Topline:
The Rev. Jesse Jackson has died at the age of 84.
About his career: An American civil rights leader, minister, and politician, Jackson was a protégé of Martin Luther King Jr. and in the 1980s reshaped Democratic politics with two galvanizing presidential campaigns.
Read on... for more about his activism, connections to King and his family's plans to honor his life.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, an American civil rights leader, minister, and politician, who was a protégé of Martin Luther King Jr. and in the 1980s reshaped Democratic politics with two galvanizing presidential campaigns, died Tuesday at the age of 84.
"Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world," the Jackson family said in a statement. "We shared him with the world, and in return, the world became part of our extended family."
According to the Jackson family, public commemorations will take place in Chicago.
Jackson was born Oct. 8, 1941, in a tiny house in Greenville, S.C., where he began his lifelong work fighting for civil rights.
While visiting home for Christmas break during his freshman year at the University of Illinois, Jackson needed to borrow a book but couldn't get it from the town's white-only library. Six months later, on July 16, 1960, he and seven other students held a sit-in at the library and were arrested for protesting. After his experience as a member of the "Greenville Eight," Jackson transferred to North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College, a historically Black school in Greensboro, N.C.
His burgeoning activism would bring him in 1965 to march alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and others in Selma, Ala., answering King's call for supporters of a local voting rights campaign. Jackson became a close ally of King — eventually leaving his graduate studies at the Chicago Theological Seminary to join King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He became the Chicago coordinator and a year later, in 1967, the national leader of the SCLC's Operation Breadbasket, which was dedicated to improving the economic conditions of Black communities in the U.S.
In April 1968, Jackson traveled with King to Memphis, Tenn., where he witnessed the civil rights leader's assassination.
King's death marked the beginning of the end for Jackson's association with the SCLC. By 1971, he split with the group and formed his own organization, called Operation PUSH. The group continued Jackson's work to increase Black Americans' political strength and political opportunities.
Jackson later merged Operation PUSH with his National Rainbow Coalition to form the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, which became a prominent civil rights organization.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Jackson, who became an ordained Baptist minister in 1968, increasingly became an influential player on the national stage.
In 1983, Jackson organized a voter registration drive in Chicago that is credited as being the key factor for the election of the city's first Black mayor, Harold Washington.
In November 1983, he announced his first bid for president, becoming the second Black person to seek a major party's nomination after Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm in 1972. His rousing speech at the 1984 Democratic Convention in San Francisco appealed to a "Rainbow Coalition" of disenfranchised Americans and people of color.
"This is not a perfect party. We're not a perfect people," Jackson said. "Yet, we are called to a perfect mission. Our mission to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless, to teach the illiterate, to provide jobs for the jobless, and to choose the human race over the nuclear race."
Though Jackson had significant support for his bid, with his campaign registering more than a million new voters and winning 3.5 million votes, his run for president was not without controversy. Jackson drew heated criticism for making a disparaging remark about New York's Jewish community and for his relationship with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has said the Jewish community is to blame for Black oppression.
Jackson would apologize for his comments and distance himself from Farrakhan, but those efforts were not enough to clinch the Democratic nomination. He placed third in the Democratic primary behind former Vice President Walter Mondale and Sen. Gary Hart. Still, it was a landmark achievement for Jackson and a growing Black political movement.
In 1988, he ran again, expanding his outreach to more white Americans, and reached an emotional crescendo during an impassioned speech at that year's Democratic convention. Although Jackson won major presidential primaries, the first African American to do so, he came in second to the Democratic Party nominee, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. Until Barack Obama's election in 2008, Jackson was the most successful Black U.S. presidential candidate.
Though Jackson never ran for the presidency again, he remained a powerful player in the Democratic Party, pushing for the leaders to adopt a platform that recognized issues important to Black voters.
Jackson traveled around the globe throughout his life using his voice to expose international problems and highlight civil rights abuses. In several instances, he negotiated and secured the release of American hostages held captive abroad — most notably from Syria, Cuba and Serbia. From 1992 to 2000, he also hosted a weekly discussion show on CNN, Both Sides with Jesse Jackson, where he addressed current social and political issues.
In 2000, Jackson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor a civilian in the U.S. can receive. But controversy was not far behind. A year later, news that Jackson fathered a daughter with a former member of his staff became public.
