The Brief

An Orange County nonprofit that got millions in pandemic relief funds earmarked to feed struggling seniors failed to submit federally-required yearly audits detailing how it spent that taxpayer money, according to public records obtained by LAist.

The organization has been led at various points over the last year by the 22-year-old daughter of O.C. Supervisor Andrew Do. Do voted to direct funds to the group without publicly disclosing his close family relationship. State law allows officials to knowingly award taxpayer money to their adult children — something the state Senate and two Assembly committees voted unanimously in 2016 to make a crime. But the bill never made it to a full Assembly vote.

The money was part of O.C.’s allocation from a wave of pandemic relief funding for local governments provided by Congress under the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA. County supervisors each got to allocate part of that money to meal programs in their districts, and Do directed his district’s funding to a nonprofit that was new at the time, Viet America Society.

The missing audits are “a really excellent example of the failure to monitor at the county level,” said Rose Chan Loui, a longtime attorney for nonprofits who now directs UCLA Law School’s program on philanthropy and nonprofits.

“If they would have been required to comply with that, we probably would have a lot more transparency as to what is going on.”

The details of what happened

In April 2021, O.C.’s top elected officials — the Board of Supervisors — voted to devote part of the county’s ARPA funding to feed seniors and people with disabilities who lacked access to sufficient food. The supervisors divided that money equally among each district, with each supervisor then deciding how to spend their district’s funding.

Supervisor Do — who was representing communities with the highest poverty rates in the county — directed his district’s funding to Viet America Society. At Do’s request, the group’s contract was ultimately increased to $4 million in federal funds, split into monthly payments of about $167,000 to cover meal services from May 2021 through May 2023.

Viet America Society has been led at various points over the last year by Do’s 22-year-old daughter, Rhiannon Do, according to a tax filing and other records. It’s a family relationship Do did not disclose before key votes on the group’s funding, according to an LAist review of meeting videos and three county officials — two supervisors and county CEO Frank Kim.

The group was initially led by Peter Pham, an electrical contractor and restaurateur. Before founding the nonprofit in mid-2020, Pham was paid about $21,000 — largely raised by Do — for construction work on statues Do had installed in Fountain Valley in 2015 and 2016, according to a state investigation.

More recently, Pham has alternated with Rhiannon Do as president of Viet America Society since last December, according to public records.

It’s unknown how much of the $4 million in taxpayer money went to meals for those who needed them. Records obtained by LAist through a public records request show the nonprofit failed to submit federally-required audits that would detail how it spent the money.

Andrew Do, Rhiannon Do, and Pham did not respond to LAist’s requests for comment for this article. The Dos previously declined to comment on reporting by LAist on other funding Do helped direct to the nonprofit. Andrew Do denied wrongdoing in an interview with City News Service in late November.

Pham initially told LAist last month that he would be available for an interview, but has not returned multiple follow-up calls and text messages to schedule it.

The audit requirement was spelled out in a county contract with Viet America Society that Pham signed in May 2021. It states the nonprofit was required under federal law to conduct an annual audit of how the funds were spent, known as a “single audit,” once it spends more than $750,000 of the funding.

Single audits look at a nonprofit’s finances to make sure they’re using federal dollars for their intended purpose and have an accounting system to accurately document the spending, according to the federal government. They’re “the single most important way” to assess an organization’s ability to manage federal dollars, federal officials say.

Deadlines for filing two of those audits with the county and federal authorities were missed by Viet America Society, according to public records. The first was due to be filed to the county by late June 2022 and the second in June 2023, according to the county contract. And a federal spokesperson told LAist the audits were required to be uploaded to a public database within nine months of the audit period, which corresponds to a deadline of the end of September last year and this year.

But the audits do not show up in that federal database.

And weeks after first being asked by LAist in November, county officials have not answered whether the audits were submitted to the county, as required by the contract. Viet America Society also was unable to provide copies of either audit to the county in October of this year, according to email records. A consultant to the group told LAist they hadn’t been completed at that point.

