Investigation underway into claims LAist unearthed about top LA homeless services officials

L.A. County has commissioned a months-long outside investigation into allegations LAist brought to light about current and former high-ranking officials at the L.A. Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), according to the county’s investigations chief.

The investigation started around May 23 after LAist published the allegations and is being conducted by an outside investigator, according to Greg Hellmold, who heads the Office of County Investigations.

In an emailed response to LAist’s questions, he said none of the allegations LAist published had been reported by LAHSA to county investigators, despite a requirement to do so for all claims of fraud, waste and abuse of taxpayer resources.

The allegations were leveled in demand letters in May and June last year by two former high-ranking executives at LAHSA. They claimed former LAHSA CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum wrongfully fired them in retaliation for pushing back on alleged misconduct by her and people she hired into high-ranking jobs.

The misconduct allegations against Adams Kellum include financial mismanagement, wasteful spending, hiring unqualified friends into highly paid powerful positions, trying to destroy public records of her communications with L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, and getting a lap dance while drunk from a consultant she had just hired.

A LAHSA spokesperson previously denied the allegations. In March, the agency agreed to $800,000 in payments to settle the claims, but no investigation had been commissioned to determine whether the claims were true, according to LAHSA.

[Click here to read the first demand letter’s claims and here for the second one.]

County investigations result in reports describing their findings, which the county investigations office can send to LAHSA’s staff and governing commission, as well as city and county officials, according to the investigations agreement.

If county investigations sustain any allegations as likely to be true, the agreement says LAHSA must take “appropriate” action in response. Adams Kellum left her post in late July and has not responded to requests for comment. It is unclear what repercussions, if any, the investigation could have for her or other current and former LAHSA officials.

The claims made allegations against several LAHSA executives Adams Kellum hired on from her previous job, and remain in their roles. They did not respond to a request for comment through a LAHSA spokesperson.

A failure to report

When LAist asked LAHSA spokespeople what the agency’s policies are for claims against their executives, agency officials pointed to the agreement with the county. It requires LAHSA to immediately report all allegations of waste, fraud and abuse of resources to the county Fraud Hotline.

That didn’t happen, according to the county investigations chief.

Instead, Hellmold said county officials learned about the allegations after LAist published the demand letters.

“LAHSA is required to report all allegations [of fraud, waste and abuse] to the County’s Fraud Hotline,” Hellmold said in an emailed response to LAist’s questions. “However, as of the publication date of the LAist’s May 6 article, no allegations matching the allegations in the article were reported to the County Fraud Hotline.”

By the time the article published, LAHSA officials had copies of the claims for nearly a year and had agreed two months earlier to the $800,000 in settlement payouts.

The county then contracted an outside investigator to look into the claims on behalf of the county’s human resources department, Hellmold said in an email.

After learning of the allegations, Hellmold told LAist his office reminded LAHSA’s internal affairs staff “of the need to notify us,” and that the staff agreed to do so going forward. He added that his understanding is that the missed report also was “brought to the attention of the LAHSA Commission Chair.”

When LAist published the claims, the commission chair was Bass appointee Wendy Greuel, who did not respond to LAist’s request for comment. Citing the ongoing probe, LAHSA spokesman Paul Rubenstein said the agency could not comment on the investigation nor answer questions about why LAHSA had not referred the claims for an outside review.

Speaking about the overall process, he said the agreement requires LAHSA to report fraud, waste and abuse allegations to the county hotline, but not personnel investigations, which are handled by LAHSA’s internal human resources staff.

“Our commitment is to ensure all matters are addressed through the correct and most effective channels, maintaining the integrity of both our internal operations and external relationships,” Rubenstein said in an email.

Email destruction attempt alleged

One of the allegations by former IT chief Emily Vaughn Henry was that Adams Kellum had asked her “to violate record retention laws and delete two emails that Mayor Karen Bass had sent from her personal email account to Kellum's LAHSA account.” LAHSA’s stated policy was to retain all emails for seven years, the claim states.

Adams Kellum previously told the L.A. Times she did not ask to delete any messages from the mayor. A spokesperson for Bass told the L.A. Times that the mayor had “no knowledge” of the deletion allegation. Bass did not respond to questions LAist sent to her spokesperson for this article.

LAHSA has denied multiple requests from LAist to disclose what their record retention policies have been.

State law generally requires cities and counties to retain public records for two years, according to a city of L.A. settlement agreement and a court ruling, respectively. But LAHSA is technically a separate type of agency called a joint powers authority. It was created, funded and overseen by the city and county, but it’s not clear what record retention laws apply to LAHSA.

LAist filed a records request with LAHSA in late May for copies of all emails between Bass and Adams Kellum, among other records. Agency officials said they needed time extensions to search for and review records, before ultimately stating in mid-August that they object to searching for the records. LAHSA said they considered that request unreasonably broad and unduly burdensome. They have not told LAist how many emails exist.