When the scandal broke, he said, "This is no time for evasions, denials or alibis. I fully accept responsibility and I am truly sorry for my actions."
Jackson found himself apologizing again in 2008, this time to Obama, for crass remarks he made about the presidential candidate in an aside to a reporter on a Fox News program. Obama accepted the apology. And despite other comments critical of the tone of some of Obama's campaign speeches, Jackson was present at his victory party at Grant Park in Chicago and wept.
"I knew that people in the villages of Kenya and Haiti, and mansions and palaces in Europe and China, were all watching this young African American male assume the leadership to take our nation out of a pit to a higher place," Jackson told NPR after Obama's election night.
Jackson saw the rise and painful fall of the promising political career of his oldest son, Jesse Jackson Jr., who was elected to Congress from Illinois in 1995 and resigned in 2012 citing health issues. After leaving office, he was investigated for misuse of campaign funds and pleaded guilty in 2013 to spending $750,000 in campaign funds for personal use. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison.
"I speak really today as a father," Jackson Sr. said at the courthouse the day of the sentencing. "Most of my career has been spent outgoing — helping someone else on something I really understood socially and politically. But this one, of course, is home."
In 2017, Jackson announced he had Parkinson's disease, a degenerative disorder that affects movement. In November, his organization revealed Jackson was diagnosed in April with progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare neurological disease similar but different from Parkinson's disease. Despite his illness, Jackson often showed up at protests against police brutality, calling for justice for victims of police shootings.
In August 2020, Jackson spoke at a news conference in Kenosha, Wis., where police shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, several times.
"Today, there's a moral desert, top-down. The acid rain is coming, top-down," he said. "That kind of moral desert hurts all of America."
He compared the demonstrations that summer to those that occurred during the Civil Rights Era, comments that echoed earlier remarks he made to NPR that June about the nationwide protests that erupted after another Black man, George Floyd, was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis.
The marches were "hopeful signs," Jackson said. "The marchers are full of hope. They believe something can happen. On the move, we're not going backwards."
In 2021, Jackson contracted COVID-19. He was hospitalized and spent several weeks in a rehabilitation facility. He stepped down as president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition in 2023.
On Nov. 12, the coalition announced Jackson was hospitalized for PSP, which affects body movements, balance, vision, speech and swallowing.
Jackson is survived by his wife, Jacqueline, and six children.
Copyright 2026 NPR
Topline:
For decades, the Los Angeles Metro Board has operated without a member of the public who regularly rides trains and buses among its members. Now, calls to change that are growing. Tomorrow, the Metro Board is set to vote on what the future make-up of the governing body should look like.
Background: In light of the L.A. County voter-approved Measure G, which expands the Board of Supervisors and adds an elected county-level executive, the L.A. Metro Board has been considering how to reconfigure its make-up. Agency staff have recommended maintaining the size and geographic split of the governing body and expanding the pool of people who can be appointed to serve.
Hahn’s motion: While the recommendations would theoretically allow for a transit rider to be appointed to the board, there would be no guarantee. A separate motion from L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn would expand the Metro Board to include a dedicated voter seat. Both items, and a motion that competes with staff’s recommendation, are scheduled for a vote tomorrow.
Read on … for more information about the composition of Metro’s Board and the diverging perspectives on adding a transit rider seat.
For decades, the Los Angeles Metro Board, which runs the countywide public transit system that sees more than 1 million daily riders, has operated without a member of the public who regularly rides trains and buses among its members.
Now, calls to change that are growing. On Thursday, the Metro Board is set to vote on what the future make-up of the governing body should look like, and there are several options on the table:
Sound complicated? It is. Let’s break it down:
Currently, there are 13 voting members of the Metro Board: the five L.A. County Supervisors, the mayor of L.A. and her three appointees, and four regional representatives from across the county chosen by a selection committee.
There’s no requirement that they have transit expertise or public ridership experience.
At the beginning of this year, the Metro Board formed a committee that convened monthly to discuss how the Metro Board could be reformatted in light of Measure G. That’s the measure L.A. County voters passed in 2024, which expands the Board of Supervisors from five to nine members by 2032 and adds an elected countywide executive.