Viet America Society is the county’s only private contractor for this pandemic meals program that does not have single audits on file in the federal database. The others — Meals on Wheels Orange County, 2-1-1 Orange County and AgeWell Senior Services — all have their audits in the database for the last two years.

Tax records also indicate neither audit of Viet America Society was conducted, at least as of this October. Despite its county contract requiring the single audits — “in accordance with” federal law — the nonprofit marked on its tax filings for the last two years that the audits were not required — and left blank whether they were conducted.

If any such audits exist, a county spokesperson said, they will be provided in response to a records request LAist submitted over three weeks ago.

LAist also asked county spokespeople if the county has received any accounting at all of how Viet America Society spent the $4 million the county provided for these meal services. They have not provided an answer. The contract terms require the single audits to be submitted to the county, as well as a final financial statement “detailing all program expenditures.” The financial statement was required to be submitted to the county within 30 days of the contract ending on May 31, 2023.

[Click here to read the contract and amendments.]

Group withdrew when asked for copies of audits

Two months ago, in October, the county required Viet America Society to submit its single audits for the last two years as part of an application for new county funding in a competitive bidding process. In contrast, the group’s previous county contracts were not subject to competitive bidding, according to county records LAist obtained.

A Viet America Society representative told the county that the group was unable to provide copies of those audits, according to emails LAist obtained through a public records request.

Those emails show that after obtaining a one-week extension from the county to disclose the audits in its application, the representative told the county that neither audit could be provided by the extended deadline. And the group withdrew from seeking the new funding.

“I have checked with Peter Pham at VAS and due to the deadline of Friday he could not commit to meet it,” wrote the nonprofit’s representative, Roger Faubel.

“With many thanks, we must withdraw our pursuit.”

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That representative, Roger Faubel, told LAist that Pham, the nonprofit’s founder and on-and-off president, had told him in October that the audits hadn’t been completed.

“I talked to Peter, and I said, ‘Peter, you know you can’t do this. It’s unraveling here,'” said Faubel, a high-profile county lobbyist, in an interview.

Viet America Society had only gotten part way through the audit process by that point, Faubel told LAist.

“You say that you can meet the timeframe, but it’s not occurring,” Faubel said he told Pham, recommending that he withdraw from seeking the new funding. Emails show Faubel followed up by letting the county know Viet America Society was withdrawing from consideration.

“I realized that he could not comply with all of the information that was required of him,” Faubel said.

In an email to county officials, Faubel said he was Viet America Society’s consultant. He told LAist he didn’t register as the nonprofit’s lobbyist because he wasn’t paid for helping, so he wasn’t required to register as its lobbyist under county regulations.

Faubel’s clients have included AT&T, Waste Management and Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Faubel also lobbied the county on behalf of the landlord for both Viet America Society and Do’s private law office, according to lobbying disclosures by Faubel. The nonprofit and Do’s law office are on the same floor of the same building.

The October emails about audits not being available took place within days of Do’s daughter being marked as the group’s only director or trustee on its tax filing.

What happens when audits are missed

Nonprofits can face consequences for not submitting their single audits. When it comes to money given directly by the federal government, federal agencies can halt funding until a nonprofit completes their audits, or even cancel the federal dollars altogether.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Treasury Department, which awarded the federal funding the county provided Viet America Society, told LAist in an email that the county is responsible for making sure the nonprofit follows the audit requirements.

“All recipients are required to provide detailed information on how funds are used,” a Treasury spokesperson said of the ARPA dollars that flowed through local governments.

“It is the recipients’ responsibility (in this case, assumably, Orange County) to ensure compliance of their subrecipients,” they added. Viet America Society was a subrecipient.

The county’s contract — pointing to federal law — obligated the nonprofit to submit annual single audits once it spent more than $750,000 in federal funding. That would require audits so far for 2021 and 2022.

County officials can take action if organizations breach their contract terms. In the past, they’ve taken steps like having contractors refund the county from money already provided.

When O.C. Supervisor Katrina Foley was told of the missing audits by LAist, she said she found the situation frustrating.

The audits, she said in an interview, are “a requirement of law so that we ensure that taxpayer dollars are being well spent and used for the purpose they were intended.”

