Appointees of Bradley Were Fund-Raisers Too : Mayor: In possible conflict of interest, commissioners raised money from those doing business with the city.

Several of Mayor Tom Bradley’s appointees helped raise Bradley political contributions from contractors and others with business before their city commissions, according to previously undisclosed campaign records.

State conflict-of-interest law prohibits commissioners from soliciting donations of $250 or more from anyone seeking their agencies’ approval.

But Bradley campaign records obtained by The Times under a court order reveal apparent conflicts of interest by several key commissioners who doubled as mayoral fund-raisers during the last five years:

--The planning commission president held a fund-raiser at his home that yielded at least $5,000 from development interests and lobbyists, several of whom had controversial building projects before the commission.

--Two city airport commissioners held campaign events in their homes that produced nearly $10,000 from airport contractors, airlines and others with business matters before their agency.

--During a fund-raiser at the home of the library commission president, a $1,000 donation was given by a developer seeking rights to a piece of the historic Central Library site.

In each case, Bradley campaign officials usually gathered checks from contributors. But current and former state Fair Political Practices Commission officials said that appointees are in effect soliciting contributions when they lend their names and homes to a fund-raising event.

In interviews, the commissioners said they did not intentionally violate any laws and that the contributions did not affect their votes on contracts and other matters of importance to Bradley’s financial backers.

Several commissioners blamed Bradley’s city and campaign aides for putting them in positions of potential conflict by inviting developers and other special interests to fund-raising events.

Bradley declined to be interviewed about the fund-raising activities of his commissioners. But Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani said “the mayor has made every effort to make the rules clear.”

Each commissioner was given a copy of a city attorney memorandum outlining fund-raising restrictions that apply to commissioners and listing the most frequently asked questions about the conflict-of-interest law, Fabiani said.

Commissioners are appointed by the mayor. Members of the most powerful commissions--such as the Planning Commission, the Airport Commission and the Community Redevelopment Agency--often vote on multimillion-dollar projects and contracts, although their decisions can be appealed to the City Council.

Since 1983, state law has prohibited members of local boards and commissions from soliciting or collecting campaign donations--for themselves or anyone else--from contractors, lawyers, lobbyists and others with business pending before their agencies. The law is an outgrowth of a major fund-raising scandal involving developers and the California Coastal Commission. Violations can lead to fines or criminal charges.

But criminal prosecutions are rare, and FPPC officials could not recall an instance in which a commissioner was charged after staging a prohibited fund-raiser at his or her home. “We’ve never received a complaint about it,” said a FPPC spokeswoman.

The statute is intended to reduce potential conflicts of interest and public concerns that “those people who contribute will receive favors and be rewarded,” said Ruth Holton, a spokeswoman for California Common Cause, a citizens lobby that has pushed for political reforms.

Alleged conflicts of interest have dogged Bradley and his Administration for the last 18 months. He was criticized last year by City Atty. James Hahn for showing what Hahn called an “indifference” to ethical concerns by entwining his personal finances and official conduct.

In addition, the mayor’s campaign finances and other matters currently are under investigation by federal, state and local authorities.

City voters approved sweeping ethics reforms last June following disclosures of alleged conflicts of interest, cronyism and campaign irregularities in the Bradley Administration. But the new laws do not go significantly beyond state laws regulating fund-raising by appointees.

The fund-raising by key commissioners was revealed in tens of thousands of memos, checks, ledgers and other Bradley campaign documents. The Times filed suit to obtain the documents after the city refused the newspaper’s California Public Records Act request to see them. In March, Superior Court Judge David P. Yaffe ordered officials to release the records, which were in the city clerk’s office for a routine audit .

The documents offer a rare, inside look at the connections between appointed members of the Bradley Administration and his campaign contributors. They also call into question the adequacy of current controls over fund-raising by city commissioners and the reporting requirements.

Unlike contribution reports required by the state since 1974, Bradley’s internal records in many cases indicated who collected donations or held fund-raising events--information that helps identify potential conflicts of interest.

Bradley raised more than $10 million in political donations from 1985 to 1989, the bulk of it for his unsuccessful 1986 governor’s race. Records show that at least $350,000 of the money was raised by about 20 members of key city commissions, mostly through private fund-raising events that included city contractors and other special interests.

The Times tracked the votes and fund-raising activity of several commissioners whose campaign events raised conflict-of-interest questions.

