CITY COUNCIL ELECTIONS 12TH DISTRICT : Questions of Unethical Conduct Bedevil Both Candidates : Bernson: Campaign contributions and a failure to support political reform have troubled his career.

Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson’s career has been clouded by questions about his ethical conduct, including the influence of campaign contributions on his voting record and his lack of support for ethics reform at City Hall.

It’s a record that makes political reformers uneasy. “I am not saying Hal Bernson is not ethical,” said Geoffrey Cowan, who chaired Mayor Tom Bradley’s ethics panel in 1989. “I just don’t have the confidence in him that I do in others.”

In fact, Cowan would rather place his trust in Los Angeles school board member Julie Korenstein, Bernson’s challenger in the 12th District race. Cowan has endorsed Korenstein, saying her election would bring “a breath of ethical fresh air” to City Hall.

Still, Bernson draws some grim comfort from the fact that while his campaign fund-raising and spending activities have been closely checked by authorities, he has never been formally accused of wrongdoing.

“Just about everybody has looked” at his campaign finances, but “we’ve absolutely gotten a clean bill of health” each time, Bernson said recently.

For example, the Fair Political Practices Commission, the state’s political watchdog agency, has conducted five inquiries into complaints of impropriety against Bernson. Each time the agency closed the cases without formal accusations, the commission’s records show.

But is the avoidance of actual legal accusations against him good enough? “Anybody can make charges,” Bernson replied testily.

One of the accusations of unethical--not illegal--behavior that has most bedeviled Bernson has been that his strong support for the huge Porter Ranch project was affected by his receipt of large political contributions from those involved in the project.

Bernson denies his vote was influenced by the money, and he says his critics have inflated the amount of money involved by unfairly including donations made, for example, by engineering firms that work not only for Porter Ranch but also for other developers with plans at City Hall.

A Times review of campaign records this year showed Bernson has received at least $26,000 since 1982 from the principals in the Porter Ranch project, including developer Nathan Shapell, their immediate relatives and companies they own.

Bernson said that to avoid an appearance of impropriety, he abstained for more than two years from taking political contributions from Porter Ranch interests while a blueprint for developing their land was under review at City Hall. With the exception of $500 from Liberty Building Co., a partner in the project, Bernson’s campaign reports confirm that he kept his vow. The Liberty money “slipped by us,” a Bernson aide said.

“I don’t like to take contributions from those who have got projects before us, especially if it’s something controversial,” Bernson said, explaining his decision. “I don’t have to prove anything to myself. I know my vote can’t be bought, but I don’t want it to appear that it can be, either.”

But could he recall those other examples when he rejected contributions from parties to a controversial project? “Not off the top of my head,” he said.

The 12th District lawmaker also has been dogged by a charge made by California Common Cause that he raised $180,000 in political funds for a “sham” 1994 race for lieutenant governor in order to secretly underwrite his council reelection drive with money raised from big contributors--all in apparent violation of a prohibition in city law against contributors giving more than $500 apiece to a council member.

An inquiry by the city attorney found no cause for formal charges.

Last October, as he prepared to run for reelection, Bernson disbanded his ill-starred lieutenant governor committee. “I don’t have any regrets” about the committee, Bernson said recently. “There was nothing wrong with me exploring other political possibilities.”

Bernson also came in for criticism after a 1990 Times study found the lawmaker had spent $120,622 of his campaign funds on travel during a three-year period, far more than anyone else on the 15-member council.

Among the trips was a 17-day excursion with his wife and three daughters in 1987 that included stops in Israel and Italy, where he stayed at luxury hotels, and a three-day trip to Hawaii with his wife, Robyn. All the trips were fact-finding missions with a governmental or legislative purpose and thus fell within the exceptions of a state law that bars personal use of campaign funds, Bernson has said. And to date, no public prosecutor has said otherwise.

Bernson’s junketeering prompted the Fair Political Practices Commission in 1988 to briefly question the legality of the lawmaker arranging for city-funded trips--costing taxpayers $2,759--through a Northridge travel agency where his wife worked. But the FPPC concluded that no conflict of interest violations were involved.

Bernson has been skeptical of the value of the political reforms enacted at City Hall in recent years.

“I think it has been overdone,” Bernson said recently of the reform movement. “I don’t see corruption as a problem in L.A. I don’t think you can buy a vote, a project or favorable zoning.”

In February, Bernson sided with a narrow council majority to block the hiring of former California Common Cause Executive Director Walter Zelman as the city’s top ethics enforcer by refusing to pay the veteran reformer the top salary recommended by the city’s Ethics Commission.

The vote was interpreted by some as a move to intimidate the new commission--one of whose toughest jobs will be to probe council members.