A lawyer who manages the policy of the homeless in the Los Angeles City prosecutor’s office has been selected as an acting managing director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to guide the agency in difficulty through a year of reducing workforce.
An object of the agenda published on Tuesday would authorize Wendy Greuel, president of the Lahsa commission of 10 members, to negotiate a 12 -month contract with Gita O’Neill, a lawyer for the city of career.
A vote is scheduled for Friday, the current current day will lecia adams kellum ceased to leave the agency She led for two and a half years. Adams Kellum announced his intention to resign shortly after the County Supervisors Council of Los Angeles voted in March to form a new County homeless department This will supervise the funds currently administered by Lahsa.
In addition to O’Neill’s monthly salary of $ 30,833.30, around $ 370,000 per year, Lahsa did not publish any information on the candidate who emerged at the top during a search of several months. The city prosecutor’s office did not respond to a request for an O’Neill CV. O’Neill did not respond to a call for time. Her LinkedIn page says she worked in the city’s prosecutor’s office for a little less than 24 years.
As acting CEO, O’Neill will be responsible for reshaping the joint authority of the City County because it loses around 40% $ 875 million budget And seeks to leave a tumultuous period during which he was harshly criticized in a series of audits for poor management of contracts and data.
A 2024 Report by the listener of the County of Los Angeles have noted that the lax accounting procedures led to non-compliance with the millions of dollars in cash advances to entrepreneurs and to pay other entrepreneurs in time, even when funds were available.
These gaps were already known when Adams Kellum was hired in January 2023 with a mandate to repair them. For her defense, she argued that the county’s audit mainly covered a period before she took the post.
But criticism say that progress has been far too slow.
At the beginning of this year, an audit commissioned by the American district judge David O. Carter concluded that Lahsa sufficient lack of financial monitoring To ensure that its entrepreneurs provide the services they are paid to provide, leaving the agency vulnerable to waste and fraud.
The voting of supervisors to withdraw from the agency followed shortly after.
Following the vote, more than 700 county workers will be transferred to the new agency by January 1. Six months later, the new department will finish taking hundreds of additional Lahsa employees.