Along with the mayoral and city council elections, Los Angeles has the race for city controller coming up with incumbent Kenneth Mejia running against Zach Sokoloff. I met with Mejia over Zoom to discuss his time as city controller and his campaign.
Mejia, now 35, is a Certified Public Accountant and after three runs at the US House of Representatives, he was elected city controller in 2022. Despite concerns he was too young or too radical for the job, his tenure has been fairly standard.
According to Mejia, his team has worked to expose fraud and abuse, including the recent high-profile case of Alexander Soofer, the executive director of the nonprofit Abundant Blessings, who has been charged with defrauding the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
He spoke about how he has led an agenda of increased transparency in how the city distributes our tax dollars. “You can actually go online. You can find out what we’re spending our money on, whether it’s how much we’re paying city employees, how much we’re paying in liability costs, what is the city spending on in terms of the city’s credit cards. So just radical transparency on finances and operations.”
According to Mejia, he’s helping fight the city’s accounting practices that led to the current budget deficit. “In addition, we also are getting the city to budget more honestly and more accurately, right? The city used to just budget really high revenue amounts and now they’re taking our revenue recommendations and not saying we’re going to get all this money.”
Not all is peaches and rose petals in the controller’s office though. Last month, the Charter Reform Commission, the body in charge of drafting changes to the city’s charter, considered changes that threatened to take the power to control payments and conduct waste, fraud, and abuse investigations away from the independent controller’s office and place them under the control of the mayor and city council.
Ultimately, the changes approved for review by the mayor and city council were limited and the controller’s powers were largely spared. I asked Mejia for his opinion on the motivation behind this move to make fraud and abuse investigations less independent.
“Luckily the proposals didn’t go through,” he said. “Over 2,000 people, whether it was through emails or showing up in person or over Zoom to protect their office, they got the word out in less than 24 hours to defend their office and our powers. I don’t know the motivation for why they would want less transparency and accountability and less independence.”
“Do you know who proposed them or how they came to be?” I asked.
“It came from the Charter Reform Commission staff. So those city staff who put that together, the language. And so then for us, once we saw that, we said, you know, this isn’t a good proposal because it would just put everything we have now from an independent controller [to] underneath the mayor and city council. But in terms of who directed staff to do that, I don’t know.”
According to Mejia, he simply doesn’t know who would propose destroying independent fraud and abuse investigations. The proposals were drafted by the Charter Commission staff, who answer to executive director of the Charter Reform Commission Justin Ramirez, who answers to Mayor Bass and LA City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson.
The immediate question that should occur to Angelenos is, why would city leadership be fighting against transparency and accountability? Well, it’s probably just a coincidence that LA city councilmembers just can’t seem to stop getting charged or convicted for corruption and bribery.
Councilmember Curren Price is currently facing trial for embezzling public funds and other charges but the city council has refused to suspend him while the case is resolved. Angelenos are currently paying him his $244,727 salary plus benefits.
Councilmember Mark Ridley-Thomas was convicted nearly 3 years ago of bribery and related crimes – he’s still out and about on the street – the judge allowed him to remain free while he appeals his conviction.
Councilmember Jose Huizar received a 13-year sentence for tax-evasion for what federal prosecutors called a pay-to-play scheme..
And on it goes. Los Angeles clearly needs more transparency and accountability around public spending, not less of it.
Despite the mayor and city council’s attempts to undermine the controller’s office, including persistent staffing cuts, Mejia appears to be attempting to do his job to safeguard our tax-dollars.
Along with attempting to warn the city, to no avail, that it was overpaying into its police pension contributions by over $40 million, Mejia noted the budget-obliterating liabilities created by the Los Angeles Police Department.
“I would just also say the amount of liability claims are ginormous […] you know police related lawsuits, excessive force, traffic collisions you know when they accidentally hit people with their police cruisers, things like that. […] So, you know, the police in the past [six] fiscal years have garnered over $400 million in liability claims.”
I asked him what recommendations he’s made to the city to reduce the astronomical liabilities caused by the LAPD and if they have implemented those changes.
“So we’ve recommended tacking on a percentage of the liabilities to the department budget during the budget process. So that way there is some sort of accountability when they commit these liabilities or these settlements that get you know taken away from the city’s general fund. We’ve recommended it but so far nothing has happened.”
The very fact that the office of the controller is under constant attack suggests that it is functioning. Mejia’s office appears to be doing what they can with the limited resources allotted to them.
Unfortunately, the controller cannot compel the mayor or city council to make responsible and impartial decisions.
Only a change in leadership within the mayor’s office and city council would allow for a cooperative relationship with the controller to get our budget under control and reduce fraud and waste.
Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. He is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Rochester. You can reach him at rafaelperezocregister@gmail.com.