Council Scuttles Plan to Plug Loopholes in Campaign Law

Acting to protect their own sources of political fund raising, Los Angeles City Council members Tuesday scuttled, at least for the time being, a proposal designed to plug loopholes in the city’s campaign reform law.

With eight votes required for approval, only six of the 10 members present voted to place a City Charter amendment on the ballot to strengthen the city’s powers to enforce the campaign law, even after deleting the most controversial provision. Instead, the council sent the measure to two committees for more study.

An angry Councilman Ernani Bernardi, author of the law overwhelmingly approved by voters in 1985, said after the vote, “I’m very disappointed. . . . Some of the members of the council are concerned about their skin, not the best interests of all of the people in the community.”

Besides Bernardi, those voting for the amendment were council members Joel Wachs, Zev Yaroslavsky, Pat Russell, Marvin Braude and Michael Woo.

The proposed amendment grows out of problems discovered by the city’s probe of Councilman Richard Alatorre’s 1985 council campaign.

Three Alatorre aides were charged with diverting, in violation of the city law, thousands of dollars from the then-assemblyman’s state campaign fund into his council race. The law limits contributions in council races to $500 per source.

City Atty. James K. Hahn said he lacked evidence against Alatorre, who refused to cooperate with city investigators. Hahn nonetheless filed a civil suit against Alatorre, accusing him of violating the state Political Reform Act. Alatorre agreed to pay $141,966 to settle the suit and to end the criminal case against his aides.

The city attorney proposed a number of changes in the law, including giving the city clerk subpoena power and authority to hire investigators and establishing civil penalties in addition to the existing criminal penalties.

The provision that ran into the most resistance at the council meeting Tuesday would have limited council members’ use of state political action committees, through which they can legally accept unlimited amounts of contributions as long as they do not spend any of the money on city campaigns. In city campaigns, council candidates still must limit accepting donations to $500 per source.

Many council members have used money from their political action committees to contribute to community groups, send Christmas cards and engage in other activities that Bernardi and the political reform lobby Common Cause have argued can be just as politically enhancing as an election mailer. Bernardi and Common Cause proposed to prohibit council members from using political action committees for anything other than county and state legislative races.

Alatorre was among those voting Tuesday against placing the measure on the ballot. Also voting no were Hal Bernson, Joan Milke Flores and Joy Picus. Alatorre and Flores both said they support the city attorney’s recommendations to strengthen enforcement of the campaign law but oppose putting a measure on the ballot until the council can settle the issue of action committees.