![](https://heysocal.com/wp-content/themes/heymediadev/assets/img/logos/beacon_white.png)
![](https://heysocal.com/wp-content/themes/heymediadev/assets/img/logos/logo-white.png)
Los Angeles County announced the hiring of a Washington, D.C.-based law firm Thursday to audit the county’s contracting policies and procedures, and to review all of its major service contracts, in light of the federal indictment of former Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas.
The Board of Supervisors voted in October to conduct the audit in an effort to ensure transparency in the county’s contracting procedures, which came into question following Ridley-Thomas’ indictment on federal bribery and conspiracy charges.
Federal prosecutors contend, in part, that Ridley-Thomas directed lucrative county contracts to the USC School of Social Work, in exchange for Ridley-Thomas’ son receiving graduate school admission, a full-tuition scholarship and a paid professorship at the university. Ridley-Thomas, who now serves on the Los Angeles City Council but has been suspended from his duties while the criminal case is pending, has denied any wrongdoing.
On Thursday, the county announced that it has hired the firm of Covington & Burling to conduct the audit of its contracting policies and processes. The firm is based in Washington, D.C., but has offices in Los Angeles. The firm’s auditing team will be led by Carolyn Kubota and Dan Shallman, who are both former federal prosecutors in Los Angeles.
According to the Board of Supervisors’ direction, the audit will review “all county service contracts in all supervisorial districts with a significant cumulative monetary value approved by this board between the years 2008-2020, or such other timeframe that is consistent with best auditing practices” including “the county service contracts referenced in the federal allegations, and the associated county processes and policies in place.”
Ridley-Thomas served on the Board of Supervisors from 2008 to 2020.
We are able to provide high-quality political journalism to you for free thanks to our advertisers. So that you can continue to enjoy HEYSOCAL's in-depth reporting, we ask that you please turn off your ad blocker and come on in, free of charge.
Subscribe to our newsletter for this giveaway and many more. Also, stay in the loop for SoCal news and updates.
Your subscription has been confirmed. You've been added to our list and will hear from us soon.
Your request has been confirmed! We will get in touch with you shortly.
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Essential Cookies should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.
This website uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages.
Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website.
Please enable Essential Cookies first so that we can save your preferences!
You can find more information about our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy