The Brief

Officials at the homelessness agency for the L.A. region are refusing to release public records to LAist about allegations of high-level wrongdoing — including whistleblower retaliation — that led to $800,000 in taxpayer payouts to settle the claims.

A public records attorney says the L.A. Homeless Services Authority’s decision to withhold wrongful termination and whistleblower retaliation claims filed by two executives who left the agency in 2024 is clearly “unlawful.” The employees — former chief financial and administration officer Kristina Dixon and data and IT director Emily Vaughn Henry — were terminated during Va Lecia Adams Kellum’s first year as LAHSA’s chief executive.

LAist started requesting the records more than a month ago, after seeing an agenda showing the claims would be up for discussion at the March 11 meeting of LAHSA’s governing commission. Meeting minutes show the commission settled the claims and stated information would be “available upon request.”

LAHSA is a public agency funded by city and county tax dollars. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and appointed city and county officials sit on the commission that oversees the agency.

Courts have repeatedly ruled these types of records must be disclosed to the public under the California Public Records Act, according to David Loy, a public records attorney at the First Amendment Coalition.

The fact that the claims have been settled — and taxpayer money paid out — makes it even more clear that the public has a right to see them under the law, Loy said.

The records “clearly should be available to the public,” Loy said, calling LAHSA officials’ decision “unlawful.”

A second public records attorney, Kelly Aviles, agreed.

“Imagine if it were otherwise,” Aviles added. “Just imagine, employees could make allegations and claims about wrongdoing by an agency…and an agency could pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars — sometimes even millions of dollars — and nobody would ever know why?”

“That is completely contrary to the Public Records Act and its intent. And courts have never upheld that argument or position — ever,” Aviles said.

Details of the settlement agreements

While LAHSA declined to disclose to LAist the claims documenting the allegations, officials ultimately released the settlement agreements for the payouts after multiple rounds of requests from LAist.

The settlement agreements, which went into effect last month, show LAHSA officials agreed to pay Dixon $450,000 and Vaughn Henry $350,000 to settle their claims. The agreements list the categories of allegations but do not detail the claims.

Dixon’s settlement agreement says she had alleged whistleblower retaliation, wrongful termination, defamation, libel and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Vaughn Henry’s settlement agreement says she had alleged race, gender, and age discrimination; harassment; failure to prevent harassment; whistleblower retaliation; wrongful termination and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The agreements say LAHSA officials did not admit to wrongdoing. They also include non-disparagement clauses that ban Dixon and Vaughn Henry from volunteering false and disparaging comments or opinions about LAHSA.

[Click here to read the settlement agreement with Dixon and here for the agreement with Vaughn Henry.]

Dixon and Vaughn Henry declined to comment.

‘The public absolutely has a right to know’

LAHSA has cited several exemptions that it alleges allow it to withhold the claims Dixon and Vaughn Henry submitted to LAHSA after they were fired — including attorney-client privilege.

But Loy says none of them apply. For example, attorney-client privilege is about communications between an attorney and their own client — not claims filed by an outside party.

“If there’s a threat to sue a public agency, that is something the public absolutely has the right to know,” he added, saying the records requested by LAist “clearly should be available to the public.”

The state’s open government law — the Brown Act — says legal claims have to be disclosed to the public, Loy said.

Legal claims and communications threatening litigation against an agency “shall be available for public inspection,” the Brown Act states.

Loy said that’s also supported by court rulings about the Public Records Act.

LAHSA’s attorney, Dan Kim, and his supervisor, L.A. County Counsel Dawyn Harrison, have not responded to multiple requests for comment on Loy’s analysis that the records withholding is unlawful.

Bass, who is the only elected official on LAHSA’s governing commission, did not respond to a request for an interview. Governing bodies can overrule an agency’s attorneys and order records to be released publicly if they believe records are being wrongfully withheld.

Adams Kellum, LAHSA’s CEO, also did not respond to requests for comment. Adams Kellum joined LAHSA two years ago from Bass’ administration and announced earlier this month that she’s resigning. Her resignation follows a pair of scathing audits that found LAHSA has failed to properly track hundreds of millions in homelessness spending, including during Adams Kellum’s time leading LAHSA.

She became LAHSA’s CEO after advising the mayor for about six weeks under a $60,000 consulting contract, according to records LAist obtained through an earlier records request.

Va Lecia Adams Kellum of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority with the current chair of the agency’s governing commission Wendy Greuel, left, and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass.

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Office of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass

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LAHSA is wrongfully refusing to release other records, attorney says

LAHSA’s refusal to release public records goes beyond the settled claims.

