L.A. May Still Face HUD Investigation

Los Angeles still faces the possibility of being targeted for a federal public housing investigation, despite earlier reports that Housing and Urban Development Department investigators had already picked three other sites.

Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), chairman of a House subcommittee with HUD oversight, said it was conceivable that the Los Angeles Housing Authority could still be selected as part of a $9.2-million probe to track federal money given to urban housing authorities.

“If they are selected, that’s the way the chips should fall,” he said.

Lewis’ comments contradict testimony by HUD Inspector General Susan Gaffney, who told Congress last month that Baltimore, New Orleans and San Francisco were the final three cities selected. And his remarks are likely to continue the controversy over HUD’s examination of those cities, all with black Democratic mayors, among mayors groups and Democratic leaders who complained that the selection was politically and racially motivated.

If Los Angeles--whose mayor is a white Republican--is selected, it would defuse some of the complaints.

Public housing officials in Los Angeles said they had no idea that the city was being considered for a federal probe. But according to a document prepared by the inspector general’s office and obtained by The Times, Los Angeles was among the 12 finalists originally considered for the investigation.

Lewis said “no judgment has been made” about which cities would be targeted and that it would be up to the HUD inspector general to make the final decision. “There will be more than three cities selected,” Lewis said. “It could be those three or a combination of them and others. Everything is in flux at this time.”

The Republican-led Congress has long been suspicious of widespread fraud and abuse in big city housing programs. Last year, Congress asked HUD to initiate an investigation. Since then, HUD has called on district investigators and local FBI field officers to suggest targets. The roster of 12 finalists included eight cities (Baltimore, New Orleans, San Francisco, Cleveland, Detroit, Memphis, Newark, N.J., and St. Louis) with black mayors and one (Miami) with a Latino mayor.

Arguing that the selections smacked of political and racial considerations, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National Conference of Black Mayors questioned why only those cities with black mayors and black housing chiefs were chosen. Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke protested Gaffney’s selection of his city, saying that the choice was “tainted by issues of race and politics.”

In a letter to Lewis, Schmoke complained of leaving a meeting with Gaffney with “a bad taste in my mouth about the way in which this investigation was initiated.”

Schmoke said her explanation of why Baltimore was selected over Los Angeles and other big cities was that she didn’t want to get “mired down” in large cities. “I believe . . . that it is grossly unfair to target medium-sized cities, ignoring the possibility of fraud in either suburban or rural areas and larger cities,” Schmoke wrote. “I also believe it is un-American to target only those cities with African American, Democratic administrations.”

HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo had no role in choosing the targeted cities and complained that cities with black Democratic mayors were unfairly singled out for examination. “This is in our opinion either illegal or unethical,” Cuomo said in an interview. “It is not a situation that can or should be tolerated.”

Tom Cochran, executive director of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which represents more than 1,000 of the nation’s mayors, criticized Gaffney’s selections as racially motivated, “reminiscent of when the FBI targeted African American mayors over 20 years ago.”

“Unfortunately, ‘urban’ has taken on a code word by some for cities run by African American mayors with high density of African American citizens,” Cochran wrote in an editorial for a mayors’ newsletter. “Let’s not single out one area with certain kinds of leaders with a particular skin color and say it just happened that way.”