Yaroslavsky Opposes Permanent Ethics Panel

Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky said Tuesday that he thinks a permanent city ethics commission would be too expensive.

Yaroslavsky said he agreed that an ethics panel, as proposed by a blue-ribbon panel appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley, is needed. But he dismissed as “out of the question” a plan to give the commission authority to hire lawyers to conduct investigations without approval of the city attorney or the council.

“I have seen enough $3 (million), $4 million bills from private attorneys,” Yaroslavsky said. “No department in the city of Los Angeles has a call on the city’s general fund in this way,” he said. “(Police Chief) Daryl Gates, who has a much more serious problem to deal with than the ethics commission will ever have to deal with, doesn’t have the right to call on the general fund for unlimited sums of money to police gang violence.”