The agency also told LAist it was refusing to release any legal claims or public lawsuit filings that have yet to reach a settlement, citing the “pending litigation” exemption — even though the courts have ruled that exemption doesn’t apply to legal claims and lawsuits are already public in court.

“It’s absurd. It’s dead wrong,” Loy said of LAHSA’s position.

Legal guides from the state attorney general and California Special Districts Association also both state that agencies cannot use the pending litigation exemption to withhold legal claims.

When LAist pointed out the court rulings, LAHSA’s attorneys then changed their response to say they hadn’t yet withheld any lawsuits or legal claims but “may” withhold them under pending litigation exemption as they continue to review documents.

[Click here to read LAist’s emails requesting all legal claims and public lawsuits, and LAHSA’s responses up until earlier this week.]

Taxpayers can face bills when officials wrongfully withhold records

When officials withhold public records, they can ultimately cost taxpayers.

The city paid out $1.7 million to settle public records lawsuits from 2016 to 2020, according to one tally — not including the city’s costs for its own attorneys.

LAHSA itself faced a public records lawsuit last year from the news organization CalMatters, after LAHSA officials refused to release thousands of incident reports about serious problems inside shelters.

LAHSA claimed attorney-client privilege in withholding the incident reports, even though the reports are created by shelter contractors rather than attorneys, CalMatters reported.

After months of litigation, LAHSA ultimately settled the case by agreeing to release 175 of the reports every other week.

Three weeks ago, LAist asked LAHSA how much taxpayer money they spent on legal costs fighting the CalMatters public records case.

A LAHSA spokesperson responded that the agency doesn’t have records of the costs because the costs are paid directly by the county through the county counsel’s office, which represents LAHSA.

LAist then reached out on March 26 to Harrison, the top attorney for L.A. County, to ask how much the legal costs were for the CalMatters case. Three weeks later, no answer has been provided about the costs. Information was originally promised by Harrison’s office to be delivered to LAist by April 7. Her staff later extended that deadline to April 21.

The White House clarified Donald Trump's comments at a Monday night rally, explaining that the president was not insinuating that he wanted Iran to attack U.S. cities but instead wants to prevent Tehran from having that capability.

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said on social media Tuesday that the president's comments have been misunderstood and misrepresented in a “media freakout” that is “not rooted in reality.”

Trump was discussing the Iran war and the resulting high gas prices that have become a midterm liability for Republicans during his remarks in Nebraska when he mentioned the possibility of an Iranian attack on U.S. soil.

“It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe,” he said of the war and its economic fallout. “They can take out a city. Let ’em take out Los Angeles, let ’em take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay.”

The commentary, including Trump's casual mention of the two California cities, was delivered in the familiar meandering style that he uses at campaign rallies, when he speaks for extended periods — often an hour or more — and is only occasionally following prepared remarks on a teleprompter.

Critics, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, seized on his statements. The governor, a Democrat who could run for president in 2028, called Trump “deranged and dangerous” for, in Newsom's framing, “saying our foreign enemies should ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego.”

Cheung, in his response Tuesday, said it was obvious that Trump was not calling for such an attack.

“The media freakout over President Trump’s comments is not rooted in reality,” he said. “He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped. America is safer because of the President.”

Cheung added that Iran “has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money.”

Still, at least one Republican politician shared Newsom’s interpretation.

“As a Navy veteran, I served to protect Americans, not write off American cities as an acceptable price of war,” Jim Desmond, the Republican congressional nominee in a metro San Diego district, wrote on social media, adding that “no American family should ever be treated as collateral damage.”

Trump has often criticized U.S. cities as he campaigns, especially the largest areas that lean heavily Democratic. At a recent North Carolina rally, he described the state's cities as “blood-soaked killing fields.” North Carolina's violent crime rate ranks in the middle third of states, according to FBI statistics.

Iran has said that it’s not pursuing nuclear weapons, but has enriched uranium to near-weapons-grade levels that have no civilian purpose.

Fred Claire, who parlayed early jobs as a sports writer and editor into a 30-year career with the Los Angeles Dodgers in public relations and as a World Series-winning general manager, has died. He was 91.

Claire died Monday, on his 91st birthday, in Pasadena, the team announced Tuesday. Claire had entered hospice care recently.

In January 2015, at age 80, Claire was diagnosed with squamous cell skin cancer on his lip. He had the cells removed, but the cancer later returned in his jaw and again in his neck. He had surgery to remove a nerve on the left side of his face along with several lymph nodes. He underwent radiation, chemotherapy and immunotherapy as part of his 11-year journey with cancer.

