Law School Dean Will Direct City Ethics Panel : Government: The commission, created last June to enforce regulations on public officials, has been stalled by its search for a leader.

The Los Angeles Ethics Commission, off to a slow start when its search for a leader stalled, has selected a law school administrator as its first director.

Commission President Dennis Curtis said he hopes the appointment of Benjamin Bycel, to be announced at today’s commission meeting, will help the beleaguered unit enforce an ethics law approved by Los Angeles voters last year.

Bycel, the dean of the Santa Barbara-Ventura College of Law, was selected from a field of about 100 candidates after a six-month search, Curtis said Thursday. “He was the best qualified for the job,” said Curtis.

“We are a part-time commission, but the task of setting up a new ordinance and new policies and procedures is a full-time job,” said Commissioner Alice Walker Duff. “That is why we are so anxious for him to get started.”

The city commission was created last year to enforce a tough new set of regulations for city officials, including rigorous financial disclosure laws. But the commission has been troubled by delays in finding a director and staff and by attacks from some of the officials that it is supposed to regulate.

The commission’s first choice for director, Walter Zelman, rejected the job after the City Council voted to cut his starting pay from $90,000 a year to $76,254. Zelman, former head of California Common Cause, accused the council of trying to keep the commission “in check.”

Last month, a group of city officials and commissioners discussed lobbying the city or filing a lawsuit to reduce financial reporting requirements that the officials said are too onerous.

The 48-year-old Bycel, who heads the small private law school with campuses in Ventura and Santa Barbara, said he has followed the commission’s history and is not troubled by it.

“I like challenges,” he said. “That is why it is called public service.”

Bycel is a former Peace Corps volunteer, Democratic Party functionary and Sacramento legislative advocate for the American Civil Liberties Union. He has practiced law in Santa Barbara for 15 years.

Since taking over as dean and chief administrator of the law school in 1986, Bycel has continued his legal practice. The school, accredited by the State Bar but not approved by the American Bar Assn., has an enrollment of about 300 students. Roughly half of the students at the two campuses passed the Bar exam during Bycel’s tenure, about average for comparable schools, according to figures from the California Bar Assn.

Bycel described the college as a working people’s law school, without the cachet of Harvard or Yale, but with a record for producing some fine graduates.

“He has done an exceptional job,” said Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury. “He has a very good reputation in the legal community.”

Bycel is credited with pulling the school out of a scandal in which the state attorney general’s office filed a lawsuit involving the school’s former dean, who resigned after it was alleged that he took $50,000 in school money over his $30,000 annual salary.

Bycel was appointed by the state Bar to head the school. He said his appointment gave him experience in “time-bomb management, which is probably what I’m going to be getting into now (with the ethics appointment). It’s new dilemmas exploding every day.”

With the commission largely dormant for six months because of its lack of staff, Bycel said his first goal will be to have a staff and office procedures in place by July. He will start Monday.

The Ethics Commission was created by voters last June, through the passage of Proposition H, which included a 40% pay raise for City Council members.

Confusion and protests about the law’s financial disclosure requirements swept City Hall in February as about 1,500 employees were forced to report details of their holdings, such as the precise values of stocks and real estate, the names of their stock brokers and even the value of home improvements.

Without a staff, the commission has had difficulty fielding all the questions and complaints.

Bycel said he does not object to the salary reduction ordered by the City Council. He makes only a few hundred dollars more a year as head of the law school, according to his resume, but also lists an income from his private law practice of between $3,000 and $4,000 a month.

Bycel also is president of the Santa Barbara County Board of Education and ran unsuccessfully in 1986 for the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors.

He espoused a controlled-growth platform in the election, but at one time was a spokesman for actor Fess Parker, who proposed building a massive hotel and conference center near the beach in Santa Barbara.

Some slow-growth advocates criticized his work for Parker, whose Red Lion Inn has since been built. But others defended him.

“He looks at each project for its advantage instead of saying it’s good or bad without looking at the particulars,” said Santa Barbara County Supervisor Michael Stoker.

Bycel also served as legislative advocate from 1974 to 1976 for the American Civil Liberties Union in Sacramento. He drafted several bills and was a frequent contributor to several newspapers as a columnist.

The separated father of two said his 14-year-old daughter asked him, on his appointment to the commission, if he would receive free Lakers tickets.

“I told her, ‘No, we are still going to have to pay. That’s what ethics in government is all about,’ ” Bycel said with a laugh.