While Dan Garcia was president of the Planning Commission, for example, he held a 1986 political fund-raiser for Bradley at his home. Ten city lobbyists and developers attended or contributed to the event while at least half of them had controversial projects pending before Garcia’s panel. Records show that the mayor and other planning commissioners also attended.

At the time, residents in Garcia’s own Mt. Washington neighborhood were peppering the Planning Commission with dozens of letters protesting a proposed condominium project nearby. Records show that the condominium developer, D & D Development, and its lobbying firm gave $750 through Garcia’s event--part of nearly $6,000 in donations made by the two firms since 1985.

Paul Cook, president of the C. W. Cook Co., the engineering/lobbying firm pushing the condominium project, said he went to the fund-raiser “to be in the right place and get to know Dan Garcia. . . . I thought it was a unique opportunity.”

Neighborhood leaders said they had no idea that Garcia held the fund-raiser, or that contributors included the developer. “We had no inkling,” said Mt. Washington activist Lucille Lemmon. “. . .We would have been pretty mad.”

The condominium project bogged down in the Planning Department. But records show that less than a year after his fund-raiser, Garcia voted to allow another Cook client to build extra units on a San Fernando Valley apartment development opposed by neighbors and Councilman Joel Wachs.

Other contributors to Garcia’s event also had commission business.

Engineering Technology Inc., a leading city lobbying firm, contributed $1,000, as did Taxpayers for Responsible Government, a political action committee that drew most of its money from Engineering Technology, records show.

Just two weeks before his fund-raiser, Garcia voted for an Engineering Technology client’s 22-unit hillside subdivision near Pasadena that had run into neighborhood opposition. Less than a year later, records also show, Garcia voted for another hotly contested Engineering Technology project, a Westside office building near La Cienega Boulevard and Burton Way.

ETI President Thomas Stemnock did not respond to several requests for an interview. Elaine Wior--who signed ETI’s contribution check as an employee and the Taxpayers for Responsible Government check as treasurer--said she did not recall the reasons contributions were made.

George Milhsten, a lawyer who represents several major city developers, wrote a $250 check for Garcia’s event.

The day of his fund-raiser, Garcia introduced a planning commission ordinance that would exempt certain areas from proposed controls on commercial development. Some of Milhsten’s clients could have benefited from the ordinance, and he lobbied on it. “Sure, we were heavily involved in the (Garcia-backed) ordinance,” he told The Times.

Garcia, a lawyer and now a City Hall lobbyist, denied doing anything improper or knowingly violating the law. He said there was no link between his fund-raiser and his commission votes, adding he did not keep track of which projects lobbyists were promoting.

“My reputation for neutrality and objectivity . . . is well established,” said Garcia, who was appointed by Bradley to the Police Commission last month.

Garcia said he asked some guests to attend the fund-raiser, but added that Bradley aides probably added most of the lobbyists to the list.

“We don’t see a violation,” said Garcia’s attorney, Chris Funk, who briefly served as an FPPC special counsel in 1975.

Funk said that at the time of the Garcia event, there was no legal guideline suggesting that merely holding a fund-raiser would violate the law.

Funk’s former boss, Bob Stern, who served as general counsel to the FPPC from 1975 through 1983, disagreed. “It seems to me . . . if you’re on the invitation and it’s your house, you are soliciting (contributions),” he said.

“The (1983) law is intended to eliminate soliciting contributions by commissioners in any way from people who have decisions pending before their agency, and that includes at their homes,” said Stern, who helped shepherd the law through the Legislature.

In a 1986 advisory opinion, the FPPC said that a commissioner who uses his or her name and home for a fund-raising event “acts as the agent” of the candidate and is soliciting donations.

Spokeswoman Sandra Michioku reiterated last week that any government appointee “engages in a solicitation for a contribution if the official uses his or her house for a fund-raising event.”

“The law does not say that ignorance is a defense,” she added.

Fund-raisers held by commissioners and other city officials created a perception that contributions are necessary to do business in Los Angeles, according to several businesses who contributed to Bradley events.

“We never want to do business in the city of Los Angeles again,” said Camille Courtney, an executive of Brea-based D & D Development. “Anybody who even shows their face in City Hall gets an invitation.”