He would jog regularly during his years on the road as the Dodgers general manager and said he was diligent about wearing sun screen except on his lips.

“Fred brought many victories and Dodger legends to our franchise, as well as the 1988 World Series title,” team president and CEO Stan Kasten said in a statement, “and we are forever grateful for his leadership during such a memorable era.”

From sports writing to public relations

Claire was covering the Dodgers during spring training in Florida for the Long Beach Press-Telegram in 1969 when one of the team’s public relations assistants was fired.

He expressed interest in the job and was hired that July. He was promoted to vice president of public relations and promotions in 1975.

During his tenure, Claire was instrumental in creating the Dodger Blue branding and Think Blue campaign. The club drew 3.3 million fans in 1978, the first MLB team to exceed 3 million. He also hired announcer Ross Porter, who worked for the team from 1977 until being let go in 2004.

In 1976, Chicago Cubs outfielder Rick Monday ran over and saved an American flag from being burned on the Dodger Stadium field by two spectators. Claire directed the message board operator to type the words: “Rick Monday......You Made a Great Play” on the board.

Becoming Dodgers GM after a scandal

In April 1987, a public relations firestorm occurred over comments 70-year-old general manager Al Campanis made on ABC’s “Nightline.”

Campanis, who was white, was asked by host Ted Koppel about the lack of Black people in significant positions of authority in baseball.

“I truly believe they may not have some of the necessities to be, let’s say, a field manager, or perhaps, a general manager,” Campanis said. “Why are Black people not good swimmers? Because they don’t have buoyancy.”

Campanis had agreed to the interview without telling anyone in the Dodgers organization. Claire awoke the next day to a story about Campanis’ comments in the newspaper.

“I couldn’t believe what I was reading,” he wrote in his 2004 memoir.

Campanis had been Jackie Robinson’s roommate when the two were in the minor leagues in 1946, and he tutored Robinson in transitioning from shortstop to second base. Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

“Those who knew Al expressed shock. There had never been a hint of bigotry in anything he had ever said or done,” Claire wrote. “In my view, what Al had attempted to do that night was to defend his beloved game of baseball in an area where there was no defense.”

Campanis was fired after two decades as GM. Team owner Peter O’Malley handed control of one of the most storied teams in baseball to Claire. He accepted on the condition that he would have total and complete responsibility for baseball operations.

Claire wasn’t intimidated, either, having been involved in discussions regarding free agents, arbitration and team payroll since becoming a team vice president in 1975.

In Claire’s first full season as GM, the Dodgers finished with a 73-89 record in 1987. O’Malley informed Claire he was considering bringing in a more experienced person for the job. He called the New York Mets and asked for permission to speak to Joe McIlvaine, but was denied. O’Malley decided to stick with Claire.

“Fred was a talented team player and everyone in the organization enjoyed working with him,” O’Malley said in a statement.

Winning 1988 World Series

In January 1988, Claire signed Kirk Gibson and the outfielder made a huge difference in the Dodgers winning the World Series in five games over the heavily favored Oakland Athletics that fall. An injured Gibson hobbled to the plate as a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the ninth inning with the Dodgers trailing 4-3 in Game 1. He launched a two-strike, two-run homer — one of the most dramatic moments in baseball history — off closer Dennis Eckersley into the right field seats to win the game, 5-4.

Claire was named baseball’s executive of the year, an award previously won by such Dodger greats as Larry MacPhail, Branch Rickey, Walter O’Malley and Buzzie Bavasi.

The Dodgers returned to the playoffs just twice over the next decade, losing in the first round both times. It would be another 32 years before the Dodgers won the World Series again.

Good trades and bad ones, too

Among the trades that Claire was most proud of during his tenure as GM were those that brought John Shelby, Tim Belcher, Alfredo Griffin, Jay Howell, Jesse Orosco and John Tudor to Los Angeles — all of which had a connection with the 1988 World Series championship. He also traded for future Hall of Famer Eddie Murray in 1988 and again in 1997.

Two trades that Claire regretted were sending pitcher Pedro Martinez to the Montreal Expos and acquiring Eric Davis from Cincinnati. Martinez went on to win three Cy Young Awards with the Boston Red Sox, while Davis played two injury-plagued seasons in Los Angeles.

Dodgers sold, Piazza traded behind Claire’s back

The O’Malley family sold the team to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Entertainment Group in March 1998.

Two months later, future Hall of Fame catcher and fan favorite Mike Piazza was traded to the Florida Marlins in a stunning seven-player deal struck without Claire’s knowledge. It was pulled off by Fox television executive Chase Carey, who Claire said, was pursuing a regional TV sports channel in Florida and wanted the Marlins to be part of it.

