Angry Council Fights Back at Proposed Ethics Reforms

Bristling at the implication that they may be corrupt, Los Angeles City Council members on Wednesday threw out the $1.5-million annual funding for a proposed ethics commission and began picking away at other provisions of a sweeping ethics reform proposal.

“Because the mayor said he used bad judgment, we are all tarred with being crooks,” said Council President John Ferraro. “We have to prove our innocence before we’re accepted, and I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all.”

The full council was confronting, for the first time, an ethics reform package whose seeds were planted a year ago when questions about Mayor Tom Bradley’s financial dealings began to emerge publicly.

Bradley conceded that he used poor judgment in accepting paid positions with two area banks and appointed an ethics-in-government commission to draft a new standard of conduct for public officials.

The far-ranging proposals of that commission, combined with the recommendations of a council committee, call for publicly financed political campaigns, restrictions on outside income for public officials, increased financial disclosure and a ban on lobbying by former officials for a year after they leave office.

In a special session Wednesday, the council began attacking the package with a blizzard of amendments generally intended to weaken it.

Among the most serious changes was an amendment that greatly softens a proposed ban on gifts and honorariums. The amendment, sponsored by Councilman Joel Wachs, bars only gifts and honorariums from people who do business with the city.

“I don’t think it matters to anybody whether my cousin from Minneapolis sends my daughter a bat mitzvah gift,” said Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who seconded the amendment. “My cousin from Minneapolis is actually regulated more strictly than Art Snyder” (the former councilman who is now a powerful lobbyist).

But Councilman Michael Woo, one of the drafters of the package, said the change “has the effect of gutting the entire proposal.” Woo said he will attempt to repair the damage today.

Most council members had been skittish about publicly criticizing ethics reforms, but a number spoke out bluntly Wednesday.

“Are we subhuman? Are we less ethical than any other profession?” asked Councilman Hal Bernson, who declares Los Angeles “the cleanest city in the world.”

Bernson said the only incident “that has even been remotely connected with any wrongdoing” has been the “alleged situation” regarding Bradley.

“Because of this, we’re stampeded into a situation where we’re going to declare ourselves as not being thieves,” Bernson said. “I am not a thief. . . . I’m not going to support a package that declares we’re all dishonest.”

The council debate lasted into the evening and is to resume today. Council members and observers said it is impossible to tell what provisions will survive the amendment process.

The council barely touched on the most controversial provision--publicly financed campaigns.

In a move that gives the council far greater control over the commission, the council voted to throw out the provision that automatically gives the new ethics commission $1.5 million a year.

Yaroslavsky, who offered the amendment, said the original proposal gives the commission $1.5 million “whether they need it or not. . . . It is bad public policy to guarantee a level of funding to any department.”

Yaroslavsky said he could give the backers of the proposal--including Geoffrey Cowan, chairman of Bradley’s commission--his personal guarantee that the commission would be adequately funded.

Cowan said Wednesday that council control over the budget “compromises” the independence of the commission.

“Some provisions that we thought were important are not in the document as it’s emerged today,” Cowan said when the session ended. “Whether those are . . . fatal flaws is something we’ve got to give some thought to.”

The package before the council is a compromise worked out by Cowan and Woo, chairman of the council’s Ad Hoc Ethics Committee. Cowan said last week that if the compromise emerges from the council substantially intact, there will be no citizens initiative on the June ballot that would encompass all the recommendations of Cowan’s commission.

In passing its own ethics reforms, the council is attempting to head off an initiative.

In a brief address to the council Wednesday, Bradley urged passage of the proposal without amendment.