Courtney’s firm contributed $4,000 to Bradley during a recent two-year period while it was pushing the controversial, 80-unit Mt. Washington condominium project. Records show the total included $500 given through Garcia’s reception while the project was awaiting a vote by the planning commission.

Several developers and lobbyists with city business dealings echoed Courtney’s complaint, but asked that their names not be used out of fear of reprisal by city officials.

One developer said he has been asked for donations by at least three Bradley commissioners and gives largely out of fear. “I don’t want my name on a (non-contributors) list so they go out of their way to be nasty,” he said.

“People are afraid to say no,” added a veteran City Hall lobbyist, who also has been asked to commissioners’ events. “The whole system stinks.”

Even some commissioners who did fund-raising for Bradley expressed concern about the appearance of conflicts and the legal pitfalls. “Frankly . . . I wish I wouldn’t have had anything to do with it,” said Garcia, when asked about potential conflicts of interest. “It would be better if there was a clear prohibition (on commissioner fund-raising) than these crazy rules.”

The rules, embodied in the state Political Reform Act, prohibit commissioners from raising contributions of $250 or more from those with matters before them.

One commissioner who has lent his name and home to Bradley fund-raising events is attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., a Bradley appointee to the city airport commission.

Cochran raised several thousand dollars from individuals who benefited from a controversial program to increase minority business opportunities at the airport, records show.

During the last five years, Bradley has received nearly $50,000 from Concessions International--a minority-owned LAX cafeteria contractor--and from company executives who also received lucrative gift shop concession contracts, records show.

In June, 1985, Herman Russell, chairman of Atlanta-based Concessions International, sent Bradley a $2,500 company contribution by way of Cochran’s law office, records show. At the time, a plan was pending to substantially boost the firm’s share of the LAX food and bar business--an action personally endorsed by Bradley two years earlier.

Less than three months after the donation, city records show, Cochran voted to assign Concessions International the entire, new Bradley International Terminal, a nearly tenfold increase in the size of the firm’s LAX food operations.

Within a year of the contribution, Cochran also voted on a separate agreement assigning Russell and two other principals in Concessions International shares of the airport gift shop business.

Officials at Concessions International did not respond to several requests for interviews.

In 1988, when Bradley was gearing up for his fifth campaign for mayor, Cochran held a fund-raising brunch at his home that included the mayor, longtime supporters and city business interests. This time, records indicate, $3,000 was donated by Concessions International and other individuals with interests in airport concessions contracts.

A $1,000 donation was given by Rep. Julian Dixon (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Ethics Committee, whose wife, Betty, is a minority partner in airport gift shops.

And $1,000 more came to Bradley from California Co-Composting Systems. At the time of Cochran’s brunch, the firm had pending before the Airport Commission an environmentally sensitive plan to compost trash and sewage sludge on vacant airport property.

Joaquin Acosta, the firm’s chairman, said he received a letter from Bradley inviting him to the Cochran brunch.

“My company was trying to do business in the city of Los Angeles at the time,” he said. “We thought it was a normal request.” In the face of opposition from homeowners and city officials, Acosta later took his multimillion-dollar plan to another city.

Cochran said that Concessions International was on a longstanding list of potential donors he and his wife use to raise money for Bradley. But he said that he “never knowingly solicited anyone who has a matter before my commission.”

The commissioner said that the 1985 Russell contribution had nothing to do with subsequent decisions on concession contracts. He said some guests were invited to his fund-raisers by mayoral aides.

Another airport commissioner also raised money for Bradley. Two airlines--Flying Tiger Lines and Federal Express--contributed $2,000 each through a fund-raiser at the home of then-commissioner Maria Hummer in June, 1986, records show.

Flying Tiger Line had an agreement for construction of a pipeline at LAX pending before the commission. Federal Express had just won permission from Hummer and other airport commissioners to build a $2-million package-handling facility at Ontario International airport on city-owned land.

Federal Express was invited to Hummer’s fund-raiser by one of Hummer’s law partners, Bradley political adviser Mickey Kantor, according to Federal Express spokesman Doug Buttery.

Under state law, Hummer’s vote on the Federal Express development was legal because the contribution came from an employee political action committee, not the company. However, the donation by Flying Tiger Line, which Hummer’s law firm represented, was made by the corporation that was seeking the pipeline lease and is thus legally questionable.

