Lack of Accountability Could Cost Taxpayers

Lack of Accountability Could Cost Los Angeles Taxpayers

Los Angeles City Council has voted 13-0 — with two members absent — to approve Council File 24-1168, authorizing taxpayer-funded outside counsel for litigation involving Silver RV Park / Oceans 11 RV Park LLC at 23416 S. President Avenue in Harbor City. That vote matters. The Council approved more public money for this fight without first requiring a full accounting of what it has already cost, what taxpayers may still owe, or whether the officials who helped create the litigation risk should still be participating in funding the next round — or why outside counsel is needed at all, given that the City's own record, built over nearly two years, appears to support the court's findings far more than it supports the City's appeal.

This is not a routine legal-services contract. It is a taxpayer-accountability issue involving avoidable litigation, court losses, housing, and unanswered questions at the highest levels of Los Angeles City government.

The Budget and Finance Committee report requests a three-year contract with Burke, Williams & Sorensen in an initial amount of $160,000. That same report acknowledges the trial court ruled a Conditional Use Permit was not required, that the project satisfied LAMC § 14.00(A)7 and that the City must issue permits ministerially. It also states no Fiscal Impact Statement was submitted and no financial analysis was completed by the CAO or Chief Legislative Analyst. Every Los Angeles taxpayer should find that concerning.

The housing reality the City is trying to ignore

The City wants to argue for litigation purposes that RV parks do not provide housing — but that position ignores reality. The reality is that thousands of people in Southern California alone rely on RV parks for residential living, and that need continues to grow. Long-term residents in RV parks are not passing through. They pay for a space, connect to utilities, follow park rules, and use that space as their home. The model is similar to mobilehome parks: the resident owns or occupies the dwelling unit, the park provides the legal lot, utility connections, infrastructure, and managed setting that makes it livable.

The City cannot have it both ways. When tenant protections are at issue, the City recognizes that long-term RV park residents need housing protections. When it wants to block an RV park, those same residents suddenly don't count as housed. That is not housing policy. It is a litigation position. When people live long-term in a lawful, utility-connected, managed RV park, the space is functioning as housing — whether the City finds that convenient or not. California's RV Park Occupancy Law already recognizes long-term residential status in these communities, and recent federal HUD rulings have reinforced that point, recognizing that RVs can function as primary residences and that people living in them long-term may qualify for housing-related protections and assistance.

This is not a homeless encampment

Silver RV Park is a permitted, managed residential RV park with rules, inspections, security, and state oversight. Los Angeles repeatedly stresses the urgency of its housing shortage, yet here it is using public funds to fight a more affordable form of housing that was legally permitted, privately financed, filled quickly, and is now home to residents. If the City truly wants fewer people in unsafe or illegal conditions, it should be supporting regulated alternatives like this — not spending taxpayer money trying to undo them.

The appeal does not appear to match the record

If the City is going to spend public money to continue this litigation after losing on the core issues, the public deserves to know what has already been spent, what comes next, and what taxpayers could owe if the City loses again. The true full cost far exceeds $160,000.

The City has appealed the findings that the project satisfied LAMC § 14.00(A)7 — the ordinance that allowed this park to be built and that the City is now choosing to ignore — and that the City had a ministerial duty to process and issue permits, a ruling corroborated by the City's own record. But that appeal has a basic problem: the City's own records, built over nearly two years, support the judge's findings. City Planning and LADBS cleared the project and issued a permit granting land use. City officials confirmed multiple times that the project satisfied the applicable standards. Appeals are generally decided on the existing record — and that record repeatedly confirmed the very compliance the judge relied on.

So what exactly is the City appealing? And why should taxpayers fund outside counsel to keep fighting it?

The public is being shown the next invoice, not the total bill

The real cost of this fight includes City Attorney time, outside counsel, court costs, appeal work, LADBS and Planning staff time, CPRA responses, and attorney-fee exposure created by forcing the developer into court in the first place. The public is being shown a $160,000 line item, not the total bill.

This matters because Los Angeles repeatedly says litigation costs are contributing to its budget crisis. If that is true, City Hall should be asking why this litigation was created at all, all from a project the City's own departments repeatedly found to be compliant. The developer built the housing. The City is spending taxpayer money to fight housing that already exists and cost the City nothing to build. Every dollar spent here is a dollar not going to housing production, homelessness services, public safety, or basic city needs.

The City issued approvals, then tried to undo them — again

Silver RV Park is a functioning residential community. The City issued the Certificate of Occupancy, HCD issued the state Permit to Operate, people moved in, and the park reached capacity within weeks. Even after the court rulings, the City did not correct course. After conducting inspections, approving the project as compliant, and issuing the Certificate of Occupancy, the City revoked it days later — apparently on the theory that the court ordered the City to issue the Certificate but did not expressly prohibit revocation.

That raises a serious question: if a city can claim compliance with a writ one day and undo the same approval days later, what does court enforcement actually mean?

Park residents have no voice in their own district

After two years of negative public comments and assumptions about this park, one would think Councilmember Tim McOsker — the District 15 representative whose district includes Silver RV Park — or someone from his office would have made an effort to meet the residents who now live there. These are his constituents. Has he visited the park? Has anyone from his office spoken with them? Has anyone from the Mayor's Office gone there to understand what need this park is meeting? The answer to all of those questions is a hard no — and the contract now sits on the Mayor's desk awaiting her approval.

