City May Cut Budgets to Pay for Costs of Prop. H : Ethics package: Bradley, council must find $5 million to fund the program and the raises approved by voters.

City officials on Wednesday began searching for $5 million to pay for the ethics package and salary increases approved by the voters on Tuesday, and said the money may have to come from 1% budget cuts in most city departments. Although the money must be set aside now, it will be months, and in some cases years, before all of the far-ranging provisions of Proposition H take effect.

The ballot measure was approved Tuesday by a 56.67% to 43.32% vote, a margin that surprised many backers who feared that voters would balk at the entire measure because pay raises were attached.

“Just as we find money for every other high-priority item in this city’s budget, we will find the money to finance this program,” Mayor Tom Bradley said Wednesday. “The people have spoken and we are required by law now to find that money.”

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, chairman of the council’s Budget and Finance Committee, said Wednesday an attempt will be made to avoid cuts in the fire, police and sanitation department budgets, but the budgets of most other city departments will have to be tapped to fund the measure. Yaroslavsky had opposed the proposition, but said Wednesday he will work to have it implemented. Under the provisions of the measure, partial public financing of political campaigns and limits on campaign spending will first affect the 1993 election, but will not be in place for the municipal election next spring.

The new city ethics code contained in the package takes effect next Jan. 1, but officials will have at least six months after that before they have to file the thorough new financial disclosure statements required by Proposition H. The total ban on outside jobs for elected officials also begins in January.

But pay raises that City Council members inserted in the package for themselves, the mayor and other city officials take effect as soon as the election results are certified by the secretary of state, a process that is expected to take about 30 days.

The pay raises will cost the city $213,000 in the coming fiscal year and $426,000 the following year. Council members will get 40% pay increases, raising their salaries to $86,157, the level of Municipal Court judges. In the future, their pay rates will be tied to those of Municipal Court judges. The mayor will get a 9.2% pay raise, making his salary $112,004, 30% higher than Municipal Court judges’ pay. His pay also will rise according to the judges’ rate.

Bradley said last February that he would give his raise to charity, but on Wednesday he appeared to hedge on the offer. Asked at a press conference whether he would accept the raise, Bradley did not answer, but said he would review the matter.

Drafters of the package said Wednesday that the composition of the new city Ethics Commission authorized by Proposition H is the key to making the reforms work. The five-member board, which will determine how the law is implemented and enforced, is to be in place by July 1.

The challenge will be assembling an aggressive panel that will be free of compromising political or business ties to City Hall, backers said.

“This kind of victory is not self-enforcing,” said Geoffrey Cowan, the head of the citizens commission that helped draft the measure. “The next job is to get the right people . . . to make sure it is implemented and enforced as aggressively as this law deserves.”

Art Snyder, an influential lobbyist and former city councilman, warned Wednesday that the commission could hurt local government.

“It just comes down to what kind of attitude is going to be expressed by the ethics commission,” Snyder said. “If it turns out to be an inquisition, they can certainly burn politicians at the stake. . . . If we do enough of this, no competent person will run for office in the city of Los Angeles.”

Bradley will appoint its president and another member, and one member each will be appointed by City Atty. James K. Hahn, City Controller Rick Tuttle and City Council President John Ferraro.

Ferraro was out of town Wednesday and the others said they had not decided on their appointees.

But proponents of the measure and knowledgeable city officials said potential appointees include Michael Josephson, who runs a nonprofit ethics institute in Marina del Rey; Walter Zelman, a former state Common Cause executive director who lost a bid Tuesday for state insurance commissioner; and Cruz Reynoso, a former state Supreme Court justice.

Other possible nominees are Herbert Alexander, director of USC’s Citizens’ Research Foundation and a campaign finance consultant; Tracy Westen, executive director of the nonprofit California Commission of Campaign Finance; Occidental College President John Slaughter; and Ignacio Lozano, editor of the Spanish language La Opinion newspaper.

Among those who legally cannot serve are Cowan and other members of the ethics panel that drafted Proposition H.