Hahn Defends Ethics Policies, Renews Pledge to Cut Crime

A little less than a year before he faces reelection, Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn kicked off a critical week Monday by renewing his pledge to reduce crime and delivering his most forceful defense of his administration’s ethics.

“Questions are being raised about how we do business at City Hall,” Hahn said in his annual State of the City address. “To me, ethics isn’t optional, and I won’t tolerate unethical behavior in my office or anywhere in City Hall.”

Hahn delivered his speech the day before he is scheduled to unveil a city budget that will demand cuts to preserve funding for various city services, which the mayor has identified as police, after-school programs, housing and neighborhood services, such as libraries.

At the same time, former police chief and now Councilman Bernard C. Parks is ramping up an exploratory campaign to unseat Hahn with a series of community meetings he is calling “chats with Bernard.”

Later this week, former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg is expected to announce whether he will enter the race.

Faced with those potential opponents, as well as a persistent investigation into his administration’s contracting practices, “the challenge for Hahn right now is to look like a leader,” said Jaime Regalado, a political scientist who heads the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State L.A. “It will be important for him to convey to Angelenos that he is the man in charge.”

Flanked by dozens of police officers and firefighters in a garage at a Sherman Oaks firehouse, Hahn used his last State of the City speech before next March’s election to push what promises to be a central theme of his reelection campaign -- his work to make Los Angeles the safest big city in America despite the city’s tough financial situation.

“It’s time the overwhelming majority of good, hard-working people in our city did not have to live in fear of the criminal few,” Hahn said.

Without naming Parks, the mayor also took a swipe at the former police chief as he applauded Chief William J. Bratton for raising morale at the Police Department.

Parks’ campaign staff distributed the South Los Angeles councilman’s own assessment of the city after Hahn’s address.

“You didn’t need to go to a firehouse and hear a speech before a group of gathered political contributors to understand what the real state of the city is: leaderless,” Parks said in the statement.

For months, Hahn’s leadership has been under steady attack. The mayor has been criticized for not responding more forcefully to escalating criminal investigations by federal and local prosecutors into allegations of a connection between city contracting and political giving.

Hahn has been attacked for ignoring concerns about his controversial plans for a $9-billion modernization of Los Angeles International Airport.

And last summer, he was embarrassed by City Council members who rejected his plan to hire more police officers.

On Monday, Hahn told the gathering of some 250 city leaders that he is committed to a clean City Hall.

“Nobody is more interested in finding out if there is wrongdoing in city government than I am,” the mayor said. “If there is wrongdoing, it needs to be rooted out and punished.”

Hahn pointed to his proposal for new campaign reforms that would, among other things, prohibit contributions from city contractors and those seeking land-use permits from the city. Hahn presented the proposal to the city Ethics Commission last week.

The mayor also signaled a new willingness to compromise with his critics over the LAX modernization plan.

The mayor spent the bulk of his 24-minute speech, however, enumerating the ways he plans to maintain a commitment to what he called “the things that make people’s lives better”: more police officers on the city’s streets, more students in the LA’s BEST after-school program and more funding for affordable housing development.

As he does at almost every opportunity, Hahn lavished praised on Bratton, his popular police chief. And he highlighted last year’s reduction in crime: Homicides fell 22% citywide.

Many council members said they were pleased with the mayor’s message.

“He hit the right notes,” said Councilman Tom LaBonge. “When you go to the neighborhoods, these are the things that people are talking about.”

Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, meanwhile, beamed after the mayor said he wanted to “build the consensus” for his airport plan, which Miscikowski has been criticizing for months.

But many city leaders said they are still waiting to see if the mayor will make good on his pledge to work more closely with his colleagues in the coming months to close what was a $250-million hole in the city’s budget. The City Council will spend the next month considering the mayor’s proposed budget.

And Hahn’s ethics reform plan continues to receive only a tepid response from other city leaders, some of whom say the mayor should return political contributions he has received from city contractors if he wants to really demonstrate his commitment to reform. The mayor has thus far refused to do that.

There were other ominous signs that Hahn will not have an easy year leading up to the 2004 election.

Parks, who chairs the council’s budget committee, criticized individual pieces of the mayor’s budget, including Hahn’s plans to cut the popular DARE anti-drug education program in Los Angeles schools.

And he blasted Hahn for making City Hall “home sweet home to the insiders and powerbrokers, while the public is on the outside looking in.”

State Sen. Richard Alarcon, a Valley Democrat who entered the mayoral race last month, said from Sacramento that he also believed Hahn’s speech failed to address ethics forcefully enough.

“It’s lacking in building confidence in the electorate that he’s going to avoid this kind of pall over City Hall,” Alarcon said.

Julie Wong, deputy mayor for communications, said afterward that Hahn’s ethics reform package and work to expand the city’s neighborhood councils prove his commitment to making city government more open and responsive.

And Hahn advisors insist that the mayor is responding to the questions about ethics.

Ted Stein, a Hahn fundraiser and president of the Airport Commission, and Deputy Mayor Troy Edwards, who was a fundraiser during Hahn’s 2001 campaign and then oversaw the airport, port and Department of Water and Power, both resigned in the last month.

An advisor to Hertzberg said the Sherman Oaks Democrat would not comment on the speech.