The Brief

Responding to an investigation by LAist, a county supervisor is publicly criticizing L.A.’s homeless services chief for signing a $2.1 million contract with her husband’s employer, calling it “sloppy work.”

Through a public records request, LAist recently revealed that Va Lecia Adams Kellum, CEO of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, signed the contract and two contract amendments with a nonprofit that employs her husband in a senior leadership role. Adams Kellum had previously told LAist she followed rules barring her from any matters that involve the group.

Her husband, Edward Kellum, has not responded to requests for comment.

A government ethics expert told LAist that the signatures appear to violate state conflict of interest laws, which forbid government officials from signing contracts with their spouse’s employer, even if it’s by mistake.

“This is about just plain old sloppy work by [executives at] LAHSA, and quite frankly the executive director who signed it,” Supervisor Kathryn Barger said Tuesday evening at the L.A. County Board of Supervisors’ public meeting.

“If my spouse was working for A-B-C Corporation and I saw something come across my desk, I would know I shouldn't sign that,” Barger added.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger during an Eaton Fire press conference on January 09, 2025 at Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena.

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Barger served on LAHSA’s governing commission for about a year during Adams Kellum’s time as CEO. Her spokesperson told LAist earlier this month that Barger was unaware of the family tie until after she left the commission last fall.

A LAHSA spokesperson previously told LAist Adams Kellum “mistakenly signed” the three agreements after staffers at the agency inadvertently sent them to her.

The spokesperson and Adams Kellum have not responded to follow up questions from LAist asking how her signatures could be a mistake, given her husband’s employer is named as the other party just below her signatures.

Supervisor Horvath criticizes ‘lack of accountability’

L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath also criticized LAHSA executives during Tuesday’s meeting.

“I have seen firsthand for two years how there is a lack of accountability” at LAHSA, Horvath said.

She pointed to the agency’s long delay in following a state law that requires dozens of staff members to disclose their financial interests on publicly-accessible forms to help prevent conflicts of interest. LAist discovered the delay and reported it in December.

LAist reported at the time that LAHSA was out of step with other local governments by not requiring any staff besides the CEO to file the disclosures. LAHSA executives acknowledged to the county in September 2022 that the agency was required to make more staff disclose. The agency was required by state law to submit the proposed changes to the county within 90 days. It ended up taking more than two years for the agency’s staff to propose the changes for the commission’s approval in late October. County supervisors approved the changes during the board meeting on Tuesday, during which Barger and Horvath made their remarks.

“If we can’t get simple things right, like quickly updating a conflict of interest policy, that should concern us,” Horvath said at the meeting.

On Wednesday, LAist asked Adams Kellum for her response to Barger and Horvath’s comments. A response was not provided Thursday.

L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath speaks at a meeting of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority's governing commission on Friday, March 22, 2024.

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Horvath served on LAHSA’s governing commission from January 2023 to the end of last month. Her spokesperson has said Horvath was not officially notified that Adams Kellum’s husband worked for a LAHSA vendor.

Questions swirl around oversight issues

At a news conference for the region’s annual homeless count later Tuesday evening, an L.A. Times reporter asked Adams Kellum about Horvath’s criticism that LAHSA lacks accountability.

A LAHSA spokesperson responded he would follow up with the reporter. But the reporter pressed again for an answer, and Adams Kellum then responded that she supports accountability and transparency.

“ I've said that we needed increased accountability. It's one of our five pillars. I came to LAHSA to make it better. And of course, we need increased accountability and transparency,” Adams Kellum said.

An LAist reporter then asked Adams Kellum for her comment about her signatures on agreements with her husband’s employer.

LAHSA spokesperson Ahmad Chapman immediately declared the news conference over.

The LAist reporter pressed for an answer, but Adams Kellum referred reporters to a written statement. The statement said Adams Kellum was not involved in decisions about her husband’s employer.

It also said that “LAHSA had no decision-making power over” the $2.1 million contract Adams Kellum signed. The contract itself states that Adams Kellum would be administering the agreement and that she or someone she designates could increase or decrease how much is paid to the vendor.

Horvath and Barger’s remarks come as they and their fellow supervisors weigh whether to pull the vast majority of the county’s $350 million in annual funding out of LAHSA and instead have the county directly oversee the contractors who do the work.

LAHSA is jointly funded by the city and county, and administers more than $700 million in annual contracts with nonprofits to provide homeless services.

Horvath and Barger introduced the proposal to pull out of LAHSA in November, following a scathing county audit that found LAHSA was failing to properly oversee contractors and recoup over $50 million in tax dollars that vendors were supposed to pay back.