The make-up of the Metro Board is codified in the state’s public utilities code, so any proposed changes approved on Thursday will need another vote by legislators in Sacramento before they go into effect.
Based on feedback from committee deliberations, public input and a review of peer agencies across the country, Metro officials in June proposed maintaining the size and geographic split of the Board.
Under that proposal, they also recommended expanding the pool of people who could serve on the Metro Board to include riders and experts in relevant subjects, like engineering or finance. If ultimately approved, these members could be chosen by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, the mayor of L.A. or the city selection committee.
In its recommendation, Metro officials notably shied away from adding a seat to the board, saying an extra person would impose “administrative and financial burdens on the agency.”
According to the rules for the Board, members are paid $150 per day they attend “to the business” of Metro up to $600 per month.
Metro’s media relations office did not answer a request for more information on what additional administrative and financial burdens the addition of a board member would impose on the agency.
A competing motion introduced by Bass would not allow the L.A. County Board of Supervisors or the committee that selects the four regional representatives to appoint a transit rider or subject matter expert.
Instead, it would designate one of the mayor’s four seats for a for a transit advocate or rider, and it would add a 14th voting member of the board who would also be a rider.
Hahn’s motion does not directly conflict with staff’s recommendation, and similar to Bass’ motion, would add a transit rider to the Metro Board.
Hahn said a dedicated seat for a transit rider would be more powerful than an appointed one.
“I worry that if [the rider] was just an appointed position by an elected official … [the rider] would feel loyalty to the appointing elected official as opposed to loyalty to their fellow riders,” she said in an interview with LAist.
She said it’s clear that there’s a community desire for a guaranteed rider seat on the Board.
During a public outreach period between February and May, Metro gathered input from 1,300 people. The clearest and most consistent piece of feedback was that the public wants to see a “formal rider voice on the Metro Board,” according to a Metro report.
While the staff recommendation to expand who can sit on the Metro Board would theoretically allow for the appointment of a transit rider, if not several transit riders, some officials have questioned whether elected officials would voluntarily cede political power to a member of the public if that option moves forward.
L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath characterized a future under Metro staff’s recommendation as a “political game of chicken.”
“ Who's going to take the responsibility and give up the power that they hold?” Horvath told LAist.
Michael Schneider, the head of the influential transportation advocacy group Streets for All, warned that reserving a seat for a transit rider on the Metro Board could backfire.
He said adding a seat for a rider, or any interest group, risks creating a situation where Metro Board members defer leadership to the representative.
“The rider experience should be top of mind for all board members,” Schneider said. “If there’s a specific seat for a rider, then board members may decide to not pay as much attention to the rider experience.”
Schneider argues Metro Board members should all be mandated to use Metro at least once a week. It’s a metric that could be tracked using TAP cards, he suggested.
“It’s hard to improve a system that you don’t have experience with,” Schneider said. “Experience is not sitting in a chair in a boardroom. It’s on a train or on a bus or using Metro bike share.”
The debate over a dedicated transit rider on the Metro Board is just one of several thorny questions, some politically charged, that officials are weighing as they decide what the Metro Board should look like.
Here’s what else will likely be discussed on the topic on Thursday:
Metro's Board meeting starts at 10 a.m. Thursday.
Topline: The aftermath of last summer’s militarized deportation campaign still reverberates in many of L.A. County’s Latino business corridors, this according to a UCLA report published on Wednesday.
Why it matters: The report, rooted in quantitative data and conversations with entrepreneurs countywide, was conducted by UCLA’s nonpartisan Latino Policy and Politics Institute and Inclusive Action for the City, a nonprofit based in Boyle Heights.
What were some of the findings: It found that many entrepreneurs are still struggling to keep their businesses open, and that some have taken on debt and made other sacrifices to stay afloat.
The backstory: In the summer of 2025, L.A. County became the focal point of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. Federal immigration agents, backed by the Marines and the National Guard, carried out large-scale operations at commercial corridors that serve as important economic hubs for Latino communities, as well as in residential areas and public spaces.
Go deeper: Federal immigration raids in LA started a year ago. They left a permanent mark on many
Disclosure: Julia Barajas is a part-time graduate student at UCLA Law.