“I’m disappointed that this is happening,” she added. “Because there are those of us that are really doing work to make sure that there’s equity in the way that grants are given out” and that audit requirements are followed.

Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento has called for an investigation into Do. The other two county supervisors, Doug Chaffee and Don Wagner, didn’t return messages for comment on this story. They previously have said they see nothing wrong with Do’s actions.

Tax filings show $276,000 in taxpayer money went unspent

The nonprofit’s tax filings show it grew its cash on hand by $276,000 in 2021 by not spending all of the government funding it received that year — all of which appears to have been paid specifically by the county for the group to provide meals to vulnerable people. That year, the group billed the county monthly for providing meals to vulnerable people.

The county contract, however, required the group to return any funds that were not spent on services.

Additionally, the county meals contracts required Viet America Society to disclose how many meals were provided and the number of meal deliveries. But invoice records obtained by LAist show that for the first 15 months, the nonprofit did not do so on its regular invoices — for which the county paid $2 million during that period.

The only detail given in invoices for charges across that 15-month period was "Services for the County of Orange Nutritional Gap Program," according to records LAist obtained through its records request to the county.

Click to see the invoices

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Orange County records

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LAist asked county spokespeople about the lack of disclosure, and why the county apparently did not enforce this contract requirement. No answers have been provided.

‘Serious concerns’ raised early on about the group’s legal status

Email records obtained by LAist also show a county contract administrator raised concerns three years ago about plans to contract with Viet America Society to provide meals — largely because of its inability to show it was legally registered as a nonprofit.

A county executive approved the funding anyway, emails show. That executive, Dylan Wright, and county spokespeople have not answered questions about why he decided to proceed despite the concerns, and whether Do had a role in that decision. The county went on to pay more than $3 million to the organization over the next two years before it registered with state nonprofit regulators as required by law.

The first $2 million of that money was directed by Do to Viet America Society outside public meetings, under the meal funding for his district. The rest was approved by Do and other supervisors, at Do’s request, in an April 2022 extension of the group’s contract.

“I have serious concerns about issuing a contract to this organization that appears to be a home based business and can’t verify their non-profit status,” wrote Heather Condon, a county contract administrator who was processing the group’s first county contract, in an email to other officials at her department on Dec. 23, 2020.

She then asked her colleagues if Viet America Society had been approved at the state level as a nonprofit. Follow-up emails show the concerns were raised up the chain that day directly to Wright.

State Attorney General records reviewed by LAist show no registration until two years later, in January 2023. And even then, state regulators said the group was still not in compliance.

After learning of the legal status concerns in December 2020, Wright decided later that same day to move forward, according to the emails. The emails back do not show an explanation back to Condon responding to her specific concerns.

Condon told LAist she never received an explanation addressing her concerns.

“Just a direction to proceed,” said Condon, who retired from the county earlier this year.

“I don’t know what went on in the discussions to go ahead and approve issuing the contract.”

The state charity registration is required in order for the state attorney general to ensure nonprofits are doing the work they said they’d do when they obtained their nonprofit tax exemption, said Chan Loui of UCLA Law School.

“It’s essentially your pact with the public,” she said.

“You’re getting benefits as a nonprofit from the state of California, and the attorney general is charged with making sure that those funds are in fact being used for public good,” she added.

“The attorney general can’t do their job if you’re not filing.”

Foley, the county supervisor, told LAist it’s important that the county is only paying entities that can legally receive the money. Foley said she’s worked hard to make sure that the nonprofits she directed funding to were in compliance with legal requirements.

“No matter what kind of contract we're entering into with the county, we need to be entering into these agreements with organizations that are lawfully able to partner with the county agency,” she said.

“I feel like we have to have standards. Right?” she added.

State law requires nonprofits to register with the attorney general within 30 days of receiving assets. It took Viet America Society over two years to do that, according to disclosures it later filed.

Even after it registered, the attorney general found the nonprofit still was not legally compliant because it hadn’t filed its long-overdue annual registration and financial disclosures for 2020.

