The Era of the Free Lunch Fades

Down City Hall’s dark second-floor hallway, where generations of fixers have prowled, the City Ethics Commission meets each Friday morning for intense discussions of right and wrong.

The lobbyists who roam these halls would smile at the debate. Their currency has consisted of Dodger tickets, seats on the 50 yard line at the Coliseum and in the orchestra at the Music Center; $100 dinners at Bernard’s or the Pacific Dining Car; overseas junkets and big speaking fees for even the most inarticulate council members.

Outraged at these manifestations of the political good life--and at revelations of Mayor Tom Bradley’s outside business interests--voters last year approved a charter amendment that restricted gifts, honorariums and campaign contributions, and instituted public financing of political campaigns. It also created the Ethics Commission to enforce the law.

The law turned out to be confusing and contradictory, largely because the council members who wrote the charter amendment wanted it to fail. They loved it to death, as legislators used to say, adding many unwieldy provisions in hopes of making the law unworkable.

But the charter amendment passed. And, after an initial period of hostility, the council is beginning to cooperate with the commission it created. “Four or five months ago, it looked like my next office would be a telephone booth in the City Hall Mall,” said Commission Executive Director Benjamin Bycel. “Things are getting much better.”

Friday, I sat in the back of Room 250B watching the commission discuss the longstanding “no-free-lunch” controversy.

It stems from the City Council’s tortured debate on the ethics law.

Originally, reformers proposed a law that would have permitted council members and other top officials to accept gifts of less than $50. The theory was that you can’t buy a vote with a lunch.

And those in charge of ethics law enforcement, not bogged down with reports of small gifts, would have more time to investigate big offenses.

It sounded reasonable during the debate. But Councilman Joel Wachs objected. Wachs is an art collector and he receives thousands of dollars worth of paintings each year from friends. The $50 limit would have prevented him from accepting the paintings.

So Wachs pushed through an amendment eliminating the limit. At the same time, not wanting to look anti-reform, he offered the council an offsetting provision, an absolute ban on receiving a gift from anyone doing business with the city.

No free lunch. No free cup of coffee.

The provision passed, and unfortunately has had the effect of reducing ethics enforcement to nit-picking.

Commission director Bycel, for example, told the commission how he went to lunch at The Times’ employee cafeteria with one of the paper’s reporters. The Times has dealings with City Hall, ranging from selling papers in City Hall to obtaining city permits. Aware of that, Bycel paid for his lunch.

Admirable, said the reporter, who nevertheless noted that the inexpensive food in the cafeteria is subsidized by the paper.

No free lunch, but a suspiciously cheap one.

One of the ethics commissioners, Ed Guthman, former Times national editor and now a USC journalism professor, replied that the no-free-lunch rule should be modified. Permit gifts of $25 or less, he said. Commissioner Billy Mills Jr., an attorney who unsuccessfully ran for City Council earlier this year, agreed.

No, said Vice Chairwoman Cynthia Ann Telles, a UCLA psychiatry professor, and Treesa Way Drury, a former radio reporter and now director of advertising standards for the American Assn. of Retired Persons. They agreed with ethics watchdog Lisa Foster of California Common Cause, who had told the commission: “There is simply no reason why a lobbyist should be purchasing coffee or anything else for city officials.”

As the four commissioners nit-picked their way through the argument, my attention drifted to the newspaper I’d brought along. By noon, it was time for my own lunch, and I left, thinking I’d wasted my time.

Later, when I returned to City Hall on another story, I revised my assessment. At that time of day, when it is practically deserted, the poorly lighted second-floor hallway has a real conspiratorial look.

A nice touch, I thought, that this hallway, so evocative of the shady past and present, is also where political life at City Hall is slowly, painfully and tediously changing.

Voter approval of the ethics law last year was a sign of the change. So was the electorate’s imposition of term limits on the Legislature.

The politicians are beginning to listen. The message is clear, delivered through the Ethics Commission. No more deals. No more season tickets at the Music Center or the Coliseum. The pols will have to dodge punches and beer with the rest of the Raiders fans.