Updated November 4, 2025 – Now expanded with campaign filing data, contract approvals, executive background checks, and new scrutiny on Supervisor Janice Hahn’s apparent violation of California’s Levine Act.
Los Angeles County corruption isn’t a bug in the system, it is the system.
The Board of Supervisors doesn’t govern; it brokers influence. For decades, the same developers, donors, and political insiders have turned the County into a pay-to-play bazaar where the rules bend for those who bankroll campaigns. No player has profited more from this machine than Majestic Realty Co., the City of Industry powerhouse helmed by billionaire Edward P. Roski Jr. Through more than $340,000 in political donations since 2007, Majestic has built a fortress of influence spanning zoning approvals, lease contracts, and sweetheart deals that would make indicted former Assessor John Noguez blush.
Roski’s operation mirrors the Noguez playbook: money buys access, access buys approvals, and approvals mint fortunes. When the FBI raided Noguez in 2012 for a $400,000 bribery web tied to developer kickbacks, the County promised reform. Instead, the Board doubled down. Janice Hahn—fresh off taking Majestic’s cash—cast the decisive vote in 2019 to approve the fire-prone Tejon Ranch sprawl, a 19,333-home desert mega-project that environmentalists warned would ignite more than brushfires. That $1,500 check she pocketed from Majestic weeks before the vote wasn’t a coincidence – it was a catalyst.
Under California’s Levine Act (Gov. Code §84308), Hahn was legally required to recuse herself from voting on any matter involving a donor who had given her more than $250 in the prior twelve months. Instead, she sat, voted, and delivered Majestic a billion-dollar rezoning windfall. No recusal. No disclosure. Just a quiet, calculated breach of state law.
Follow the money and the timeline tells the story: Majestic’s donations were never random, they were precise, deliberate transactions strategically timed around major County decisions. Records from the LA County Registrar show a steady escalation: $9,000 from 2007 to 2012, $26,700 through 2018, and then a massive $152,500 surge from 2018 through 2023 targeting Supervisors, Assessors, DAs, and Sheriffs. The Roski family, Edward Jr., Gayle, Patricia Reon, Michael, and Raymond, fed the machine, often listing Majestic as their employer. Commerce Construction, a Roski-affiliated firm, sweetened the pot with another $9,000.
Hahn banked over $80,000, including that $50,000 campaign dump in 2017 and the illegal $1,500 pre-vote gift in June 2019. Hilda Solis pocketed $25,000+, including a suspicious $25,000 spike in 2016 that coincided with her public push for “equity reforms.” Kathryn Barger quietly accepted $6,000 from Majestic affiliates between 2016 and 2020, right before voting to rezone rural parcels that would benefit Roski’s Tejon holdings. Even Mark Ridley-Thomas, now a convicted felon, raked in more than $10,000 before casting his own Tejon “yes.” The web was bipartisan, efficient, and bulletproof.
Then, almost as abruptly as it started, the donations stopped. After the final 2023 contributions, Majestic went silent. Not a dollar to Supervisors in 2024 or 2025. But silence doesn’t mean the influence dried up, it means the investment matured. On January 14, 2025, the Board unanimously approved three Majestic-brokered leases for the Department of Public Social Services at the City of Industry’s Crossroads Parkway complex. The deals totaled up to $154 million through 2043, funded by state and federal money, no County cost on paper. A gift to the public? Hardly. It was the dividend of a 16-year campaign finance strategy.
Every clause of those leases, amendments, term extensions, even tenant improvements, was brokered by Majestic’s network. Each passed through the Real Estate Management Commission without a whisper of dissent. On paper, these were routine renewals. In practice, they were the payout, a perfectly legal return on decades of dirty donations.
The parallels to Noguez’s downfall are impossible to ignore. In 2012, the Assessor’s office was caught undervaluing developer properties for campaign donors. In 2025, the Board of Supervisors is approving multimillion-dollar leases for the same corporate interests that funded their elections. The names have changed; the scam hasn’t.
When the California Court of Appeal struck down the Tejon Ranch project this summer for violating CEQA and ignoring wildfire and climate risks, it confirmed what everyone already knew: the County bent the rules for its donors. Yet the same Supervisors who greenlit that disaster – Hahn, Solis, Barger – turned around and rewarded the same developer with $154 million in public leases.
Janice Hahn’s 2019 vote wasn’t just unethical, it was downright illegal. Her office refuses to address it, but the filings speak for themselves. The Board’s corruption carousel spins on, fueled by the same donors, the same deception, and the same disdain for the law.
Los Angeles County voters deserve more than platitudes about “equity” and “reform.” They deserve accountability. It’s time for the Fair Political Practices Commission to investigate Hahn’s violation of the Levine Act. It’s time for County auditors to dig into the Majestic leases. And it’s time for the public to demand that the Supervisors stop selling out the County one check, one contract, one vote at a time.
We will continue to peel the layers of the onion, but it’s time for the Feds to step in and clean up the rot.
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