Los Angeles residents will have to choose their next city controller next week, with Zach Sokoloff looking to take down incumbent Kenneth Mejia.
Sokoloff worked as a grade school teacher before becoming an asset manager for Hackman Capital Partners, a large real-estate company.
Why Sokoloff is running
Sokoloff told me that he’s running for controller because of the sad state of LA and the poor job that Mejia has done in the last few years.
“I think you look around the city and you see a city that is clearly on the wrong track. We’ve got a budget deficit that fluctuates between hundreds of millions and a billion dollars. And we’ve got a homelessness crisis that we’ve spent over $3 billion on homelessness in the last four years. And we’ve got no results and no accountability. We have city infrastructure that is crumbling, streets with potholes, sidewalks that are busted up and take years to repair.”
According to Sokoloff, much of the blame can be laid at Mejia’s feet.
“He’s conducted less than three audits per year in his first term. That compares to an average of 12 audits per year for nine straight years in his predecessor. My opponent has conducted 11 audits in his first term. His predecessor conducted 108 audits … And so you just see this unbelievable drop-off in work product and output from the current controller’s office.”
I asked Mejia for comment on this, to which he replied, “My predecessor had more auditors than I did, at times double and even triple the number of auditors I have had. Additionally, my office’s budget for audit and fraud, waste, and abuse investigations was cut by nearly 25% one year into office. I have eight auditors for the second largest city in the country. As far as the cumulative count is concerned, he is also comparing the 3.5 years I have been in office with my predecessor’s 9.5 years. Of course my predecessor had done more.”
I asked Sokoloff if he believed that the Controller’s Office was appropriately funded and staffed to perform its oversight duties. Sokoloff blamed Mejia himself for alienating city officials and motivating them to cut his resources.
“I think if you asked… Every elected official in Los Angeles, if they have enough resources to do their job as well as they would like, every single one of them would say no … I think that he bears some responsibility for the depletion of resources being directed to that department … They’re diverting money away from the controller because they don’t trust him to do a good job.”
It’s certainly an interesting theory but staffing for the office has seen massive decreases since before Mejia’s term, going from 289 in 2018 to 140 budgeted for the 2027 fiscal year. What’s more, it’s just a fact of the matter that public officials like mayors and council members tend to underhandedly oppose independent oversight. Sokoloff seems to believe that his oversight will be more welcomed at city hall while history tells us that this is deeply naive.
I asked Sokoloff to clarify whether he would ask for budget increases if he’s elected.
“I think that the first way to earn someone’s trust as a leader is to perform on the field,” he said. “And so I think that I need to get into the controller’s office, do really good work. And then I think budget dollars will flow in our direction.”
Sokoloff is either very naive in thinking that he can sweet-talk city officials into loving oversight or he’s merely attempting to avoid saying anything that would validate Mejia’s concerns about the office’s limited resources.
Sokoloff makes everything about Mejia
I hate to keep making everything about Mejia since this is supposed to be about Sokoloff’s candidacy, but Sokoloff himself couldn’t seem to answer a question without mudslinging against Mejia. I asked him about what programs he would direct the attention of the controller’s office to. He immediately accused Mejia of choosing what to audit based on his ideological biases.
“And so his audits, I think, have focused principally on sort of ideologically driven initiatives and pet policy programs that, again, in my view, kind of cut directly against the nonpartisan impartiality of the office,” said Sokoloff.
I asked Sokoloff if he had any examples of ideologically motivated audits or investigations by Mejia.
“Well, look, I would say, you know, you look at some of the rhetoric coming out of his office, and I think he has put a bullseye on LAPD. I mean, his first audit was of the – or his major audit of LAPD was on the police helicopter division. The police helicopter division, I think by my latest calculation, Rafael, was $46 million. The police helicopter division supports our forces on the ground … When he talks about the police budget, he likes to use the denominator of the general fund, which makes the police budget feel like a much larger percentage of the budget … But I think the way he presents the numbers skews them to fit an ideological perspective that he has … And so that’s, I would say, one example of, I mean, look, it’s no secret. He was kind of swept into office on a defund the police wave. And that has been a major focus of his during his time in office.”
