Council Blasts City’s Oversight of Contracts : City Hall: Two members call for mayor’s office to be stripped of responsibility. The awarding of business to politically connected minorities and women draws fire.

Two council members on Tuesday demanded that the city strip Mayor Tom Bradley’s office of all responsibility for overseeing a controversial program that has awarded millions of dollars in city contracts to politically connected minorities and women.

“I’m not willing to put any trust in overseeing this in the mayor’s office,” Councilwoman Joy Picus said. “That’s where the trouble is, where the problems are and where there is no integrity.”

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky also criticized part of a city audit that recommended strengthening the role of the mayor’s office in monitoring the minority business program. He said the recommendation was like sending the “fox to guard the chicken house.”

The attacks on the mayor’s office came during a meeting of the council’s Finance and Budget Committee and its review of the audit findings submitted by the city’s chief administrative officer. The audit was initiated last year following reports in The Times that concessionaires at Los Angeles International Airport paid $7.3 million to a group of prominent minorities and women for doing little or no work.

The contracts were awarded under the city’s minority and women business enterprise program, which was set up by Bradley in 1983 and monitored by his office. The audit found that the city awarded dozens of lucrative contracts to companies without verifying their status as minority- and women-owned firms or requiring any involvement in the business.

Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani said Tuesday that Bradley first suggested sweeping reforms in the program in mid-February when he proposed a single, independent office to certify and monitor the participation of minorities and women in city contracts. These changes include taking the oversight function of the program out of the mayor’s office, Fabiani said.

“The mayor has been out front on this issue for months with thorough and far-reaching proposals,” Fabiani said. “Councilwoman Picus’s off-the-cuff remarks are typically unhelpful.”

Under Wilfred Marshall, the mayor’s Office of Small Business Administration monitored the minority business program. Last year, Marshall said in an interview that his office was not to blame for the troubled program.

Yaroslavsky said in an interview Tuesday that, given the major problems with the city’s minority business program, “a finger can be pointed at the mayor’s office directly. I don’t think (Bradley) can get away from that.”

Bradley appointees on the Airport Commission awarded concessions contracts to a handful of politically influential figures instead of economically disadvantaged minorities and women. These included Bishop H. H. Brookins, the wife of House Ethics Committee Chairman Julian C. Dixon (D-Los Angeles), Bradley commissioners John Mack and Myrlie Evers and Eastside attorney Andy Camacho.

Brookins has received three other city contracts with the help of the mayor’s office, including a $336,000 renovation loan. On Sunday, The Times reported that Brookins was one of several influential black leaders who, since 1983, have owned a 20% share of a South-Central cable TV franchise without having any investment or involvement in the business. Cable analysts say the city-awarded franchise is worth at least $50 million.

City Councilman Michael Woo on Tuesday called for an investigation by the chief administrative officer into the cable-television deal.

Yaroslavsky said the city’s minority business program should be taken out of a political office such as the Bradley Administration or the City Council.

“It should be one stop removed, so the tinge of political favoritism and cronyism can be eliminated from the selection process,” he said.