From an FBI raid on the LAUSD superintendent to a fired fire chief suing the mayor, the same pattern keeps emerging: officials protect themselves first and the public last.
In the span of a single week, the FBI raided the home and office of the superintendent of the nation's second-largest school district, and the city's former fire chief filed a lawsuit accusing the mayor of orchestrating a smear campaign to avoid accountability for a wildfire that killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes. Two separate stories. One very familiar pattern.
Los Angeles doesn't have a corruption problem. It has a governance problem. Corruption is almost incidental to it — the natural output of a machine that runs without meaningful accountability, where bureaucrats are rewarded for loyalty to leadership and punished for speaking inconvenient truths. This week just happened to make that unusually visible.
The LAUSD Scandal: A $6 Million AI Failure With the FBI's Attention
On Wednesday, February 25, the FBI served search warrants at LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho's San Pedro home and at the district's downtown headquarters. ABC7 A third location was simultaneously searched: the Florida home of Debra Kerr, who previously worked with AllHere, an education technology company that had a contract with Los Angeles schools before it collapsed and its leader was indicted for fraud. ABC7
Carvalho had just begun a new four-year, $1.7 million contract with LAUSD two weeks prior to the raids. CBS News The board — the same body that unanimously renewed that contract — then voted unanimously to place him on paid administrative leave ABC7 after two days of closed-door sessions.
The thread connecting Carvalho to the investigation runs through AllHere, a Boston-based AI startup. In 2023, LAUSD entered into a $6.2 million professional services contract with AllHere to develop a chatbot called "Ed," designed to address student absenteeism and provide academic and mental health resources. EdSource The launch was a spectacle. At a party at the Roybal Learning Center in March 2024, dignitaries gave speeches, a mascot paraded in an Ed suit, and a DJ spun tunes. Flanking Carvalho at the announcement were Mayor Karen Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom. LAmag
Within months, the whole thing fell apart. LAUSD ultimately paid about half the contract amount before AllHere collapsed in June 2024 and furloughed most of its staff. Los Angeles Daily News Then came the criminal charges. AllHere founder Joanna Smith-Griffin was arrested and charged with securities, wire fraud and identity theft. The Justice Department alleged she misrepresented her company's financial health to obtain nearly $10 million from investors — and instead of using the money for her company and the chatbot, Smith-Griffin is accused of embezzling the funds to put a down payment on her house in North Carolina and pay for her wedding. NBC Los Angeles
Carvalho's connection to the now-raided Florida home belongs to Debra Kerr — a longtime friend of Carvalho's who helped AllHere close the lucrative deal in Los Angeles. DNYUZ Kerr claimed in bankruptcy proceedings that AllHere owed her approximately $630,000 in unpaid commissions related to the LAUSD contract. Los Angeles Daily News Carvalho has denied personal involvement in selecting AllHere. The FBI has not charged him with any crime. But the raids happened, the warrants are sealed, and Los Angeles taxpayers are left holding a $3 million tab for a chatbot that never worked.
This is what government-directed technology procurement looks like in practice. Politicians host launch parties. Vendors collect millions. Products fail. Investigators show up. Taxpayers pay for all of it — including the superintendent's salary while he sits at home on paid leave.
This is also not Carvalho's first encounter with questions about impropriety. In 2021, the Miami-Dade County Public Schools Office of the Inspector General investigated a $1.57 million donation from K12 Inc. to a nonprofit chaired by Carvalho. While no legal violations were found, officials said it created the appearance of impropriety and that the funds should be returned. Orange County Register The LAUSD board knew this history when they renewed his contract. They renewed it anyway.
The Karen Bass Cover-Up: How a Mayor Turned a Wildfire Into a Political Operation
The Palisades Fire burned more than 23,000 acres, killed 12 people, and destroyed thousands of structures. MyNewsLA.com When it broke out on January 7, 2025, Mayor Karen Bass was in Ghana on a diplomatic trip. The suit alleges she left despite knowing of the potential severe winds and fire danger. FOX 11 Los Angeles
The official story Bass told afterward was that Fire Chief Kristin Crowley had failed to pre-deploy firefighters, failed to notify the mayor's office about dangerous conditions, and refused to prepare a post-fire after-action report. But what was emerging behind the scenes was different. According to records obtained by the LA Times, shortly before releasing the after-action review, the LAFD issued a confidential memo detailing plans to protect Bass and others from "reputational harm." FireRescue1 The 13-page document included email addresses for department officials, Bass's office representatives, and public relations consultants hired to shape the fire's narrative.
Crowley went public anyway. She revealed that the Palisades Fire had been exacerbated by a $17.6 million budget cut to the LAFD FOX 11 Los Angeles — a cut Bass's administration had made the prior fiscal year, over Crowley's objections. Crowley had submitted "numerous detailed reports" to city leaders including Bass warning of aging infrastructure, shrinking staff, and rising emergency calls. MyNewsLA.com Those warnings were ignored. The budget was cut anyway.
Bass's response was swift. She removed Crowley as fire chief on February 21, 2025. MyNewsLA.com Crowley appealed to the City Council. The council voted 13-2 to reject her appeal. MyNewsLA.com This month, Crowley filed a formal lawsuit, alleging Bass orchestrated a retaliatory campaign to deflect blame for the catastrophic January 2025 Palisades Fire and fired Crowley to "avoid accountability." Yahoo!
Bass's office called the suit meritless. But the lawsuit's core allegation — that a mayor who cut the fire department's budget, left the city during a predicted wind event, then blamed her fire chief for the resulting disaster — is not a claim that gets dismissed with a press release. It's a claim that gets litigated. And it should be.
The Bigger Picture
What connects these two stories is not corruption in the conventional sense. It's something more systemic: institutions that have no real mechanism to hold their own leadership accountable, so they don't. The LAUSD board renewed Carvalho's contract despite a history of impropriety flags. The city council protected Bass despite public evidence she had slashed fire resources before one of the worst wildfires in LA history. In both cases, the institution closed ranks — until outside pressure (the FBI, a lawsuit) forced their hand.
That's not a bug in how Los Angeles government operates. It's the feature. Bureaucracies protect bureaucracies. Officials protect officials. The people who get protected are the ones at the top. The people who get blamed — or fired — are the ones who push back.
Crowley pushed back. She's now in court. Meanwhile Bass is still mayor. Carvalho is still drawing a paycheck. And Los Angeles residents are still waiting for someone in City Hall to act like they work for them.
What Needs to Change
At minimum, LAUSD needs an independent procurement review process — one that can't be overridden by a superintendent with personal ties to a vendor. The AllHere contract went from a $6 million celebration to an FBI investigation in under three years. That doesn't happen when real oversight exists.
For Karen Bass, the question is simpler: if a fire chief who warned about budget cuts, documented everything, and spoke publicly when the cover story fell apart gets fired — while the mayor who cut the budget and skipped the country faces no consequences — then the accountability structure in Los Angeles city government is not broken. It's working exactly as designed, just not for residents.