This April, the group was declared delinquent by the AG’s office, which stated at the time that Viet America Society was “prohibited” from seeking or spending funds.

While the group was still declared delinquent, Do voted for another $2.5 million in county funding for his daughter’s group, without disclosing the family connection. Viet America Society resolved its status in June when the AG’s office received its overdue 2020 paperwork, according to the AG’s records.

Supervisors to vote on new policy to require family member disclosure

Supervisor Sarmiento is proposing county ethics reforms that would require supervisors to disclose any family relationships to people or groups seeking county funding approvals that come before them. It would also require more public transparency about who supervisors divvy up their districts’ discretionary funding to, by posting online a quarterly log of all agreements that have been approved.

“As elected officials, we have an obligation to be as transparent as possible with the public and disclose any potential conflicts of interest, especially when voting to spend taxpayer dollars,” Sarmiento said in a statement to LAist.

That item will be up for a vote at Tuesday’s board of supervisors meeting, which starts at 9:30 a.m.

Topline:

Key topics: The candidates each had about 45 minutes to individually answer questions from Erin Stone, an LAist senior reporter focused on climate and environment.

Here are some of the topics they covered:

• Extreme heat
• Emergency preparedness and recovery
• Protecting communities from pollution
• Water
• Public transit

About the organizers: The event is organized by a coalition of local environmental and environmental justice groups including: Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters, SCOPE-LA, Sierra Club, Clean and Healthy California, Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance and Communities for a Better Environment

LAist will have more coverage and analysis of the conversations Friday morning.

The Trump administration is taking steps to advance a mysterious and unprecedented project to compile state-by-state lists of people it has decided are eligible citizens over the age of 18 who can vote in the upcoming midterm election. But it will no longer meet its own deadline to publish that information on a portal on Friday, which is 60 days before Election Day.

Department of Justice attorneys told opposing counsel in two separate lawsuits that instead of meeting the Sept. 4 deadline, they would give 48-hours notice to plaintiffs' counsel before the state citizenship portal was launched, according to recent court filings.

The U.S. has never attempted to create a comprehensive list of American citizens before this administration. Maintaining voter lists is the responsibility of states, not the federal government, as the Constitution dictates that states control elections. But President Trump has repeatedly taken steps to try to exert executive control over elections.

The basis for the federal government creating state citizenship lists is an executive order Trump signed on March 31. A lower court had blocked implementation of key parts of that executive order in 23 states and Washington, D.C., but the Supreme Court stayed that injunction late last month, opening the door for the plan to be implemented after all.

The March 31 executive order directs U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Social Security Administration to create "State Citizenship Lists" of individuals the agencies believe are citizens in each state, and send those lists to state officials "no fewer than 60 days before each regularly scheduled Federal election."

The next section of the executive order says the U.S. attorney general will prioritize investigating and prosecuting state and local officials who issue federal ballots to anyone not eligible to vote.

"States here have a strong incentive to actually use these lists to try to avoid federal investigation," said Jules Torti, counsel at the nonprofit Protect Democracy, in an interview with NPR. "But we know that these lists are going to be based on really inaccurate data. So the risk of disenfranchisement here is really, really palpable."

The privacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center, along with individual voters, filed a motion Thursday asking a federal judge in Maryland to block the administration from creating the citizenship lists and publishing them on a portal. Specifically, they seek to block a June 8 implementation memo authored by USCIS director Joseph Edlow that outlines the plan.

The motion, which was brought by Protect Democracy, along with another nonprofit legal group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, argues the administration's plans to share Americans' personal data between agencies and then disseminate the data to states violates multiple federal laws, including the Privacy Act, the Social Security Act and the Administrative Procedures Act. Under the Privacy Act, federal agencies must give the public 30 days notice and the opportunity to comment before they collect and disseminate Americans' personal data for a new purpose.

The EPIC lawsuit also argues the government does not have access to accurate, up-to-date information on American citizens, especially those who move frequently, have changed their names, or are foreign-born. For example, Social Security's citizenship data often isn't updated when people naturalize, and the SAVE data system, operated by USCIS, frequently doesn't include records for people who became citizens as minors when their parents naturalized.

