Fired City Official Sues, Citing Bias

A former executive with the Los Angeles Housing Authority has sued the city, claiming she was discriminated against and was fired in retaliation for being a whistle-blower.

Lucille Loyce, former assistant executive director, alleged she was ousted a week after telling the mayor’s office it was illegal to transfer funds intended for housing the poor to pay for Police Department patrols of city housing projects, her attorney said Monday.

Loyce was the No. 2 administrator until she was fired April 29, 2004, after investigators from the city attorney’s and other offices questioned as much as $1 million in agency spending, including billings that appeared to have been for personal expenses of agency officials.

Samuel J. Wells, an attorney for Loyce, said she was fired without cause. Her dismissal came as the mayor’s office “released a statement containing a trumped-up claim that Ms. Loyce had been fired because she had been involved in the misappropriation” of Housing Authority funds, according to a statement released by Wells. “No such misappropriation ever occurred, and the story was entirely false.”

The lawsuit filed in federal court last month claims the firing violated the California Fair Employment and Housing Act because it involved discrimination based on race and gender. Loyce, who is African American, said managers repeatedly “belittled” African American employees and gave the best assignments to white employees. She also said managers failed to act when employees made “unwanted and derogatory comments” about sex and women’s anatomy.

The suit also alleges her firing was retaliation for her being a whistle-blower on faulty designs of agency buildings and diversion of funds to the Police Department.

Loyce alleged that she had complained for years that she had been discriminated against but that her complaints were never addressed.

She claims her latest problem started in December 2003, when the Housing Authority disbanded its police force and proposed to give up to $4 million in funds meant to house the poor to the Los Angeles Police Department to pay for taking over enforcement activities at city housing projects, Wells said.

“In April 2004, Ms. Loyce complained to the office of the mayor, City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, and the [Housing Authority] board of commissioners that the move to give away to the city Police Department the funds earmarked for services for the underprivileged in Los Angeles was improper and illegal,” said a statement from Wells. “Within a week she was fired.”

Representatives of the Housing Authority and mayor’s office declined to comment on the personnel action.

However, Deputy Mayor Renata Simril on Monday defended the “creative” solution to a lack of policing in housing projects, where there were multiple murders last year.

The Housing Authority made $2 million in payments in lieu of property taxes to the city to cover the policing cost, Simril said.

“It is absolutely in the purview of the law to use the money for this purpose,” she said.