Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Meija said Wednesday that the city had wasted millions of dollars on outside audits of its homelessness program rather than using his office for free — then ignored the results.
Meija, a frequent critic of city government, posted a video to X on Wednesday laying out his case:
Meija is no conservative; he is widely considered a “progressive.” Yet frustration with incompetence in local government is not a partsian issue.
While Mayor Karen Bass touts progress in reducing the number of homeless people on the streets — at massive expense, largely achieved by renting or even buying hotel and motel space — millions of dollars allocated to homelessness, both by the city and by nonprofit groups, is wasted.
An audit earlier this year of spending by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) that included programs partly funded by the city government found that billions of dollars could not be accounted for, amid allegations of self-dealing and conflicts of interest by senior executives.
There have been calls for a “Special Master” to be appointed to oversee funding allocated to California fore relief and rebuilding in the wake of the devastating Los Angeles fires earlier this year, precisely because of the pattern of state and local mismanagement that Meija describes in the video.
The State of California lost a huge proportion — $20 billion of $170 billion — of funding provided for unemployment spending during the coronavirus pandemic to fraud.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Zionist Conspiracy Wants You, now available on Amazon. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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