CRA Chief Can Avoid City Ethics Disclosure : Government: Agency’s top administrators are not required to file expanded financial reports because of loophole in law. City attorney rules the officials are exempt.

The new ethics ordinance passed by Los Angeles voters, touted as the toughest in the nation, allows the controversial chief of the Community Redevelopment Agency and his top administrators to avoid filing expanded financial reports disclosing their personal assets, The Times has learned.

Several City Council members said Tuesday that they are shocked by the loophole in the ethics law, and the mayor’s office scrambled to force the redevelopment agency to follow the same ethics requirements as the rest of the city.

“If there’s any agency (where officials) need to disclose those kinds of interests, it’s the people operating the CRA,” said Councilwoman Gloria Molina. She cited reports that outgoing CRA chief John Tuite, who was awarded a $1.7-million contract buyout that was widely criticized by the council, once had business ties to a redevelopment project that is the focus of an ongoing political corruption probe.

The first of hundreds of detailed new reports on the personal finances of top city officials also were released Tuesday as the controversy over the confusing and inconsistent application of the new ethics code continued to grow.

Several City Council members said Tuite and other redevelopment agency officials were supposed to be covered by Proposition H, the ethics measure approved by voters last year and designed to prevent conflicts of interest by city officials.

But Tuite said in an interview Tuesday that the city attorney’s office ruled that CRA administrators were exempt.

“I don’t have any reason to hide anything,” Tuite said. “I’ve disclosed all of this stuff for many, many years.”

Vallee Bunting, a spokeswoman for Mayor Tom Bradley, said Tuesday that the mayor did not agree with the city attorney’s ruling and that he has recommended the agency adopt its own “parallel” statute.

Earlier Tuesday, Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores introduced a motion to review all high-level management positions that were excluded by the ethics ordinance.

Financial disclosure forms reviewed by The Times show a broad range of personal financial transactions by city officials in detail not previously available to the public. For example, Mayor Tom Bradley’s chief deputy, Mark Fabiani, reported receiving a $17,000 student loan in addition to his $98,000 salary.

By contrast, Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, who earns a salary of $168,793 a year, listed a dozen stock market investments last year, records show. He put $22,000 into software manufacturer Oracle Systems Corp., a stock he repeatedly bought and sold throughout the year. Shares of Oracle also were purchased by Bradley in January, 1989, and sold the next month.

In another case, Gates invested $1,000 in Growth Fund Spain, a stock that he sold two days after he bought it. An even quicker deal was the $1,000 in common stock he bought and sold on the same day in Integrated Systems Inc., a software manufacturer. Gates was not required to state whether he profited or lost money on any single transaction.

The new city law significantly increased the personal financial data that public officials have been required to disclose for years to the state Fair Political Practices Commission. The new information includes real estate holdings and loans held outside the city, precise values of investments, improvements made on personal residences and details of income earned by spouses and dependent children.

About 1,500 of the city’s 45,000 employees covered by the disclosure law were required to submit the new forms last week. Bradley and other elected officials have until April to file the reports.

A review of forms filed in the city clerk’s office shows that most council staffers have few or no investments. Of the 14 aides to Councilman Robert Farrell, for example, only one listed property or stocks.

Robert Gay, a council deputy in the 9th District who is running for the seat made vacant by the death of Councilman Gilbert Lindsay, is among many staffers who listed no reportable interests.

Over the past week, many city employees swamped the city attorney’s office and city clerk with questions over who was supposed to file and the kinds of detailed information required. The new part-time Ethics Commission charged with enforcing the laws still has no executive director or staff to offer guidance and gather the forms.

Indicative of the confusion at City Hall was the conflicting accounts provided by city departments over whether the new forms due last Friday were public records. While agencies such as the police and airport departments balked before making the records available Tuesday, a Harbor Department official said the forms of nine port officials were not yet ready for release. These officials include Port Executive Director Ezunial Burts, who said his forms were not finished. “It was not done properly, apparently,” Burts said.

Meanwhile, the chief executive of the CRA said he has no plans to comply with the city’s stringent reporting standards.

“I didn’t make the law and I didn’t apply it,” Tuite said. “All I do is follow it.”

The city attorney’s office ruled that the CRA--although its commission is appointed by the mayor and its decisions reviewed by the City Council--is an agency created by the state and therefore the ethics ordinance does not apply to its officers or employees.

“The ordinance applies to officers and employees of the city,” said Assistant City Atty. Anthony Alperin. “That is why they get out of doing this.”

However, one legal source familiar with the city attorney’s opinion said CRA officials could impose the ethics requirements on themselves as requested by Bradley. But it is doubtful that the City Council could force such a change, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The head of the citizens panel that drafted the law and pushed for the independent Ethics Commission said he was unaware that the city attorney’s office considered CRA officials exempt from the ethics law.

“We intended to cover the CRA,” said Geoff Cowan, who was appointed by Bradley. “If anyone had suggested a way of covering the CRA that went beyond the proposals in our package, we would have favored it.”

Flores said that a top-level administrator such as Tuite has to be included under the disclosure law.

“There’s going to be adjustments that need to be made,” she said.

Times staff writers Rich Connell, Greg Krikorian, Richard A. Serrano, Mark A. Stein and Tracy Wood also contributed to this article.