Torti said it is "deeply concerning" that the administration is still planning to go ahead with the creation of citizenship lists but is no longer going to meet the deadline, since that means the lists will be completed even closer to Election Day.

"It means additional chaos, additional confusion for the state election officials and just for voters," Torti said. "And I think that's the point. The point here is to create chaos in advance of the election."

Neither the Department of Justice, nor the Department of Homeland Security, which is tasked with compiling the citizenship lists, responded to NPR's request for comment.

The June 8 implementation memo stated that the portal for state election officials would be available around June 30 and a second portal where citizens could check their information would be available at a later date – but that deadline passed without further updates.

The federal government has secured a domain for the state citizenship lists portal. While the portal is not currently online, it was briefly live in recent days with a landing page that said "Coming Soon," according to court filings.

Lawyers representing Democratic party groups that had challenged the March 31 executive order in a separate lawsuit filed in April, accused the administration in a recent filing of failing to notify the court or the parties about its plans to move forward with the state citizenship portal. They asked the judge to require the federal government to give immediate updates about their plans to implement the executive order.

This latest legal battle over the administration's plans to compile state citizenship lists comes as the Department of Homeland Security is ramping up its efforts to analyze state voter rolls with the goal of identifying potential noncitizens who are registered to vote. Previous audits have found instances of noncitizens casting ballots to be incredibly rare. 

Additionally, last week, ICE published a request for information on a federal procurement site seeking vendors who can compile public voter rolls and voter history files from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and U.S. territories, "to support Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) fraud detection and data segmentation activities."

NPR's Hansi Lo Wang contributed reporting to this story. 
Copyright 2026 NPR

A group of California lawmakers called on federal officials to halt and reject a proposed land exchange in Yosemite National Park that would allow a private developer to take control of a strip of land in the park for an access road to the park’s main attractions.

The letter to Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Wednesday was signed by a bipartisan group of 61 state legislators led by Assemblymember Greg Wallis, a Republican who represents Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

“Republicans and Democrats from both houses of the Legislature are standing together because some things are bigger than politics,” Wallis said in a statement. “Yosemite is not a subdivision. It is not a bargaining chip. And it is not for sale. Secretary Burgum and the administration should put an end to this proposal.”

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum (center) visited the Tunnel Tops in San Francisco in 2025 after he and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi toured Alcatraz ahead of their announcement to reopen the former federal prison.

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Katie DeBenedetti

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The group argued that the proposed land exchange is counter to the mission of the National Park Service and the founding of Yosemite in 1864, which set aside the start of the park for public use and protection for the first time in the history of the federal government.

“What is being proposed now runs directly against that founding principle, more than a century and a half later,” the letter states.

It continues later: “Our national parks belong equally to every American. They are not the Department’s to trade away, and they are not for sale.”

The proposal was first reported by news outlet NOTUS, which published a story last week alleging that members of the Trump administration were meeting with representatives of Kingsbarn Realty Capital, a private equity group that owns an 83-acre parcel next to the park. In an email to KQED, Kingsbarn’s lawyer Lanny J. Davis confirmed the group is pursuing the land exchange to build a new access road from its property to the park.

Previous owners have pushed for the same deal since the early 2000s and failed in court.

State Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park), who signed on to the letter, called the proposal “indefensible,” and said he’s looking at state laws to ensure a similar proposal could never slip through.

“If the Trump administration can’t defend this publicly in broad daylight, then they shouldn’t be doing it,” he said.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Marin) told KQED’s Forum on Wednesday that he’s worried there isn’t enough opposition among his Republican colleagues in Congress to stop the Trump administration’s efforts.

“I have not seen a single Republican colleague willing to stand up to Donald Trump when he decides that he’s just going to do something,” Huffman said. “So that is my concern, that he just plows ahead with this — even if it has dubious legal authority, or even if it’s an open violation of the law. He’s doing stuff like that anyway. And in this Congress, there’s no one here to stop him.”