Hummer said “it never crossed my mind” that there might be a conflict of interest involving her fund-raiser and denied she broke any laws. Although she said she could not recall whether the airlines attended the event or contributed to Bradley, she said she was certain that she did not solicit their contributions. “I was always very careful. . . . I would not ask someone with a connection to the commission,” she said.

Hummer’s law partner, Kantor, said that he probably solicited the Federal Express and Flying Tiger contributions.

Most of the 14 current and former commissioners interviewed by The Times said they were not pressured to raise money, and did so only because they believed in and supported Bradley.

But a few said hints were dropped around campaign time that help was needed. “They don’t want you to lick envelopes,” said one former commissioner who raised money. “They want dough.”

One major Bradley fund-raiser and contributor has been developer Ronald Lushing, who served as the city’s Library Commission president for five years before switching to the Harbor Commission last year.

Records show that in 1986 Lushing, while serving as finance chairman of Bradley’s gubernatorial campaign, opened his Westside hilltop home for a St. Patrick’s Day dinner that brought in at least $60,000--about $20,000 of it from city development interests. Among them were developers of the 535 South Grand Project, a luxury hotel that needed an easement across part of the historic downtown Central Library site. The hotel’s representatives were in continuing negotiations at the time with Lushing and other library officials to purchase the easement.

The firm contributed $1,000 by way of Lushing’s event, records show, and gave Bradley an additional $3,500 two months later.

William Wilkinson, an executive with the hotel firm, said the Lushing dinner offered a chance to improve political contacts, especially with Bradley. He said he chatted with Lushing and the mayor.

“As a businessman, you want to get a phone call answered. . . . We wanted an opportunity to make friends with the mayor. It would be important in our business to make sure he looked favorably upon us,” he said.

About 18 months after the donations, Lushing voted for a compromise agreement to sell the easement to the hotel developers for $450,000, records show.

Lushing said he sought the best deal possible for the city on the hotel easement rights.

Lushing said he did not directly solicit contributions and therefore did nothing improper. Bradley campaign staff issued invitations to the dinner, he said, adding, “I was merely a facilitator as to a place to hold the party.”

Fund-Raising Activities By Bradley Commissioners

The Mayor’s Commissioners Some of Mayor Tom Bradley’s appointees to powerful city commissions have helped him raise well over $350,000 in political donations in the past five years, newly obtained campaign records reveal. Some of the appointees may have run afoul of state anti-favoritism laws by holding fund-raisers that included lobbyists, developers and contractors who had business with their agencies. Daniel Garcia Former Planning Commission president was host to lobbyists for developers at fund-raiser at his home. Johnnie Cochran Airport commissioner held fund-raisers in his home that included interests seeking business at LAX. Maria Hummmer Former airport commissioner held fund-raiser in her home that brought in donations from airlines. Ronald Lushing Former Library Commission president’s fund-raiser included developer negotiating for right to use part of historic Central Library site. Dollie Chapman Community Redevelopment Agency commissioner was hired to redecorate mayor’s office and paid with campaign donations from her agency’s insurance contractor.

The Law Statutes lay out the following requirements regarding fund-raising activities by appointed officials: * Appointees to state and local boards and commissions are prohibited from soliciting, accepting or directing contributions of $250 or more from those with permits, leases and contracts pending before their agencies. * The ban includes contributions by lobbyists and lawyers representing such parties and extends three months after a final decision is rendered. * Commissioners who allow their homes and names to be used in connection with a fund-raising event are considered to be soliciting contributions, according t the state Fair Political Practices Commission. * Violations can lead to state fines of $2,000 per incident. In serious cases, civil penalities of $10,000 can be sought and criminal charges filed. There is a four-year statue of limitations.

The path of a campaign contribution The Timing: When contribution was made, airport records show, a proposal was pending to substantially increase Concessions International’s LAX business. Less than three months later, Cochran voted to approve the proposal. The Connection: The contribution was addressed to Cochran’s law office at the request of Herman Russell, Concessions International president. Less than a year later, Cochran voted for a contract that gave Russell, as an individual, a share of LAX gift shop business. The Pipeline: Donation was forwarded to Bradley’s fund-raising chief, Maureen Kindel, then president of the city Public Works Commission, and on to Jules Glazer, Bradley’s campaign accountant, for deposit. The Check: Donation came from the corporation, Concessions International, and check bears the signature of Herman Russell.