It’s unclear to me what the argument is supposed to be here. Since police helicopters help first responders, the program should be immune from scrutiny? What about every other city department or program that provides essential services?
I checked the controller’s budget breakdown and the police’s budget is represented as a proportion of the total budget just as with every other department and program. On some social media posts, Mejia represents it as a proportion of the general fund but it’s unclear why it would be a problem to know what percentage of our discretionary funds go to the LAPD – that seems like a perfectly informative presentation given that most of the LAPD’s budget comes from the general fund.
The evidence for Mejia’s biased investigations provided by Sokoloff was poor and of course, it would be extremely difficult for him to provide solid evidence given that it has to do with the internal motivations of a different person. But perhaps that’s why our aspiring controller should be more careful about throwing out accusations that he cannot substantiate – it makes him appear dishonest and willing to say anything to help his campaign.
Sokoloff continued the offensive, explaining that the controller is legally mandated to annually audit affordable housing programs but has failed to do so.
“Proposition HHH demands an annual audit by the controller, and he’s done not a single one,” he said. A quick look at the controller’s audit repository shows that Mejia’s office has audited both HHH and the city’s affordable housing programs.
Sokoloff’s lack of ideas
When we finally got to some of the specifics of Sokoloff’s plans, it was a bit unsatisfying. LAPD liabilities have contributed to the sizable budget deficit so I asked what he would propose to get the liabilities under control.
“I think doing better budgeting on the front end is important. I think holding departments accountable to the liabilities that they incur is important. But I also think that liabilities are a symptom, not a cause. I think when you see our streets, for example, that are not adequately cared for and you see trip and fall liabilities going through the roof, the liabilities are a downstream effect of poor behavior … If we were, uh, you know, more effective at using our LAPD dollars, we would see liabilities go down. And so to me, these are, are, um, effects of, uh, sort of upstream failures.”
I asked if he had any more specific proposals but he came up empty.
“Yeah, I mean, look, I think I will have to dig into that a little bit more. It’s certainly something that I would like to look into, Rafael, because as you note, it is a meaningful annual expense that we have to incur that diverts money away from services. And so I think that we need to look at ways of making the department accountable for liabilities that they incur.”
According to Mejia, he has suggested tying in a percentage of the liabilities to the LAPDs budget, which might incentivize them to rein it in.
The misconduct allegations
Sokoloff also brought up the misconduct allegations against Mejia, “My opponent has been accused of sexual harassment by former staffers … He’s been accused of creating a toxic work environment. He pressured his employees to rent apartments in his building to collect referral fees.” He stated that these allegations demonstrate that Mejia doesn’t have the moral character to hold office.
I asked Mejia about the allegations, to which he responded: “The accusations are the product of two disgruntled former employees lashing out after we made the difficult decision to move forward without them. I hired seven members from my previous campaign to join my office. Unfortunately, two were not ready for the demands of a full-time City Hall job. As refuted at the time by my campaign manager and chief of staff, the accusations made simply aren’t true. Since that story came out, my team, which includes the remaining five members from my campaign, are still with me in office to this day.”
Some of Sokoloff’s criticisms may be fair. I don’t know for sure whether Mejia acted inappropriately and perhaps he could have done more with what he has as city controller. But it’s also certainly true that the office isn’t adequately funded. However, many of his criticisms paint Sokoloff in a worse light than they do Mejia. He has often criticized Mejia for his constant social media presence, but Sokoloff also posts multiple times a day, so why even take that line of attack?
Honest matters
All in all, I found Sokoloff’s unending mudslinging to be at times dishonest and at times plainly lacking in factual basis – but it was worse than that.
Politicians launch criticisms at each other all the time but apart from the fact that several of Sokoloff’s criticisms were false or misplaced, I can’t shake the feeling that someone who is so laser focused and willing to aggressively attack their opponent – and it was nonstop – may have character issues of their own.
It’s hard not to compare them to more honorable politicians I’ve spoken to like Josh Fryday who plainly refuse to speak poorly of their opponents, even though I asked them to, and would rather talk about the good that they themselves can create. Honor is still important and our controller should have honor and speak truthfully.
Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. You can reach him at rafaelperezocregister@gmail.com.