Council Passes Ethics Package, Ties in Raises : Reform: The measure will go to L.A. voters in June, but a proposal for public campaign financing is killed.

The Los Angeles City Council on Friday killed a proposal to establish public financing of political campaigns and passed an ethics-in-government package along with pay raises for council members, the mayor, the city attorney and the controller.

The council “tore the guts out of the proposal” by killing public financing, said Councilman Michael Woo, the chairman of the council’s Ad Hoc Ethics Committee and one of the authors of the broad reform package. Other council amendments over the last three days “seriously weakened” other ethics-reform measures, he said.

The compromise package presented to the council this week called for public financing of political campaigns, establishment of an ethics commission, a ban on outside work, honorariums and most gifts, and a ban on lobbying by former public officials for one year after they leave office.

Through a flurry of amendments this week, the council weakened the authority of the proposed ethics commission and inserted numerous exceptions to the ban on outside work, gifts and lobbying.

“I’m very disappointed,” Woo said, adding that he saw little hope for changing the ethics proposal before it is placed on the June ballot for approval of the voters.

The pay raises--approved Friday by a 12-1 vote with Councilwoman Gloria Molina dissenting and council members Nate Holden and Ruth Galanter absent--will go on the June ballot as a separate measure for voters to approve.

The proposal gives council members a 40% pay raise, hiking their salaries to $86,157 from $61,522. The mayor will get a 9.2% raise, making his salary $112,004; the city attorney’s pay will jump 18.6% to $103,388, and the city controller’s pay will rise to $94,773 from $61,522, an increase of 54%.

City Council President John Ferraro sponsored the pay increase measure, which permanently ties the salaries to those of Municipal Court judges.

If the pay increase measure is approved, all outside work and honorariums for the elected officials would be banned.

“Do we want the salaries for elected officials to fall further and further behind so that we can’t get good candidates to run for office?” asked Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores.

Councilman Hal Bernson urged the council to approve the pay raise measure, saying, “I don’t want to have to vote on any pay raises for myself anymore.”

In passing an ethics-reform proposal, the council had been trying to head off a threatened citizens’ initiative that would encompass the wide-ranging recommendations of the citizens’ committee appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley a day after his narrow election victory last spring.

Woo and Geoffrey Cowan, the chairman of Bradley’s commission, had hammered out a compromise agreement last week that Cowan said would make a citizens’ initiative unnecessary.

Cowan said Friday that an initiative is now likely, at least regarding public financing.

“Campaign finance reform was a fundamental part of any ethics proposal,” Cowan said. “I think without meaningful campaign finance reforms, there would have to be an initiative the citizens would put on the ballot themselves.”

Cowan said the changes to the rest of the ethics package were so numerous and confusing that they will have to be studied before a decision is made on whether a second citizens’ initiative is necessary.

“I still believe that it is better for the elected leadership to show the community that they are committed to ethics reform in such a fundamental way that they put it on the ballot themselves,” Cowan said.

In a written statement Friday, Bradley said the package passed Friday “falls far short” of the reforms necessary. He urged the commission members to begin preparing a citizens’ initiative.

Cowan said he was surprised that Ferraro voted against placing a public-financing measure on the ballot. Ferraro had joined Cowan and Woo last week at a press conference endorsing the package.

Ferraro said later that he “did not realize” when he cast his vote that he was voting for an amendment that eliminated public financing.

Public financing was eliminated on an 8-5 vote, the bare minimum necessary to kill a measure. Council members Marvin Braude, Richard Alatorre, Woo, Robert Farrell and Joy Picus voted against the measure that wiped out public financing, which was estimated to cost up to $27 million over four years.

Molina, who was not present during the vote on public financing, later attempted to hold up the overall ethics package so that it could be amended yet again, but she was unsuccessful. The package now goes to the city attorney’s office for drafting.