The aftermath of last summer’s militarized mass deportation campaign still reverberates in many of L.A. County’s Latino business corridors, this according to a UCLA report published on Wednesday.
The report, rooted in quantitative data and conversations with entrepreneurs countywide, was conducted by UCLA’s nonpartisan Latino Policy and Politics Institute and Inclusive Action for the City, a nonprofit based in Boyle Heights.
The participants include people who run restaurants, bakeries, hair salons, childcare centers, auto repair shops, furniture stores and other brick-and-mortar businesses. Most are located in neighborhoods that were most targeted by federal immigration agents.
In the summer of 2025, L.A. County became the focal point of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. Federal immigration agents carried out operations at commercial corridors that serve as important economic hubs for Latino communities, as well as in residential areas and public spaces. Amid roving patrols and large-scale raids, the federal government deployed thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines to support these efforts, further militarizing the region.
The institute's report found that, since then, many entrepreneurs are still struggling to keep their businesses open. Some have taken on debt and made other sacrifices to stay afloat.
Amada Armenta, one of the lead researchers and director of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute, underscored that the consequences of the raids go beyond economics.
In April, she and her colleagues conducted a series of focus groups for the report. And, “without fail,” Armenta added, at least one participant would end up in tears.
The entrepreneurs cried about the effects the raids had on their businesses, she said. They also cried about the toll they took on their health and on their families.
First, the researchers identified nine places that were subject to enforcement actions, with the goal of sampling a wide breadth of neighborhoods across L.A. County. Ultimately, they landed on businesses in:
The researchers identified 989 businesses within that half a mile by measuring cellphone data near raids.
After that, “we looked to see how many cell phones visited those businesses in the two weeks after a raid happened, compared to the two weeks before,” Armenta told LAist.
That’s how the researchers determined that, after last summer’s raids, the businesses had 46,000 fewer visits. Then, the researchers estimated the lost revenue. In the two weeks after the raids, they calculated a loss of $3.16 million.
To learn more about how businesses in those areas have fared since last summer, the research team conducted surveys and focus groups with 75 entrepreneurs.
The participants, Armenta said, shared “stories of tremendous hardship,” describing chronic fear and psychological distress.
In the surveys, the entrepreneurs repeatedly described a sustained sense of fear, anxiety, depression and hypervigilance. The entrepreneurs continue to limit their movement outside work and home; carry identification documents when they leave the house; monitor community reports of federal agent activity; and develop contingency plans for themselves, their families and their employees.
For many, dreams of expansion are gone. The entrepreneurs described having to lay off some of their employees, taking on more hours themselves and consolidating locales.
The stress of mounting bills has also taken a physical toll on the participants. One store owner described relapsing into alcohol use after maintaining sobriety. She attributed the relapse to prolonged feelings of helplessness and loss of control. Another business owner said the stress of seeing her family’s savings dry up caused her so much stress her face became paralyzed.
“We thought this was an important part of the story,” Armenta said. “There's been a couple of other reports that have come out about the way that the raids impact L.A.'s economy or businesses, but none of it has documented [their] effect on entrepreneurs.”
“And when we think about Latinos, particularly, they didn't just experience this as an attack on their businesses,” she added. “They experienced it as an attack on their communities, on their families, on themselves.”
Disclosure: Julia Barajas is a part-time graduate student at UCLA Law.
Topline:
Flies, rodents and other pests have been a persistent problem in Boyle Heights and nearby communities as millions of tons of food rot in a nearby burned-out warehouse. It’s gotten bad enough that L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is asking for action from the L.A. County Department of Public Health.
What Bass said: In a letter to county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, Bass said she’s “concerned with County DPH’s pace in addressing this disaster” and the risks it posed to health and quality of life. “Possibly the worst manifestation of these risks is the severe infestation of flies in Boyle Heights and neighboring communities,” she wrote today.
The pest control measures so far: Bass’ letter says the county took its first steps to hold Lineage accountable for a fly infestation on July 17, ordering Lineage to remove flies and mosquitoes from the warehouse, though her letter noted, “the County’s report only directs Lineage to eliminate flies from Lineage’s own property.” She said the county also needs to help control flies in adjacent communities.
What the county has said: A spokesperson for the county Department of Public Health told LAist on July 17 that it had itself directed the city and Lineage to develop and implement a vector and insect control plan.
