It has been revealed by our RedState colleague Jennifer Van Laar that Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (DPH) Director Barbara Ferrer gave a patronage job to a convicted felon as part of an effort to ensure her authority would never be in question.
Ferrer has been a controversial during the COVID-19 pandemic as she lead the effort to implement strict measures, such as banning outdoor dinning, despite data showing those measures were nonsensical. Recently, the DPH announced it would reinstate a mask mandate for the county even though hospital data in Los Angeles County shows people hospitalized for COVID-19 is at an all-time low.
NEW: L.A. County+USC hospital confirms only 10% of their COVID positive patients are hospitalized *for* COVID, few are being admitted to ICU, & nobody has been intubated for COVID pneumonia in months. Only 3 patients currently hospitalized *for* COVID, none are in ICU. @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/FPnHheSpX7
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) July 18, 2022
RedState reported Ferrer hired Carl Kemp after she became in charge of DPH in 2017. Kemp had recently been released after being convicted of filing a fraudulent tax return, failing to report $750,000 in “lobbying” income, including nearly $220,000 from a drug trafficking kingpin. Kemp became the Chief Communications Officer in the Environmental Health Division of DPH.
Prior to his conviction, Kemp was a government relations and communications consultant based on Long Beach. He remains a popular and well-connected figure within the higher echelons of Los Angeles County.
As Jennifer noted in her report:
"While Los Angeles County has a Fair Chance Initiative, which allows those with criminal records to be hired, it’s unbelievable that Ferrer was able to hire Kemp, who had never worked for the County before, in such a position just two years after he went to prison on public corruption-related charges. The terrible details of what happened in Kemp’s case will be discussed in an upcoming article."
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