L.A. County CEO Fesia Davenport
LOS ANGELES - Critics have become increasingly vocal about what they see as the squandering of taxpayer funds by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, which approved a $2 million payout to its CEO for both economic and noneconomic “damages.”
“No, (CEO Fesia Davenport) wasn’t the victim of any apparent malicious behavior by county officials,” Steven Greenhut, a resident senior fellow at the R Street Institute in Washington, D.C., said in a recent opinion piece. “The source of her distress, it turns out, was the county’s voters. In July 2024, the county’s elected board members directed the drafting of a charter change for the November ballot.”
That proposal, Measure G, won voter approval with 52% of the vote in last year’s election. Greenhut and others, including Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, have criticized the county board’s decision in July to provide the $2 million payment to Davenport. The payout avoids a possible lawsuit over the CEO’s claims that Measure G caused her “reputational harm, embarrassment, physical, emotional and mental distress, in addition to economic damages.”
The claims were detailed in a letter Davenport sent to the county counsel, Dawyn Harrison. She also said in a letter to the Board of Supervisors’ chairwoman, Lindsey Horvath, that Measure G’s provision for an elected county executive by 2028 – rather than the current appointed position – would upend her retirement planning and lead to demonstrable professional harm.
“... I have briefly consulted with private counsel and was advised that I have substantially undervalued my claim by focusing solely on financial detriment for salary and wages (i.e., ignoring the impact on my retirement) – as opposed to both economic and noneconomic detriment,” Davenport said in the letter to Harrison. “... I have modified my request to focus on the non-economic impacts of damages.”
Measure G will also increase the number of county supervisors from five to nine in order to provide better representation for supervisorial districts, supporters have said.
Critics of the $2 million payout point out that it was done in executive session, with little transparency, and that while voter-passed government reforms have taken a bite out of some public officials’ fortunes in the past, this doesn’t usually result in major employment settlements.
“Perhaps once the measure is fully in place in 2028, voters will elect supervisors who have more backbone,” Greenhut said in his opinion piece.
Davenport has pointed out that the text of Measure G said “... the lack of strong, elected executive leadership has impacted our ability to address … challenges” facing the county. People have read this to mean that as an appointed CEO, Davenport’s leadership was weak, the CEO said.
During this time, Davenport indicated that she has also had to deal with “a rash of illnesses in my family.”
The CEO’s Office told the Southern California Record in an email that it would not comment on the specifics of the settlement, but the county did provide some details about her professional status.
“CEO Fesia Davenport is currently on unrelated medical leave and expected to return to her role in 2026,” the county’s statement said.
Davenport has been serving as the county’s chief executive officer since January 2021.