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County Gives Ethics Rule Teeth

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Times Staff Writer

Nearly a decade after Los Angeles County voters overwhelmingly approved an ethics initiative to regulate contributions to county political campaigns, the five supervisors agreed on a way to enforce it.

The board, without discussion, voted unanimously Tuesday to empower the county registrar-recorder to investigate campaign finance reports submitted by candidates and to fine violators.

But because the plan was completed only in the last several days, the county still has not figured out how many new employees will be needed to do the investigating and how much the enforcement will cost.

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The supervisors agreed to settle that next year.

“We have no idea how many people it would take,” said Kristin Heffron, the county’s chief deputy registrar-recorder. “We weren’t even sure if the board was going to adopt this.”

The registrar-recorder said that she received a copy of the proposed change just before the supervisors voted and would come up with a staffing plan over the next several weeks. No investigators are currently assigned to look into campaign finance violations, Heffron said.

The long wait was not what was promised to voters in the 1996 campaign to pass Proposition B.

At the time, Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Yvonne Brathwaite Burke signed the ballot argument for the measure, promising “workable, enforceable campaign finance reform.”

Supervisor Mike Antonovich opposed the vote to put the measure before voters in 1996. Supervisor Gloria Molina, who was present at the meeting, was absent during that vote. Supervisor Don Knabe was not yet on the board.

Because it placed a $1,000 limit on most individual donations, the measure largely curtailed the practice of wealthy donors giving thousands of dollars to their preferred candidates.

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But neither the registrar-recorder nor the district attorney ever took responsibility for enforcing the rules.

In September, The Times reported that no candidate or donor had ever been fined or prosecuted for violating the law. The investigation also found more than two dozen contributions that violated the law since the 2003-04 election cycle.

Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley told the board in November that the law was largely unenforceable, because it did not provide investigators with the tools to find violations.

The solution gives the registrar-recorder the power to demand bank records and other documents from political campaigns to check for violations. And the office can fine campaigns for violations, much as the city of Los Angeles does.

The amended county regulation also prohibits lobbyists from making contributions, an expansion of the current regulation, which only bans candidates from accepting such contributions.

The city of Los Angeles, which created a special Ethics Commission in 1990 to police city campaigns, found 152 campaign finance violations and issued nearly $1.1 million in administrative fines this year alone, Executive Director LeeAnn Pelham said.

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Her office employs about five auditors to search campaign finance reports for violations.

The city Ethics Commission also posts campaign data on the Internet using software that the county plans to begin employing soon.

Bob Stern, who heads the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, applauded the county’s belated move. But he warned that the supervisors should not again lose track of enforcement. “If no one is watching, no one will do it. That’s what’s happened for the past 10 years.”

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