Ethics Fight Goes to the People

The debate last week on the proposed City of Los Angeles Ethics Act was unfortunate and disappointing not only because of its result but also because of its tone and style.

As drafted by an independent commission of distinguished private citizens named by Mayor Tom Bradley, and agreed to in a slightly revised form by the City Council’s own ad hoc ethics committee, the proposal would have put before the people of Los Angeles council-crafted charter amendments giving the city tough new conflict-of-interest regulations and partial public financing of political campaigns. Together, these steps would have put Los Angeles in the vanguard of a burgeoning political reform movement that already has enacted such ordinances in cities like Seattle and New York.

Unfortunately, the council majority’s decision to kill public financing and to subject what remained of the proposal to more than 50 amendments left the ethics act, in the apt description of Councilman Michael Woo, “gutted.” Almost as regrettable was the council’s rather mean-spirited discussion of the issue and its elimination of public financing through an act of parliamentary sleight of hand that protected the majority from having to declare itself in a simple “yes-no” vote. These actions introduced a new rancor and furtiveness into a process heretofore characterized by openness, conciliation and constructive compromise.

A quick summary of what the council did gives a flavor of the process: It rejected public financing of campaigns; deprived the proposed city ethics commission of fiscal independence of the council; narrowed the circumstances in which a special prosecutor could be appointed, and generally weakened prohibitions against gifts, honorariums and outside income. On the other hand, the majority did vote to place on the ballot a charter amendment raising council members’ pay; it imposed new financial disclosure rules on private citizens seeking to recall incumbent council members, and it voted to extend its authority over eight city departments, commissions and boards that are currently protected against council intervention.

When the Ethics Act was put before the council last week, the issue was clear enough: Either the lawmakers could restore city government to a basic integrity people could rely on, or the people would have to do it themselves through the initiative process. Members of the mayor’s ethics commission are now drafting a proposal that will put the key provisions of the original Ethics Act, including public financing of campaigns, before the voters in November.

The situation created by the council’s failure in this matter is precisely what the initiative process was designed to redress. Some questions of governance simply are too important to be left to government to decide. The integrity of the political process itself is one of them. Since the council has declined to put self-interest aside, the people of Los Angeles have no choice but to make the cause of ethical reform their own.