“The seven-player trade was, first and foremost, a television deal. The new team owner simply did not understand the structure of a baseball team and the importance of a franchise player,” Claire wrote. “My reaction to the trade cost me my position with the Dodgers.”

Claire, along with manager Bill Russell, was fired by Fox on June 21, 1998, the same day Campanis died. Former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda took over as interim GM.

Claire never took another full-time job in baseball but stayed connected with the sport through a column and radio show for MLB.com, as a consultant for sports-related companies and by co-founding a baseball analytics company. He taught sports business courses at Caltech, the University of Southern California and Long Beach State.

Love of baseball began as a kid in Ohio

Born Fredic Marston Claire on Oct. 5, 1935, in Jamestown, Ohio, he cultivated his love of baseball while attending Cincinnati Reds games with his family at Crosley Field. He moved to Torrance, California, at age 15. He graduated from Torrance High, where he played junior varsity baseball and basketball. He graduated from San Jose State University with a journalism degree.

His first job out of college was as a sports writer for the Whittier Daily News at $65 a week. During his time with the Progress-Bulletin in Pomona, he wrote the game story on the Dodgers winning Game 3 of the 1959 World Series against the Chicago White Sox, the team’s first World Series win after moving to Los Angeles.

He later covered the then-California Angels for the Long Beach Press-Telegram and became the paper’s beat writer for the Dodgers in 1969.

He is survived by wife Sheryl and children Jeff, Jennifer and Kim.

In a world increasingly concerned about serious risks from artificial intelligence, policymakers trying to mitigate those risks find themselves turning more and more to a new class of professionals: AI evaluators, who audit systems on behalf of the companies that create them.

California is at the forefront of embracing the evaluators — and of grappling with some of the problems they raise, including conflicts of interests and the difficulty of auditing general-purpose technology.

Gov. Gavin Newsom last month signed one law establishing standards for “independent verification organizations” that would employ the evaluators and another creating a registry of evaluators. He also assembled a group of experts, who are to report back in November to recommend whether to require evaluators to be embedded inside companies developing the most powerful AI systems and whether to set standards on what counts as an adequate AI audit.

The moves come amid an intensifying focus on evaluators within the AI ecosystem itself. More than 200 AI researchers and evaluators last month signed a letter in favor of standards for independent evaluators; signatories included a former OpenAI whistleblower and the head of the United Nations’ Independent International Scientific Panel.

When a new group focused on AI evaluation gathered United Nations officials in New York last month for its official launch, it chose a California state senator, Jerry McNerney of Stockton, to give the closing remarks. McNerney, a Democrat who authored the verification standards law, called on nations and advanced AI companies like Anthropic and Google to create standards committees — in part to help ensure AI evaluators can properly do their jobs.

“We can put these companies on notice,” McNerney said at the event, “that they're going to be evaluated by folks that understand the process, that understand the technology, and will be transparent and hold them accountable so that they create safe products, and they don't send out these things into the wild that can cause havoc with banking, with our infrastructure and so on.”

An international joint statement that calls for independent AI evaluations garnered support from nearly 30 countries, according to the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Evaluators are coming to the fore alongside serious AI incidents. This year, AI agents, while being tested for their ability to hack into computer systems, carried out a series of high-profile attacks against business and government websites. The CEOs of leading AI companies subsequently committed to evaluations of their models by independent third-party auditors. A former employee of one such company, Anthropic, added to mounting concerns when he posted online about the possibility AI models will kill all humans.

Even before those incidents, there’s been a growing consensus among lawmakers in the past few years that developers should test AI before release, said Assemblymember Rebbecca Bauer-Kahan, a Democrat from San Ramon. For example, last year, testing requirements were included in a bill to help prevent discriminatory AI decisions and legislation to stop AI from causing catastrophic events. The proposals built on calls for AI testing and monitoring stretching back the better part of a decade. Roughly three out of four Californians said this spring that the government should require testing of advanced AI models, according to a Carnegie Endowment California survey.

State Sen. Jerry McNerney gave closing remarks at the launch of a new group focused on AI evaluation with United Nations officials in New York last month. McNerney during a floor session at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Aug. 6, 2026.

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Fred Greaves

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CalMatters

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Not all the attention on AI evaluators has been positive.

Bauer-Kahan, who was behind both of the auditor bills Newsom signed, pointed out that independent evaluators sign contracts with the tech companies whose products they evaluate, and that can pose a conflict of interest.

“I’m hearing from evaluators, ‘We have to be careful, because we want them to let us back in,’” she said. “So what are you avoiding saying in order to continue to gain access and contracts?”

