L.A. County budget unlikely to be squeezed this year by deluge of sex abuse claims

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record. It’s Rebecca Ellis, offering brewing budgets tidbits from L.A. County, and my colleagues David Zahniser, Jenna Peterson and Dakota Smith with updates from City Hall.

It’s been a year since L.A. County’s top budget official warned her bosses about a day when they would have to scrounge around for an extra few billion dollars.

That money wasn’t meant for state-of-the-art hospitals or affordable housing complexes. It would be going to thousands of people who, thanks to a change in state law, could for the first time sue for sexual abuse they say they experienced as minors in the county’s custody.

The deluge of claims, Chief Executive Officer Fesia Davenport said, amounted to the “most serious fiscal challenge in recent history.” She warned that the county could have to pay anywhere between $1.6 billion and $3 billion — the latter figure equivalent to the yearly budget of all but a handful of county agencies.

“These cases could have a profound impact on the county budget for decades to come,” she told supervisors as part of her yearly budget briefing.

But the day for belt-tightening isn’t here yet.

Davenport is expected to make her annual budget presentation to the supervisors April 23. Unlike last year, however, the massive liability is not expected to be the topic du jour.

The county’ said in a statement that “anticipation of these potentially devastating costs continues to inform our conservative approach to budgeting.” However, “there are no immediate budget impacts.”

Since the 2019 passage of the Child Victims Act, a state law that gave victims of sexual abuse a new window to sue, the county has been flooded with claims involving its network of foster homes, children’s shelters and probation camps and halls, some dating back to the 1950s.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs have argued that officials need to start thinking about how the county, responsible for the social safety net for 10 million residents, is going to find the money to resolve these cases.

“Now would be that time. This is not going away,” said Doug Rochen, who said he has brought new staff to his law firm to deal with the roughly 1,200 people it is representing in cases against the county. “They should set aside a pool of money — call it the sexual abuse survivors fund — specifically for being able to resolve these cases.”

This week, a judge set the first trial date for a handful of cases filed against the county under the new law: May 15, 2025.

Acknowledging that the county will someday have to spend serious money to resolve these cases is, as one official put it, “like saying the sky is blue” — obvious to all parties. Some have expressed fear over potential slashed budgets and skeleton programs down the road.

But officials say it’s likely too early, and there are too many unknowns, for the county to start budgeting for payments in the cases. Davenport previously said officials would consider cutting department budgets or dipping into the county’s rainy-day fund.

One of the biggest questions is how many cases there will be.

Last year, county officials said they expected about 3,000 plaintiffs. They underestimated. There are nearly 5,000 so far, according to a county source.

About 2,300 allege sexual abuse in juvenile camps and halls. Nearly all the rest involve MacLaren Children’s Center, a since-shuttered shelter for foster kids in El Monte.

The numbers continue to grow. In just the first week of April, the county was slapped with at least three new lawsuits by people who say they were abused as teens.

“The reality has got to set in, and they will have to figure out how to pay for it,” said Adam Slater, whose firm Slater Slater Schulman has filed 1,500 child sex abuse cases against the county.

State of play

— STREET SETTLEMENT: The City Council voted this week to pay up to $9.5 million to settle a lawsuit by a motorist who suffered injuries during a traffic collision in the Hollywood Hills. An attorney for the plaintiff faulted the city for putting a temporary traffic light in a location that was difficult for drivers to see. The council also approved a settlement of up to $21 million for a man who said he suffered brain damage after being struck by a falling street lamp part.

— GIMME SHELTER: Faced with major overcrowding in its animal shelters, the City Council voted to temporarily stop issuing new dog breeding licenses. The city’s six shelters are more than 200% over capacity, which has caused dogs to be tripled up in kennels or forced to live in crates in hallways for months on end.

— WHERE DID THE MONEY GO? A state auditor found that California agencies have failed to properly monitor the outcomes of their own spending on homelessness initiatives. The report, issued by the California State Auditor’s Office, raises questions about the effectiveness of programs that have received billions of dollars in government funding.

— MOVING ON: Los Angeles Department of Water and Power General Manager Marty Adams has been picked by President Biden to serve on the National Infrastructure Advisory Council. Adams will retire from the DWP in the coming months.

— SUPES SHUTDOWN: Advocates protesting conditions in L.A. County’s two juvenile halls temporarily stopped the Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday, sending the five supervisors scurrying into closed session. The coalition of groups said they want the supervisors to shut down the troubled halls.

— DEJA VU: Days later, L.A. County once again managed to avoid a shutdown of its two juvenile halls. A majority of the state oversight board believed the county had made enough 11th-hour fixes to bring the halls into compliance with state standards, allowing them to keep the roughly 350 youths who are in custody where they are.

— NO GOOD NEWS DAY: Hours before the state vote, a video was shown in open court of staff in Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, one of the halls under scrutiny by the state, standing by as a 17-year-old was assaulted by at least six youths. Some officers appear to laugh and shake hands with an assailant.

— FIREWORK FUNDS: Residents of South L.A. who were displaced from their homes by a bungled detonation of fireworks by the Los Angeles Police Department in 2021 will be allowed to stay in city-funded hotels for a few more months, thanks to a vote by the City Council on Friday. The displaced residents will remain in their rooms until the end of June.

— MUTILATED MONUMENT: Copper thieves are suspected of carting off part of a monument to Harrison Gray Otis in MacArthur Park. Last month, they took a saw to the statue of a newsboy standing next to Otis, who owned a newspaper that would become the Los Angeles Times.

Quick hits

Where is Inside Safe? Mayor Karen Bass’ signature initiative to bring homeless people indoors went to two locations this week: near a stretch of Pacific Coast Highway in L.A.’s Wilmington neighborhood and the Gilbert Lindsay Recreation Center in South-Central. The Wilmington operation focused heavily on RVs, according to the mayor’s office.

On the docket for next week: Bass will deliver her State of the City address Monday inside the City Council chamber. It will be her second such address since taking office in 2022.