Supervisors are slated to make a decision on pulling the county’s funding after receiving a proposed plan in the coming days.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Horvath said the way LAHSA is set up is problematic, in that the city and county are ultimately responsible “yet it’s treated like it’s this other agency,” which has weaker accountability systems.

She said she intends to “proceed as planned” when the report comes back on redirecting the county’s funding to a new county department.

“ We know [LAHSA’s structure] doesn't work, and it's now our responsibility to do something about it,” Horvath said. She added that it’s “the right thing” to do, as expanded tax revenues for homeless services start soon under the voter-approved Measure A.

After Horvath brought up the audit and ethics issues at LAHSA, Supervisor Holly Mitchell said it’s important for the county to make sure its own ethics and accountability practices are in order for county departments.

“ I want to remind us that it would also be in our own best interest to ensure that conflict of interest policies are in place for all of our county departments, that we also need to closely watch our own audits, our own contract monitoring, and our contract execution process,” Mitchell said.

Michael Gates, a former deputy assistant attorney general, produced a letter Friday that he said confirmed he was not fired for cause, but rather resigned from the Civil Rights Division of the federal Department of Justice.

The Orange County Register last week reported that Gates had been fired for cause, citing an anonymous DOJ source who said Gates repeatedly referred to women colleagues by derogatory and demeaning names and had complained about the department employing a pregnant woman. The Register also published a government employment form, which was undated, that they said showed that Gates was fired for cause.

Gates told LAist the allegations were “100% fabrication.” Then on Friday, he shared a screenshot of a Nov. 21 letter from John Buchko, director of operational management at the DOJ, stating that the department “has accepted your voluntary resignation” and “will remove from your personnel record any previous reference to your termination.”

LAist reached out to Natalie Baldassarre, a DOJ spokesperson, to confirm the letter, sharing that screenshot. She responded by email: “No comment on personnel matters.”

Michael Gates provided this letter. A spokesperson for the department said they would not comment on personnel matters.

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Back to Huntington Beach

Gates told LAist earlier this month that he was resigning from his job with the federal government because he missed Huntington Beach and his family. On Friday, the Huntington Beach City Council confirmed Gates has been hired back as chief assistant city attorney. He starts Monday.

Gates is both loved and loathed in politically contentious Huntington Beach. He has been an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump and his policies and a continuous thorn in the side of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who is one of the most prominent critics of the president.

Gates was first elected city attorney in 2014 and has won re-election twice since then, with wide margins. Huntington Beach is among a minority of cities in California that elects rather than appoints a city attorney.

Gates' track record

As city attorney, Gates sued the state over housing mandates and the right to implement voter ID. He also marshalled the city into the center of culture war battles. While he was city attorney, his office sued California over the state’s sanctuary law, as well as a law prohibiting schools from requiring teachers to inform parents of a child’s request to change pronouns or otherwise “out” them as LGBTQ.

Many Huntington Beach residents support his work. But Gates has also faced heavy criticism and legal penalties, for some of his actions. In 2021, the city paid out $2.5 million total in a settlement with one former and one current employee who alleged age discrimination while working at the city under Gates. The city did not concede to any wrongdoing under the settlement.

And last year, Gates helped broker a controversial settlement over the pandemic-era cancelation of the city’s annual airshow, which will cost Huntington Beach taxpayers millions over the coming years.

What’s next?

Gates told LAist he’s looking forward to, once again, heading up the city’s litigation, including a scheduled trial against an effort to force Huntington Beach to adopt by-district elections. He said he plans to run again for city attorney in next year’s election.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who rose to prominence as one of President Donald Trump's biggest defenders and recently became one of his biggest critics, is leaving Congress.

Greene's announcement late Friday that she would resign effective Jan. 5, 2026, is the latest escalation of months of clashes with the president over his second term agenda — including the release of the Epstein files.

"Standing up for American women who were raped at 14, trafficked and used by rich powerful men, should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the President of the United States, whom I fought for," Greene wrote in a lengthy statement shared online.

The third-term Congresswoman also said it would not be fair to her northwest Georgia district, one of the most conservative in the country, to have them "endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the president we all fought for," while noting that "Republicans will likely lose the midterms."

Greene is one of a record 40 House members and 10 senators who have indicated they do not plan to return to their seats after the 2026 election, joining a number of lawmakers who are retiring or running for a different office.
Copyright 2025 NPR

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman filed a motion Friday in Superior Court to dismiss manslaughter charges against two Torrance police officers who fatally shot a Black man in possession of an air rifle in 2018.