Instead, the public has heard years of criticism and fear-based claims, all from the safety of City Hall offices and public meetings. If City officials are willing to spend taxpayer money on litigation that puts these residents' homes at risk, they should at least be willing to look those residents in the eye and explain why.

Accountability starts at the top

Councilmember McOsker helped drive the actions that created this litigation, helped keep the obstruction alive, and has continued participating in decisions tied to the case — including voting to approve taxpayer funding to continue it. That is a serious accountability problem. The official who helped create the dispute should not have been part of the decision making on how the City handled the litigation, nor should he be among those deciding how much public money to spend defending the consequences — and none of that should happen without full disclosure and a recusal review. The Council's 13-0 vote shows it was willing to move forward without requiring those answers. That is exactly how avoidable litigation costs become long-term taxpayer obligations.

Civil Rights Vioations are also a problem for the City

The civil-rights exposure is another reason this outside-counsel request deserves more scrutiny. When a city interferes with vested permits, ignores due process, or acts arbitrarily after an applicant has satisfied the applicable legal standards, the risk is not limited to ordinary writ relief. Civil-rights claims can expose a public entity to damages and attorney-fee shifting. In some circumstances, they can also expose the officials who personally made or directed the unlawful decision. In Town of Orangetown v. Magee, a permit was revoked after work had begun and after political opposition developed. The result was reinstatement of the permit and more than $5 million in damages, costs, and attorney fees. In City of Monterey v. Del Monte Dunes, a California land-use dispute resulted in a $1.45 million jury award under constitutional land-use claims. In Bateson v. Geisse, the Ninth Circuit held that withholding a building permit after the applicant had satisfied the required conditions violated substantive due process, and the court held that both the City and the individual councilmembers involved could be liable for the constitutional injury. Those examples show why the City should not casually dismiss the due-process and vested-rights issues here as minor procedural arguments. They are exactly the kind of issues that can turn a $160,000 outside-counsel request into a much larger taxpayer problem.

The Mayor now owns the next decision

The contract now goes to the Mayor for approval, and that is where this becomes a direct test for Mayor Bass. For nearly two years, the Mayor's Office has remained silent while this lower-cost regulated housing project was obstructed — even though it directly aligns with the Mayor's own stated goals on housing and homelessness. If the Mayor approves this contract without first demanding a full fiscal analysis, a review of the litigation record, and an answer to why Los Angeles is spending money fighting housing instead of supporting it, she becomes part of that decision.

Approval would mean the Mayor chose to continue funding a fight against a housing-related project while claiming a housing crisis. That is difficult to reconcile with her stated commitments.

A pattern seems to be emerging

This is not an isolated case. The City has taken similar action against a second RV park project by the same developer in the Valley, creating another litigation track. In that case there has already been a preliminary ruling that appears to favor the developer on key issues. The same appears true of the City's newest position in the President Avenue matter following the Certificate of Occupancy revocation — that post-judgment tactic also does not appear to be gaining traction.

This looks like a pattern: the City obstructs privately built, lower-cost housing, loses or faces adverse rulings, changes tactics, and asks taxpayers to fund the next round. Courts across California have repeatedly pushed back when cities attempt to block compliant housing projects — and the tab for those fights falls on the public.

What City Hall still needs to answer

The public deserves a full accounting of what this fight has already cost, what the City expects to spend next, and what taxpayers could owe if the City loses again. The City should explain whether $160,000 is a hard cap or just the first allocation of a much larger bill.

The public also deserves to know why outside counsel is necessary after the City has already lost on the core issue, and what the City's realistic path to victory actually looks like. And it deserves a direct answer on accountability: why has Councilmember McOsker — whose actions helped drive this dispute — been allowed to participate in approving taxpayer funding to continue defending it?

Before another dollar is approved, City Hall should give the public a full accounting of the fiscal, legal, ethical, and human consequences of continuing this fight.

Los Angeles residents deserve streets that are safe, lights that work, housing that is not blocked by politics, and a City government that follows its own laws before asking taxpayers to pay for its mistakes.

Update on the court rulings: The recent rulings in the Lemona Avenue and President Avenue cases show why this has become a taxpayer-accountability issue, not just a land-use dispute. In the Lemona case, Judge Joseph Lipner granted Oceans 11’s writ petition on the core LAMC §14.00(A)(7) claims, finding that the City had a ministerial duty to process and approve the project after City departments had already cleared it under the ordinance’s performance standards. Most notably, the judge wrote that the City “dedicated significant public resources to creating arguments outside of applicable legal principles” for why the project could not go forward. In the President Avenue case, the court also blocked the City from revoking the Certificate of Occupancy based on utility infrastructure in the landscape buffer and found that the City’s revocation effort was not consistent with the writ already issued in that case. Even the judge is now pointing to the same basic problem: public resources are being spent to defend legal positions the court is not accepting, while the people responsible for those decisions face no obvious accountability.

About the Writer

Doug Ross is a Los Angeles resident and taxpayer with direct, firsthand involvement in this dispute. That experience has made clear a much larger issue — elected officials in this city face little to no accountability for decisions that cost taxpayers real money and real consequences. He will be publishing a new article each month highlighting exactly that problem across Los Angeles City government.