In a statement to KQED, state Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil (R-Modesto), whose district includes parts of Yosemite, said she will “keep pressing the Department [of the Interior] for a clear answer that this exchange will not proceed.”

Since the news of the deal broke late last week, it has sparked condemnation from a number of Democratic state leaders, including Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, as well as Attorney General Rob Bonta and Bonta’s predecessor, Xavier Becerra, who leads the race for California governor.

“The secretive backroom land-exchange scheme has gotten everyone’s attention,” said Neal Desai, senior Pacific regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association. “I can’t recall another issue — and I’ve been working in the conservation space for over a couple of decades — where the response has been this sharp and so one-sided that this is a terrible idea that should not happen.”

The backlash comes at a turbulent time for National Park Service employees, who have faced layoffs, staffing cuts and fear of retaliation for speaking up against Trump administration policies since the start of the second Trump administration.

Some former employees have also raised concerns about a potential reorganization of the National Park Service, according to a separate letter sent to Burgum’s office Wednesday. According to an email seen by KQED, park superintendents have been asked to attend in-person regional meetings in September — with no clear agenda beyond discussing “agency priorities, our FY 2026 outlook, and other matters important to the work ahead.”

The letter to Burgam, signed by 20 retired parks superintendents warns: “An ill-advised and hastily planned reorganization could dismantle that structure, putting our parks — and those who visit them — at great risk.”

Emily Thompson, executive director of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, which organized the letter, said the email about regional meetings “raises some alarm bells.”

“The Park Service is already operating from a difficult place, from a place of crisis,” she said. “And any additional cuts, any movements or actions that would further jeopardize the capacity of the folks that are left, that’s concerning. It’s worrying, and it’ll have a devastating impact on the Park Service.”

Among the letter’s signatories is Don Neubacher, retired Yosemite superintendent, who has been a vocal advocate for parks amid the Trump administration’s changes.

Thompson said she’s worried parks leaders will be stretched even further than they already are, and local decision-making over parks could be in jeopardy.

“Morale is low,” Thompson said. “It’s a hard time to be a federal employee. Anything that … contributes to this culture of fear, it’s just not acceptable.”

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

Long Beach is offering up to $1,500 for local business owners and landlords to equip their storefronts with safety measures like cameras, floodlights, alarms and point-of-sale systems.

The grant program is accepting online applications now. You can apply here.

Businesses with storefronts of 1,500 square feet or less may receive grants of up to $750, while businesses between 1,500 and 5,000 square feet are eligible for up to $1,500.

Nonprofit organizations are eligible as well, and landlords can apply on behalf of commercial storefronts that are vacant or occupied. Franchises can also receive the grant.

To qualify, a business must:

• Have an active business license for a storefront within the city
• Be independently owned and operated (franchises are eligible)
• Be currently open and active for business
• Earn no more than $5 million in annual gross revenue
• Hold “active” status with the California Secretary of State for corporations, limited liability companies and limited partnerships

The funds will be provided as a reimbursement after eligible security improvements are installed. Grants will be given out until funds are exhausted.

It’s a great idea, according to Edwin Jara, who manages a pet store in Belmont Heights and was on the receiving end of a break-in earlier this year.

His store had security measures already in place — two cameras and an alarm system — but even that wasn’t enough to deter a masked burglar who grabbed $1,000 cash and a handful of dog treats.

Despite having footage of the burglar, Jara said police haven’t been able to catch the person and that a detective never responded after he filed a police report.

The grant program is being paid for with $350,000 from the city’s Redvelopment Agency along with $50,000 from Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn’s office.

“Our local small businesses are part of the fabric of our neighborhoods, and when business owners feel unsafe, the whole community feels it,” Hahn said in a statement.

In a statement, Mayor Rex Richardson said the program is a “direct investment in the hardworking business owners who make our commercial corridors vibrant and welcoming.”

Jara said he would consider applying for a grant if the city could send someone to help him and the store’s owner fill out the application.

He was offered a separate grant to replace a glass door the burglar smashed, but the store’s owner opted not to fill out the application.

“There was a lot of stuff that we needed to do, and I don’t have a lot of that information,” Jara said.