Quinn said.

The billboard battles ignite

Inglewood’s bet on building and redeveloping stadiums and event venues in the wake of the Great Recession was a gamble from the start. Research shows that city investments in sports stadiums often don’t pay in the ways city leaders hope.

When Butts was elected mayor, he inherited a city with considerable financial challenges. Still, he led an effort in 2012 to use $18 million in city funds to help renovate what is now the Kia Forum. In 2015, the City Council voted unanimously to approve the construction of what would become SoFi Stadium. Development after development followed.

In some ways, Butts’ bet paid off. The teams and their fans flocked to the city. SoFi Stadium is home to two NFL franchises, one of which won the Super Bowl there in 2022. The Clippers launched their first season at the newly built Intuit Dome in late 2024. By 2025, SoFi Stadium announced that 10 million people had attended events there since its opening. 

And more fans are expected for the major international sporting events on the horizon. About 5 million people registered to purchase tickets to the 2028 Olympics, and the LA Sports and Entertainment Commission forecasts the World Cup could inject about $17 million into Inglewood’s economy.

The city is paid a portion of ticket admissions and parking revenue from all venues, and is in a far better financial position than it was before the stadium boom. Its unemployment rate is about 6%, according to the California Employment Development Department, down from nearly 16% when Butts was first elected. The city’s budget shows it received about $19 million in revenue related to venue admissions and $7.7 million related to parking in fiscal year 2024-25.

But the success of SoFi alone is beginning to come at a cost. According to the contract between the city and Hollywood Park, once the city receives $25 million in tax revenue from the development in any given year, it has to pay several businesses owned by Kroenke back for various improvements made to the city during construction.

A spokesperson for Hollywood Park’s legal team said that the city had surpassed $25 million in annual revenue by 2022.

The stadium operating company claims the city owes it about $376 million.

It hasn’t always been clear to residents that the money the city makes outweighs the costs they pay. Inglewood’s business corridor has continued to struggle. Despite public outcry, water and sewer rates increased last year. Nearly every weekend, parking and traffic problems reach severe levels as the city hosts various events.

In April 2025, the Inglewood City Council quietly launched its own project to independently capitalize on eventgoers by advertising to them. It awarded a 20-year contract, which can be extended for decades, giving WOW Media, a Los Angeles advertising firm, exclusive rights to expand a series of billboards near the Inglewood stadiums. 

Butts pitched the project as a transportation information network that could be used to alert the public to critical safety information, according to City Council filings.

Digital billboards in Inglewood on Saturday.

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Dania Maxwell

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The LA Local

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Digital billboards in Inglewood on Saturday.

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Dania Maxwell

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The LA Local

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Digital billboards in Inglewood on Saturday.

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Dania Maxwell

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The LA Local

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The WOW Media contract involves constructing digital billboards in medians and near sidewalks of public streets. In total, the network could include what the city described as 60 digital signs and 108 digital screens. WOW Media would pay about 40% of the ad revenue to the city as “rent,” according to the contract.

WOW did not respond to a request for comment to this story.

The city’s billboard project took the stadium businesses completely by surprise, as they manage their own digital advertising operations on their properties. 

Businesses tied to Kroenke and Hollywood Park sued the city last July, saying the billboards threaten their own advertising business and undermine the branding of the teams and events hosted there. Those linked to Ballmer, the Intuit Dome and the Kia Forum followed with nearly identical claims. The two share the same law firm for the suits. 

Businesses and lawyers connected to Ballmer’s suits did not respond to The LA Local’s inquiries.

But the companies claim that the city launched its billboard campaign out of sight of the public and the owners of the stadiums. The city did not open the project up to bids from other advertising companies and did not hold a public hearing before the vote. The City Council approved the motion in April, and the companies said in court filings they did not learn about the project until late May.

In suits that attracted national and local media coverage, the companies argue that the city’s plan violates its own policies barring billboards in the public right-of-way and that the city approved the permits for construction of the billboards the month before the contract was voted on. 

They also said that the city’s billboard project “pulled the rug out” from under contracts establishing the standards the parties agreed to maintain to operate the stadiums and the millions they make each year.

Butts claims SoFi deal is void 

Screenshot from ‘Mission Inglewood- State of The City’ short film.