Read on ... to learn what schools might do when classes begin in August.
Flies, rodents and other pests have been a persistent problem in Boyle Heights and nearby communities as millions of pounds of food rot in a nearby burned-out warehouse. It’s gotten bad enough that L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is asking for action from the L.A. County Department of Public Health.
In a letter sent Tuesday to county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, Bass said she’s “concerned with County DPH’s pace in addressing this disaster” and the risks it posed to health and quality of life.
“Possibly the worst manifestation of these risks is the severe infestation of flies in Boyle Heights and neighboring communities,” Bass wrote.
LAist has asked the Department of Public Health for comment and will update this article when they respond.
Bass wrote that the city of L.A., which does not have its own health department, is largely dependent on L.A. County for control of potentially disease-carrying vectors. The city has said elsewhere that its Sanitation Department did set about 250 rat traps in surrounding areas.
Bass’ letter says the county took its first steps to hold warehouse operator Lineage accountable for a fly infestation on July 17, ordering the company to remove flies and mosquitoes from the property.
“Although I appreciate that County DPH has taken this first step, the County’s report only directs Lineage to eliminate flies from Lineage’s own property,” Bass’ letter to Ferrer states.
Bass urged the county to compel Lineage to address pests at neighboring properties “with aggressive measures to eliminate the flies and any other vectors.”
As for L.A. County’s Department of Public Health, a spokesperson told LAist on July 17 that it had itself directed the city and Lineage to address the pest situation.
“Los Angeles County Department of Public Health requested that both Lineage Logistics and the City of Los Angeles develop and implement a vector/insect control plan,” the statement reads.
According to Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents Boyle Heights on the L.A. City Council and met with Lineage representatives on Monday, an inspector contracted by the company confirmed that the rotting food at the warehouse is serving as a breeding ground for flies. The infestation won’t go away without addressing the root cause, Jurado reported the contractor as saying.
“Removing waste, adding odor-control equipment, and conducting a pest inspection are important,” Jurado said in a statement. “But residents are asking a more fundamental question: Are conditions actually improving? They deserve evidence, timelines and accountability — not just a list of activities.”
Lineage has not yet presented its pest control plan to the public.
The first day of instruction for L.A. Unified schools is Aug. 12, three days before the city’s current deadline to clear the warehouse — a deadline Lineage does not appear to be on track to meet.
That’s led many teachers and parents to raise the alarm about smells and pests that may very well still be around when school starts. An LAUSD spokesperson told Boyle Heights Beat that it is prepared to temporarily relocate nearby schools, as they did with summer programs during the warehouse fire.
Meanwhile, Lineage also faced a deadline of Tuesday to present a plan to air quality officials on how to address smells of spoiled food, which have been reported from miles away. A South Coast Air Quality Management District spokesperson said that the agency received a response from Lineage at 5 p.m. and is evaluating it.
Topline:
L.A.’s homeless services agency has not completed any internal audits in years — and one that was started two years ago is still incomplete because management is taking months to provide responses, officials said Monday.
Details: The delayed audit has been looking into why the L.A. Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA, failed to spend $7 million in federal dollars it was granted to house and serve people in need. The roughly six-page audit report hasn’t been released because it’s missing LAHSA management responses that were requested over two months ago, officials said.
Why it matters: Internal audits are considered critically important to protecting taxpayer dollars at every level of government. L.A. County auditors, for example, issued about 100 reports in a recent fiscal year.
Not the first rodeo: The audit is examining a repeat problem. A previous audit in January 2022 found LAHSA had left $3.5 million in federal grants on the table by not using them.
L.A.’s homeless services agency has not completed any internal audits in years — and one that was started two years ago is still incomplete because management is taking months to provide responses, officials said Monday.
The delayed audit has been looking into why the L.A. Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA, failed to spend $7 million in federal dollars it was granted to house and serve people in need. The roughly six-page audit report hasn’t been released because it’s missing LAHSA management responses that were requested over two months ago, officials said.
Internal audits are considered critically important to protecting taxpayer dollars at every level of government. L.A. County auditors, for example, issued about 100 reports in a recent fiscal year.
“ We haven’t gotten anything,” said Erum Shahnawaz, LAHSA’s chief internal auditor, referring to the lack of response from LAHSA management at a meeting of the agency’s audit committee on Monday.
