The Gascón era’s expensive hangover

Good morning, it’s Thursday, July 23, and heat will continue to roast the city, with highs reaching the low 90s.

Los Angeles County has a massive budget and its elected leaders approve millions, and sometimes billions, of dollars worth of legal settlements each year. 

But in January, I started seeing something notable on the agendas for the Board of Supervisors: Every few weeks, they were approving six- or seven-figure payouts to sitting L.A. County prosecutors. I identified nearly $14 million in payouts from the County to former and current employees of the L.A. County District Attorney’s office. 

And after I spent time digging into court records, I saw that nine more cases have been settled, but haven’t been approved or paid out — yet. 

I had a sneaking suspicion all these cases might be a holdover from the civil war that gripped the county District Attorney’s office during the tenure of the last D.A., George Gascón, who sought to transform criminal justice in L.A. County, only to infuriate many in his office and eventually lose his reelection bid in 2024. 

Here is my look at the long tail of the Gascón era, and why L.A. County taxpayers are now footing the bill. 

As the Lineage warehouse fire blasted noxious smoke over Boyle Heights and beyond, a consultant hired to assist the cold storage company with its crisis communications could see every press inquiry that the mayor’s office was receiving about the fire, along with the office’s internal discussions. 

That’s because Yusef Robb, then an unpaid senior advisor to Bass, was not removed from the Bass press office’s private WhatsApp groups until June 27, according to screenshots viewed by L.A. Material. That’s a little over a week after Robb began doing work for Lineage on June 19. (L.A. Material previously broke the story that Robb was working for Lineage; he left his volunteer role with the mayor soon after.) 

The mayor’s office previously said that Robb was not involved in fire response, and that there was a “firewall in place.” This revelation raises questions about what that “firewall” actually entailed, and how it was enforced. 

LARCHMONT SCOFFLAWS: In our latest installment of L.A. Mystery, L.A. Material’s Tomo Chien investigated  why motorists keep parking illegally in the center median on Larchmont Boulevard.

RATS ABOUND: In the wake of the Lineage fire, rats and flies are descending on Boyle Heights and its environs, where tens of millions of pounds of rotting food await their removal. Mayor Karen Bass urged county health officials to do more to address the vermin problem.