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via Youtube: City of Inglewood account

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Butts has long said he should be credited with saving the city from bankruptcy by spearheading venue development when he took office in 2011. In fact, the city of Inglewood released a video on YouTube in 2024 in the style of an action film showing him manning a war room, where he is briefed on the dire straits the city faced at the beginning of his tenure. 

Much like in the video, with characteristic confidence, Butts has repeatedly said he prevailed in the city’s seemingly impossible mission to once again earn it the nickname “City of Champions.”

Butts said the pending litigation prevented him from commenting, and he did not respond to questions about what consequence his legal claims could have on the city.

He previously told The LA Local that he inherited a City Council in dysfunction and reshaped it into one that attracted investment from business developers. Those same business benefits have come at a cost to public participation in local government. 

An LA Local investigation found that the Inglewood City Council rarely holds public hearings, rarely hears from the public after moving meeting times from the evening to regular business hours, and almost always votes yes unanimously on the motions it puts on its agenda. Council meetings have averaged about 30 minutes over the past two years.

In fact, the public never directly voted to approve the Hollywood Park development that became SoFi Stadium. Instead, a ballot initiative was used to add the stadium to already existing plans for the site after more than 20,000 signatures were collected. 

Among the crowning achievements of Butts’ business-friendly governing style, the City Council approved the SoFi initiative in a unanimous vote in 2015. But with the billboard legal battles intensifying, Butts dropped a bomb on the city’s deal with the profitable stadium and its related businesses.

The contract the city had agreed to with Hollywood Park to build SoFi a decade earlier was no longer valid, Butts wrote to Kroenke in July. The city would need to be reimbursed for a $20 million payment it had recently made, and Kroenke could expect no future payments on the millions they owed for infrastructure improvements under the 2015 contract, according to the letter he sent. 

Butts wrote that the city’s lawyers found the contract was void while reviewing claims Kroenke and Ballmer had made in their billboard lawsuits. A court had ruled in an unrelated case — after the Hollywood Park contract was signed — that such developments could not be approved by a signature-collecting initiative, as Inglewood had done. Butts claimed the ruling also applies to Inglewood. The LA Local found no evidence that the case has voided any other development agreement. 

“I’m surprised that your legal counsel did not advise you of the implications of that case prior to filing,” Butts wrote. 

The void contract was “very serious” he added. “Aside from the construction that has already been completed on the property, there are ongoing obligations that extend for many years and involve hundreds of millions of dollars.”

And it appears Kroenke did not directly write Butts back.

Butts wrote in August 2025 to another stadium representative, Otto Maly, that he remained interested in meeting directly with Kroenke to discuss the billboards and the purportedly void development agreement.

In it, Butts, a former police officer who later served as police chief, said city officials could be jailed for making the $20 million payment: “California Penal Code section 424 makes it a crime, punishable by incarceration, to transfer funds without legal authority.”

While he declined to comment about the claim, Butts appears to be attempting to trigger negotiations for a new development agreement. 

Months after the letter, a company owned by Kroenke sued Inglewood again to dispute its attempt to claw back the $20 million payment and reaffirm the validity of their 25-year agreement. The case remains unresolved.

After being paid millions annually for the past decade, the stadium’s lawyers wrote, “the city is repudiating all of that, in a brazen, cynical effort to avoid making the payments it promised to make, for rich benefits it has already received.”

“The potential impact here is broader than this dispute, and the risk ultimately falls on residents as it could affect job creation, business growth, and the city’s ability to sustain long-term economic momentum,” Quinn, the lawyer representing Hollywood Park for Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, told The LA Local.

Butts appears confident he can work through the conflict and the risks it poses to the city’s finances and his political future. Having recently announced a run for his fifth term as mayor, he is not acting as if he could be arrested for the city’s $20 million payment on what he claims is an illegitimate contract. 

“I’m certain we will work things out as we have in the past,” Butts wrote to Kroenke last August.

In a city that thrives on blockbuster sequels, the November election is set to plunge Los Angeles voters back into a heated debate around the city’s “mansion tax.”

The California secretary of state on Tuesday verified that backers of a statewide initiative to overturn the tax have collected enough signatures to place their measure on the ballot.

But other efforts to reform the tax — without ending it — may also end up going before city voters. Here’s what Angelenos need to know to make sense of the various efforts to re-do or nix the tax.

‘Mansion tax’ basics

Measure ULA was passed by city voters in 2022. It raises money for tenant aid programs and affordable housing construction by taxing real estate that sells for more than $5 million, annually adjusted for inflation.

