City Controller's Audit: Los Angeles Paid $1.03 Billion in Legal Payouts From 2020 to 2025, Largely Over Preventable Incidents
Controller Kenneth Mejia's audit found no single entity overseeing the city's risk management — and the City Administrative Officer concurred with much of it, the Monday report said.
Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia released the findings of his audit into how the city manages liability risk, pointing to the $1.03 billion in legal payouts the city made from 2020 until 2025, which he said were largely related to preventable incidents like injuries from broken sidewalks, dangerous conditions, vehicle accidents and excessive use of force by police officers, the LA Squawk Box report on the audit, read in full this cycle, said.
'My office's audit found an alarming lack of accountability throughout the city,' Mejia said in a statement carried in the report. 'There is no one entity tasked with overseeing risk management, and departments have no incentive to prevent injury, loss, or other harms to the public or to minimize the financial impact of their actions. I urge City Hall to implement the recommendations in our audit to reduce harm and liabilities.'
The Controller's report includes a response from the City Administrative Officer, one of the agencies audited: the CAO said it concurred with much of Mejia's conclusions while disputing his assertion about the CAO's existing risk role, and agreed the city's risk management needed to be centralized, the report said. Mejia's office said the City Attorney's Office did not cooperate with the audit, so it could not study how that office analyses risk; the CAO and the City Attorney's Office had released a joint report on March 27 highlighting similar concerns. The audit also comes with a white paper of recommendations for improving the city's risk management process.
