An auditor for the Los Angeles City Controller’s Office has tentatively settled a lawsuit she filed against the office in which she alleged her supervisor discouraged her from closely examining some Department of Water and Power contracts, including one that is part of an FBI investigation.
Meanwhile, plaintiff Beth Kennedy’s former co-litigant, Soledad Gomez, is headed to trial after Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dean J. Kitchens denied a motion by the City Attorney’s Office to dismiss her single claim for whistleblower retaliation on grounds there are no triable issues.
Gomez alleges she was not selected for special investigator positions she applied for in early 2020 in a backlash for reporting what she believed was unlawful activity she discovered during her temporary appointment as a special investigator in the City Controller’s Office in 2019. She investigated hotline complaints alleging fraud, waste and abuse.
Attorneys for the city stated in their court papers that the Controller’s Office, Ethics Commission and City Attorney’s Office all had legitimate, non-retaliatory reasons for selecting candidates other than Gomez for the positions for which she applied.
But in denying the city’s motion to dismiss Gomez’s single claim for whistleblower retaliation, Kitchens wrote that the city had not shown by “clear and convincing evidence that (Gomez) would have not been hired for other legitimate reasons with respect to every adverse action taken against her.”
Trial of Gomez’s part of the case is scheduled for April 13.
Meanwhile, Kennedy’s attorney filed court papers on Feb. 26 with Kitchens notifying him of a “conditional” resolution in the case with the expectation a request for dismissal will be brought by Aug. 1. No terms were divulged.
According to Kennedy’s claims, she began working as an auditor well over two decades ago. She contended that a supervisor told her in 2019 that a recent DWP whistleblower had recently died on the job and that it was “basically murder.”
The boss then told Kennedy to be careful with her audit by not asking a lot of questions and to avoid “digging too deep.”
Kennedy told the boss that they should report the information to the FBI, but he said that was not necessary, according to the suit.
Kennedy also contended that there was a break-in at her La Habra home in June 2019, hours after she and her staff had questioned DWP managers about the handling of some of its contracts. Kennedy was on the phone with her ex-husband at the time and screamed at him to call 911, then she barricaded herself and waited for police to arrive, the suit states.
Kennedy texted her boss about what had happened, saying she believe that it was related to his warning about the whistleblower who had been killed, the suit states. When Kennedy later told her boss in person that she believed the break-in was work-related, he stated, words to the effect, “You think? Of course it was,” the suit further states.
Kennedy’s boss in 2019 issued a statement denying that he tried to persuade her from doing a thorough job.
“I fully deny and disagree with the allegation,” the boss said. “Ms. Kennedy has misrepresented my words, which were given in the spirit of continuing to move forward with an audit in an environment of concern. Ms. Kennedy was worried about beginning to do field work at the Department of Water and Power because of issues unrelated to this audit.
“I told Ms. Kennedy that she and the other auditors assigned to this project should go ahead with their work of looking into procurement of IT services at the DWP. I emphasized that they could do so in a time-efficient and professional manner.”
Two contracts Kennedy said were of particular concern were with the companies Aventador and Ardent, which are linked to an attorney believed to be at the center of the FBI investigation. She said the contracts were being handled differently than other such contracts with the DWP and that the Controller’s Office had ignored complaints about the contracts since 2017.
A spokesman for the Controller’s Office previously said that the work done by the office’s audit services division “is consistently thorough, professional and delivers results that improve how the city of Los Angeles functions.”
FBI agents served search warrants at the downtown headquarters of the DWP and City Hall East in July 2019 as part of a probe into the city’s handling of litigation and a settlement over the botched rollout of a DWP billing system.
The warrants were for documents of several city employees at City Hall East and DWP offices, including some staff members of the City Attorney’s Office.
The botched debut of the DWP billing system in 2013 led to thousands of customers receiving inaccurate bills, with some being wildly overcharged. The debacle prompted a class-action lawsuit that led to a settlement requiring the DWP to reimburse customers roughly $67 million.