It was widely pitched as a “mansion tax.” But it also applies to apartment buildings and other commercial properties. Economic studies have linked this additional cost with depressed housing development in the city relative to other parts of Southern California without the tax.

Measure ULA backers dispute those findings, blaming high interest rates and other economic trends for L.A.’s housing slowdown.

Supporters initially said the measure would raise up to $1.1 billion per year. But actual revenue has proven far lower. Three years after it first took effect, the tax has raised just over $1.1 billion total.

Some of that money has gone toward defending tenants in eviction court, as well as relief to struggling tenants through the city’s ULA Emergency Renters Assistance Program and ULA Income Support Program.

On the construction side, Measure ULA has helped subsidize about 800 units of affordable housing so far. The City Council will soon take up approval of a new round of developments, largely funded by Measure ULA. In total, those new projects seek to build 1,528 units of affordable housing and preserve affordability in 3,713 existing units.

Proponents of the measure say these numbers prove Measure ULA is working, and voters should not exempt new apartment buildings from the tax or overturn it.

Joe Donlin, director of the United to House L.A. coalition, said the initiative backed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association poses a real threat to the city’s progress on addressing housing affordability.

“They want to eliminate revenue for affordable housing, the type of housing that makes it possible for working families, working people of California, to live here and work here and thrive here,” he said.

The measure that just made the ballot

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association has opposed Measure ULA from Day 1. The organization joined a 2022 lawsuit seeking to overturn the tax, which ultimately failed.

In recent months, the association has been collecting signatures for a ballot initiative that seeks to invalidate Measure ULA and other such transfer taxes in cities like Berkeley, Oakland, Santa Monica and Culver City.

Howard Jarvis organizers turned in those signatures last month. Now, state election officials have verified the organization has collected enough signatures to put the measure on the statewide ballot.

The measure seeks to limit transfer taxes to no more than 0.11% (Measure ULA’s tax tops out at 5.5%). It also seeks to counter recent court rulings, which have allowed California voters to pass new taxes with simple majority support as long as ballot initiatives are driven by citizens, not elected officials.

The measure would require future taxes to achieve more than two-thirds support from voters. Measure ULA, which was passed with nearly 58% support, would have failed to meet that threshold.

“California is very unaffordable, and the courts have made it easier to raise taxes,” said Susan Shelley, a spokesperson for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. “We don't think that's right, and we are going to make it harder to raise taxes.”

According to the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, the measure’s passage could lead to “a couple of billion dollars” of lost local revenue, plus potential losses from future taxes that could pass under the lower voter-approval threshold but won’t muster two-thirds support.

The ‘Mend It, Don’t End It’ option

Voters will get a simple binary choice on the Howard Jarvis-backed measure: “yes” to end the taxes and raise the threshold for approving new taxes or “no” to keep the taxes and the threshold as they are.

But to complicate matters, L.A. city voters may be confronted with yet another choice: to keep the tax mostly in place, with some new limits.

Affordable housing developers, business leaders and academics have formed a new coalition they’re calling “Mend It, Don’t End It.” They’re pushing the City Council to place a measure on the November ballot that would potentially exempt new apartment buildings from the tax, among other changes.

“The Jarvis measure is a blunt instrument that would harm our city,” said Melanie Mendoza, a spokesperson for the coalition. “We stand for surgical fixes that can be made to Measure ULA to build more housing, increase affordability and reduce homelessness. The qualification of the Jarvis measure adds urgency to act to make L.A. affordable.”

The City Council recently created an Ad Hoc Committee on Measure ULA, which is tasked with developing reforms that could potentially go to voters in November. The committee will also have to consider whether the tax should apply to Pacific Palisades homeowners who may end up selling their properties after 2025’s devastating fires.

Proponents of the reform-not-repeal approach say they hope that if local officials and voters get behind efforts to carve out new apartment projects, some developers will choose not to pour money into an expensive Howard Jarvis-led campaign.

Shelley, the organization’s spokesperson, said developers can choose to spend their money however they want, but the taxpayers association has no plans to back down from this fight.

“The courts have made it easier to raise taxes,” Shelley said. “We don't think they have any authorization to do that.”

The City Council’s Measure ULA committee is scheduled to meet Friday and has a deadline of the end of April to finalize its recommendations.

