L.B. Council Refuses to Put Ethics Package on Ballot

The City Council this week rejected a ballot proposal to create a local ethics commission to investigate allegations of improprieties against elected officials and other city employees.

The measure would also have established public funding for political campaigns and given the five-member ethics panel the power to raise the pay of local officials.

In a heated meeting Tuesday that was marked by confusion and sideline negotiations, the council voted against sending the proposal to the voters in November. Council members, meeting as the Charter Amendment Committee, voted 7 to 2 to refer the ethics package to the council’s Legislative Committee for further work.

“In effect, that killed it,” said Councilman Evan Anderson Braude, who supported the proposal. “The deadline to get it on the November ballot is Aug. 10.”

Braude said after the council meeting: “Obviously, I’m disappointed. When will we deal with the concerns of our citizens about campaign reform?”

Activist Bob Roxby chided the council, urging members to “stop acting like a bunch of politicians trying to keep your jobs.”

Roxby said residents are “mad enough” to approve a ballot initiative on the issue.

But Councilman Les Robbins echoed the concerns of opponents when he said, “We’re sitting here with a proposal that no one knows how much it will cost.”

City officials estimated that the proposal would cost the city about $500,000 annually. But Robbins and others predicted that outside attorneys would have to be hired--at $150 an hour--raising the costs significantly.

Councilman Warren Harwood said: “A tax-poor community that can’t afford to put cops on the street can’t afford this. We’re not anti-ethics. We’re practical people who have to deal with the problems of this city.”

Harwood also described the proposal as a back-door attempt to give the council a pay raise. Last June, voters rejected a proposal to double salaries for the part-time council to about $35,000 a year.

Opponents also questioned whether the measure’s public-financing provision could withstand a court challenge.

On the same day that the council debated the issue, Los Angeles City Councilman Ernani Bernardi and others sued to block implementation of the finance provisions of a recently adopted ethics package in Los Angeles. They argued that public financing of campaigns is prohibited under 1988’s Proposition 73 campaign measure.

The Long Beach measure rejected Tuesday was partly modeled after Proposition H, the ethics package that Los Angeles voters approved in June.

The Long Beach ethics package would have created an ethics committee with subpoena powers and the authority to enforce conflict-of-interest and campaign regulations. It would also have limited individual contributions to $750 per candidate during each election and allowed for public campaign funding, although it did not specify amounts.

The measure’s fate seemed unsure throughout most of the meeting, where it became apparent that council members Braude, Wallace Edgerton, Tom Clark and Clarence Smith supported it, while council members Harwood, Robbins, Doug Drummond and Jeff Kellogg opposed it.

Councilman Ray Grabinski held the key swing vote. During a series of straw polls, which are rare during council meetings, Grabinski indicated that he supported the measure. But as the meeting continued and it became clear that his vote was not firm, council members continually left their seats to argue among themselves, sometimes angrily.

After one five-minute recess, Braude suggested delaying action for a week to discuss the measure with the city’s unions, because the proposal would affect all employees.

Edgerton objected, saying: “I will not be here on Monday. . . . We’re playing games. Everybody knows where they’re coming from.”

Grabinski, telling why he finally decided to oppose the measure, told his colleagues: “I didn’t think it was a great idea for us to snap because Los Angeles has or presumes it has (an ethics) problem.”

During the meeting, Mayor Ernie Kell also suggested that his veto power be strengthened as part of the ethics package. Several council members said that Kell had been lobbying for stronger veto power.

“Everybody had an agenda,” Robbins said Wednesday. “Evan wanted his ethics commission. Tom wanted his public financing. Wally wanted a pay raise, and Ernie wanted a veto.”