“That’s the only thing that's holding us from issuing the final report,” Shahnawaz said of the underspending audit.
That audit is examining a repeat problem. A previous, external audit in January 2022 found LAHSA had left $3.5 million in federal grants on the table by not using them.
Shahnawaz flagged management’s delays to the LAHSA Commissioner Justin Szlasa, Szlasa said. He chairs the commission’s audit committee, and has repeatedly called out LAHSA executives’ delays in providing information about taxpayer spending over the past year.
“ I've been trying to intervene and use whatever I can to try to help provide support,” said Szlasa as he described his attempts to get the auditor the answers needed to complete the report.
Szlasa was appointed to the commission by L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger.
“It shouldn't take us two months to receive a…management response to an internal audit,” Szlasa said at Monday’s meeting. He said the industry standard for internal audits is eight or nine weeks from start to finish. That compares to the two years — and counting — for LAHSA’s federal underspend audit.
“We haven't had a single internal audit completed here in the last couple of years, which is nuts,” Szlasa added. He called for internal audits to happen much more frequently.
Long delays to LAHSA audits also are not new. In November 2024, the county issued a widely-seen audit that included findings that LAHSA was failing to complete internal audits.
Half of LAHSA’s governing commission is appointed by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and half appointed by each of the five county supervisors. Bass is also the only elected official on the commission. She served on the audit committee for several months last fall. Records show she was absent for all of the meetings during that time.
Janine Lim, LAHSA’s deputy chief financial officer, said management’s responses to the audit on underspending haven’t been provided yet because LAHSA leadership did not have clearly defined roles for who is supposed to coordinate responses to internal audits.
“ We need to work on clarifying that role internally,” Lim said.
“The last two months have been probably some of the most stress-filled two months that we've had at LAHSA,” said Paul Rubenstein, chief of staff to LAHSA CEO Gita O’Neil, pointing to mass layoffs.
Szlasa said there’s not that much in the audit for management to respond to.
“It's like, six pages or less,” he said.
Szlasa said another option is to “just say we've asked management for responses and we're awaiting management response. We can publish the results.”
In response, Shahnawaz said that if management doesn't have an updated timeline for a response, then she’ll go ahead and issue the report without the response.
Once they floated that idea, Lim committed to providing the responses by next Tuesday.
LAHSA’s leadership has downsized the internal audit team — dropping from a staff of three to just one in the agency’s proposed budget up for approval Friday.
The delayed responses from management are not the only thing that’s been slowing down audits, Szlasa said at the meeting.
LAHSA policy, approved by its governing commission, says internal auditors are “ authorized to access all organizational records, personnel, and systems necessary for conducting audits,” he said.
But the auditor has faced challenges in actually getting that access, Szlasa said — including delays in being allowed to view LAHSA’s databases that show contracts and financial payments.
”We finally were granted access, but it wasn't, it wasn't easy, it wasn't immediate. It was slow,” Szlasa said.
The delays on the internal audit come even after LAHSA failed multiple external audits in recent years, which have found the agency — overseen by city and county elected officials — has neglected to properly track billions of dollars in spending.
Largely in response to earlier audits, L.A. County supervisors pulled funding from LAHSA and are having the county instead oversee it directly. L.A.’s mayor and City Council have continued to have LAHSA manage the city’s homeless spending while the council delays plans to start studying a possible plan to transition away city tax dollars.
LAHSA is also in the midst of a different internal audit — expected to finish in late August or early September — examining whether top officials followed requirements when signing contracts and letting others sign. It was launched in the wake of LAist reporting that found LAHSA’s then-CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum’s signature finalized a $2.1 million contract with her husband’s employer.
If you have a tip, you can reach me on Signal. My username is ngerda.47.
LAist also discovered Adams Kellum’s signature, as LAHSA’s CEO at the time, finalized a quarter-million-dollar contract between LAHSA and a longtime service provider she led up until two months earlier.
That contract was signed so soon after she left the service provider — St. Joseph Center — that the contract paperwork still listed her as one of St. Joseph Center’s points of contact and authorized signers.
She is currently under a state ethics investigation into whether her actions were an illegal conflict of interest.