Two bills moving through the state Senate seek to prevent immigration enforcement officers from isolating patients from their loved ones and interfering with their ability to get legal help. Analyses for both bills cite reporting by KFF Health News that found family members and attorneys have faced extreme difficulty locating and supporting patients hospitalized while in immigration custody.

KFF Health News found that some hospitals have facilitated patient isolation through what are known as blackout policies, which can include registering people under pseudonyms, withholding their names from the hospital directory, and preventing staff from contacting patients’ relatives to let them know their location and condition.

A bill by Democratic state Sen. Caroline Menjivar of the San Fernando Valley, SB 915, would largely prohibit the use of blackout policies for patients in immigration custody and ensure they retain the right to have their families and others notified of their whereabouts and condition. Blackout policies would be allowed when the health care provider determines the patient is a credible risk to themself or others and the risk is documented in the patient’s medical record. Patients would also be allowed to receive visitors.

It seeks to address reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents guarding patients in their hospital rooms while they undergo medical exams or talk with doctors, interfering with medical decisions, and pushing for patients to be discharged prematurely to detention facilities ill-equipped to provide follow-up care.

“These are actions that have no place in health care, and it is a clear violation of the patients’ rights,” Menjivar said.

Under Menjivar's proposal, agents would not be allowed into the rooms of patients they bring in for care unless they can show legal authorization to be there. If agents remain in the room, staff would be required to ask them to leave during medical exams and patient care discussions. If agents refuse, health care facility staff would need to document it.

SB 1323, authored by state Sen. Susan Rubio, a Democrat from the San Gabriel Valley, would require health care providers to inform staff and relevant volunteers to respond when patients want their families to know where they are, and to post a notice at facility entrances with information about visitation and access policies. The law already says patients can agree to have loved ones notified they’re in the hospital, and Rubio’s bill seeks to make sure staff and others know they can do that for patients in immigration custody.

The federal Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement, did not respond to a request for comment.

Both bills were passed by the Senate Health and Judiciary committees along party lines and will be heard next by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

More than 20 immigrant rights advocates and health care workers voiced support for strengthened protections for patients at a hearing last week.

“This state must do everything in its power to protect against these abuses and ensure detainees have the right to contact their loved ones when they are hospitalized and in critical conditions,” said Hector Pereyra, political manager with the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice.

However, representatives from the California Hospital Association and California Medical Association told lawmakers last week they had concerns that directing health care workers to document agents’ badge numbers and ask them to leave patients’ rooms could create conflict and pose a safety risk.

“While we understand that this is an important issue, we want to ensure the bill strikes the right balance and does not create conflicting or unclear obligations for hospitals and their staff and clinicians, particularly in real-time interactions with federal officers,” said Vanessa Gonzalez, a vice president of state advocacy for the hospital association.

KFF Health News reported that one man, 43-year-old Julio César Peña, was held at a hospital in Victorville for almost two weeks before his attorney and family found out where he was. Peña, who had terminal kidney disease, was shackled to his hospital bed, guarded by immigration agents, and told he wasn’t allowed to disclose his location, according to his wife. He then suffered a seizure that left him intubated and unconscious, but no one notified his family. Peña died Feb. 25, less than two months after he was released to go home.

Advocates for immigrants and health care workers, as well as lawmakers, fear similar incidents are happening around the state.

Menjivar said her bill “seeks to close the gap between existing law and practice by empowering health care provider entities with the tools to uphold the privacy, health, and visitation rights of a patient brought in under immigration custody.”

SB 915 would prohibit hospitals and clinics from allowing immigration officers to make medical decisions for the patient or provide interpretation. Health care facilities would be required to document and verify, “to the extent possible,” the identities of immigration officers; provide patients access to communication tools; and inform patients of their rights. They would also need to complete discharge planning that includes attempts to coordinate with any receiving facility, such as a detention center, to ensure patients receive follow-up care.

The bills come on the heels of legislation passed last year that sought to limit immigration enforcement at health care facilities, including by prohibiting medical establishments from allowing federal agents without a valid search warrant or court order into private areas. However, that bill did not address situations in which patients are already in immigration custody.

“ICE has instilled fear in our hospitals and has kept us from doing our job,” said SatKartar Khalsa, an emergency medicine resident at a safety net hospital in San Francisco who has treated detained patients and testified in support of SB 915. “This has all led to worse care for our patients and has added another layer of fear among health care workers.”

This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.