Hochman argued in court documents that prosecutors can’t meet the legal standard of proof needed for the officers to be convicted of a crime.

The court has not yet ruled on the matter.

The details

Officers Matthew Concannon and Anthony Chavez were indicted in 2023 in connection with the killing of Christopher Deandre Mitchell, 23, who was suspected of stealing a car.

As the officers approached the car, they saw what was later revealed to be an air rifle between Mitchell’s legs. When Mitchell appeared to reach for the rifle,the officers opened fire, according to police.

The backstory

Former District Attorney Jackie Lacey declined to file charges against the officers in 2019, saying they reasonably believed Mitchell had a gun. Her successor George Gascón, elected in 2020 on a platform of police accountability, assigned a special prosecutor to review the case. The special prosecutor sought the criminal indictment.

When Hochman took office in 2024, he appointed a new special prosecutor, who recommended the charges be dropped.

“We cannot move forward in good faith with prosecuting these two officers because we cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt with admissible evidence that the officers unreasonably believed they were in imminent danger when they saw what looked like a sawed-off shotgun or rifle between Mr. Mitchell’s legs and his hands moved toward the weapon just before the officers shot,” the statement read.

The courts

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Sam Ohta did not immediately make a ruling Friday on the motion to dismiss the charges, saying the state Supreme Court is also considering the case.

The state Supreme Court is considering an appeal filed by one of the officer’s attorneys after Ohta rejected an earlier motion to dismiss by the defense.

As the Palisades Fire was still burning in January, residents saw an eye-grabbing headline: the Santa Ynez reservoir, perched directly above the Palisades, was offline for repairs and empty.

The reservoir’s closure frustrated residents and spurred Gov. Gavin Newsom to announce a state investigation into whether the reservoir being full of water would have made a difference fighting the deadly fire.

After months of analysis, California agencies including the state’s EPA, Cal Fire and the Department of Water Resources issued a report confirming the explanations given by local officials and experts in the aftermath of the fire: the water supply was too slow, not too low — and even a functioning reservoir likely wouldn’t have done much in the face of an unprecedented natural disaster.

Why the hydrants stopped working

The report found that not even a full reservoir positioned uphill from the Palisades Fire could have maintained water pressure and stopped the devastation.

“The water system lost pressure, not due to a lack of water supply in the system, but because of an insufficient flow rate,” the report states.

A reservoir perched at a high elevation, such as the Santa Ynez, can serve an important role in maintaining water pressure for hydrants throughout the system. As water gets used downhill, water from the reservoir flows to towers that maintain water pressure. Because of gravity and physical limitations on flow rates, the pressure towers can't be refilled at the same pace as they are drained and eventually dry up.

In the case of the Palisades Fire, the report states, a full reservoir would have helped keep water pressure up for only a short time.

The report noted that some data points on the demand on the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s system were missing.

However, investigators found that based on experiences with other fires, the high demand across the system meant it was “unlikely that [the reservoir] could have helped maintain pressure for very long.”

The system’s design

The report found that the closure of the Santa Ynez Reservoir was in line with the primary purpose of L.A.’s water infrastructure: maintaining a clean drinking water supply. The reservoir repairs were prompted by a damaged cover. The repairs, the report notes, were required by federal and state laws on drinking water safety.

More broadly, municipal water systems like L.A.’s weren’t built to fight wildfires, as LAist reported in January.

“This report confirms what we and others have been saying more broadly regarding water system expectations and capabilities, but does so completely independently and with new details specific to the L.A. fires,” Greg Pierce, the director of UCLA’s Human Right to Water Solutions Lab, said in an email to LAist.

What’s next

The report makes two major recommendations: continue to follow the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan, and make sure firefighters in the state are positioned for year-round fires.

The state stopped short of recommending any changes to L.A.’s municipal infrastructure. Water experts like Pierce say massive amounts of water and a very expensive redesign of L.A.’s water system would be needed to keep fire hydrants working during large urban conflagrations.

For their part, researchers and others have been looking into other solutions, including putting more utility lines underground and redistributing water across the system.

The report about the reservoir comes on the heels of a separate report from the Fire Safety Research Institute about the timeline leading up to and during the January firestorm. That report, which was commissioned by the California governor's office, contains a detailed account of the Palisades and Eaton fires' progressions and emergency services' responses on Jan. 7 and 8.

As for the Santa Ynez Reservoir, the repairs to fix its broken cover and make it usable again are slated to begin in June and finish by May 2027.