Caroline Siegel-Singh, at the D.C. think tank the Federation of American Scientists, agreed, saying AI audit regimes run the risk of repeating mistakes in the structure of the bond-rating business. Before the 2008 financial crisis, the sellers of bonds could effectively shop for the rating they wanted. Then came the crash. Siegel-Singh thinks companies and governments should pool money to pay evaluators instead of AI labs paying evaluators directly, an idea that AI lab Anthropic has also endorsed.

The AI researchers who recently signed the letter calling for industry standards for auditors share Bauer-Kahan and Siegel-Singh’s concern. They are urging advanced AI companies to rely on evaluators who maintain full editorial control and who meaningfully disclose and mitigate conflicts of interest. They also suggested companies give access to multiple evaluation groups, all receiving the same level of access as their own safety employees.

Another risk is that AI companies may test models as a performative exercise, Bauer-Kahan said — as a move to reassure the public, without a sincere determination to uncover problems. Strong legal requirements can prevent performative testing, she added.

But legal requirements raise their own problems, said Matt O’Shaughnessy, a former State Department and Congressional staffer now at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a digital rights advocacy group.

When an assessment is done simply to meet a legal requirement, organizations are more likely to do the minimum that they need to do in order to comply, he and his colleagues recently concluded in a set of AI evaluation guidelines for policymakers

“It can make it harder for assessors to get the buy-in they need to make deeper changes in companies,” O’Shaughnessy said.

Siegel-Singh said that evaluators should share the results of their work to allow other evaluators to judge its quality, thus encouraging more thorough review.

The guidelines from O’Shaughnessy and his colleagues warn that properly evaluating AI models requires a considerable range of skills, including experts in everything from privacy to mental health to cybersecurity to bias outputs and physical safety. On top of that, audits should also examine incentive structures inside AI companies in addition to the technology itself, the guidelines say.

The guidelines also warn that properly evaluating AI models requires a considerable range of skills, including experts in everything from privacy to mental health to cybersecurity to bias outputs and physical safety. On top of that, audits should also examine incentive structures inside AI companies in addition to the technology itself, the guidelines say.

In the future, as they refine their approach to AI evaluation, California officials may find themselves collaborating with international partners. The consulates or embassies of nations sometimes promote and coordinate their tech policies in Sacramento, and in 2024 California lawmakers sought to align regulation with the European Union in order to protect people from artificial intelligence. In August, California also synced implementation of laws requiring watermarks for AI-generated content with the European Union.

Bauer-Kahan said she supports the idea of working with more nations, in part because regulation in one jurisdiction paves the way for rules in another.

“I do think collaboration and finding ways to push the envelope together is helpful,” she said.

A coalition of mid-sized countries working together with California could pool their economic influence to convince the largest AI companies to follow the kind of safety guidelines laid out in the international joint statement calling for independent AI evaluations, said Canadian ambassador to the United Nations David Lametti.

Pasi Rajala, Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs of Finland, said California working together with small nations “can play a key role” in addressing fast-developing AI risks.

O’Shaughnessy said that an international framework for commercial AI system evaluation is going to be really hard to create without a domestic framework in the United States first.

The Frontier AI Act, a bill in Congress that would enshrine testing requirements into federal law, has bipartisan support in Congress from California Rep. Jay Olbernolte.

“I can imagine some of the things that California is doing influencing how Congress thinks about these issues and that becoming something bigger,” he said.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Editor's note: AP has released a new story about the remarks that says:

Then he added a new wrinkle, floating the idea that Tehran could “take out” two major American cities.

“They could take out a city,” he said. "Let ‘em take out Los Angeles. Let ’em take out San Diego.”

He continued as the crowd laughed and cheered: “This is a very small price to pay, and it’s going to be over with very soon.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who may run for president in 2028, answered on X, calling Trump “deranged and dangerous.”

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who is running for reelection against Councilmember Nithya Raman, called the president's statements dangerous in a social media post.

"The role of a president is to protect the country, not to actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives," she wrote.

Sam Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, in another post on X, said "San Diego is not collateral damage. We are not expendable. And we are never a 'small price to pay."

Trump has a history of denigrating U.S. cities, especially the largest ones that lean heavily Democratic. Los Angeles was among the cities where Trump deployed federal military personnel for what he said was a crackdown on crime, despite local authorities not wanting the troops.

At a recent North Carolina campaign rally, Trump said the state’s cities are “blood-soaked killing fields.” North Carolina’s violent crime rate ranks in the middle third of states, according to FBI statistics.

LAist staff contributed to this report.