Ethics and Other Comedies

Los Angeles provides work for plenty of television gag writers. Some, it would seem, can be found at City Hall, where the concern over ethics has evolved into a situation comedy.

Council members once again are rewriting the ethics ordinance proposed last year by a citizens’ commission appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley. The mayor, you may recall, set up the commission when he found himself in the middle of a conflict-of-interest scandal caused by his outside business activities.

The ethics ordinance, and an accompanying proposal for election campaigns partially financed by the public, had been effectively gutted by the council. But on Monday, Council President John Ferraro, one of the chief protagonists in the gutting, met with the ethics ordinance’s leading proponents, Councilman Michael Woo, and Geoff Cowan, chairman of the citizens’ commission.

Ferraro had a proposition: Combine the ethics law with a pay raise. That would win the support of enough anti-ethics council members to assure passage. Approval would put the ordinance on the ballot in June. Voters eager for reform would be more than willing to give their council members, mayor and other city officials a pay raise in return for an ethics law. In an ironic touch, a pay increase of almost $10,000 a year would go to Bradley.

So the mayor, who started it all with his questionable activities, is to be punished with a pay raise. How’s that for a laugh line?

Then there’s the ongoing serial about an unusual lobbyist. Call it “The Plying Bishop.”

On Wednesday, this newspaper reported that one of the most enterprising lobbyists in city government--a man who was paid about $300,000 for trying to get a company a gift shop concession at the city-owned airport--turns out to be a religious leader, Bishop H.H. Brookins, one of Bradley’s old pals. Brookins became a local political power in his years of leadership in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

There’s a twist to the latest story. Not only was the religious leader hired by Host International Inc. to put in the fix with city officials, but he was paid with a share of revenues from Host’s LAX restaurants and bars. Bishop Brookins, this Bud’s for you.

As it turned out, the Plying Bishop was the wrong man for the job. Host International didn’t get the gift shop contract. But Brookins got paid, anyway.

This revelation was a sequel of sorts to a Saturday story, which reported that Brookins had received about $336,000 in city-approved loans to refurbish an office complex he secretly owned.

Now it might be argued that bringing Brookins into a discussion of the ethics ordinance is a cheap shot. The ethics law being before the council has nothing to do with the Brookins situation. There’s no evidence that Bradley tried to engineer a fix with his appointees on the Board of Airport Commissioners, which runs LAX.

Still, the episode aptly illustrates the cynical view that the local political establishment--public and private--has of ethics.

The final installment in this trilogy of political comedy has not been written, but here’s an unsolicited idea.

Forget ethics laws. There’s another solution. It was found in Sacramento by a tough federal prosecutor, U.S. Atty. David F. Levi, who is teaching the Legislature an ethics lesson it will never forget by merely enforcing the existing law.

In L.A., our prosecutors have been reluctant to do that, with the noteworthy exception of some U.S. attorneys who have gone after political corruption cases. Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner and his immediate predecessor, John K. Van de Kamp, have shied away from political corruption prosecutions, perhaps fearful of endangering their own political alliances. So has City Atty. James K. Hahn.

Levi, however, has been doing it the old-fashioned way. He assigned FBI agents to investigate persistent rumors of legislative corruption. They questioned suspects and witnesses, used informants, examined documents and presented their case to Levi. Levi filed charges and persuaded a jury of 12 Sacramento residents that Sen. Joseph B. Montoya was guilty of extortion and corruption. Now, he’s expected to go after some of Montoya’s legislative colleagues.

All the insiders, including us reporters, have always believed the legislators are smart enough to continue getting away with what everyone considers legal bribery. Levi knows better. He showed that there are enough laws on the books to enforce ethical political behavior if the prosecutor has the intelligence, courage and perseverance to use them.

And, in Sacramento anyway, no one seems to be laughing.