Liberals in the Role of Tough Cops

As is the case with all cops, Los Angeles city ethics commissioners must balance the law against individual freedoms.

This isn’t a problem for most law enforcement officers. Some of the best detectives aren’t especially bothered by invading a suspected drug dealer’s privacy or sweating a confession out of an accused murderer.

But it’s more difficult for L.A.’s ethics police. The Los Angeles Ethics Commission members tend to be liberal, as is the executive director, Ben Bycel.

Bycel is a lawyer and a civil libertarian. A former journalist, he is one of the few in City Hall who believe even reporters have rights. When he got the Ethics Commission job, he pledged a “no witch hunt” policy.

Now, Bycel and the ethics panel find themselves attacked as snoopers and vigilantes in two lawsuits that threaten the Ethics Commission’s power to fulfill its mandate of cleaning up corruption in City Hall.

The immediate threat comes from Charles Fuentes, a top aide to City Atty. Jim Hahn. Fuentes is a target of an investigation into whether city attorney staff members were illegally doing campaign work on city time. If proven, that could be a felony.

Fuentes sued to stop the Ethics Commission investigation. This week, the commission suffered a setback when Superior Court Judge Robert O’Brien ruled it had “limited misdemeanor investigative powers.” He said it lacked authority to investigate felonies. Only the district attorney, he said, can investigate and prosecute felonies.

Judge O’Brien said the commission tried to get around this by turning the case over to Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner. The D.A. then hired an Ethics Commission consultant, attorney David Alkire, as a special deputy D.A. to work on the investigation.

Judge O’Brien called the arrangement “confusing, misleading and procedurally untenable . . . (and of) questionable statutory authority.”

Attorney Robert Stern, who helped draft the original ethics law, said the judge was wrong. “The intent . . . of the ethics law was to authorize and direct the Ethics Commission to pursue investigations of complaints, wherever the investigation might lead,” he said. When you get a tip, he said, “you don’t know if it will be a felony, a misdemeanor, a civil action or what.”

Thus Judge O’Brien’s decision, if upheld on appeal, may limit the commission in future cases.

The second lawsuit is directed against the commission’s authority to require city officials to fully disclose their personal finances.

The challenge comes from Library Commission member Doug Ring, who is also one of City Hall’s highest-paid lawyer-lobbyists and the husband of Cindy Miscikowski, chief deputy to City Councilman Marvin Braude. The Ring family finances are subject to disclosure because of his Library Commission post and his wife’s job.

Ring charges that the ethics law’s stringent personal financial disclosure requirements intrude on his privacy. Ring objects to being required to “divulge to the public information describing their financial and personal affairs . . . in such detail as to compel them to forfeit their fundamental rights . . . to privacy.”

His lawsuit, filed last June, is awaiting judicial action.

The two suits are taking the law into uncharted territory.

Until the L.A. ethics law was approved by the voters in 1991, City Hall had a hands-off attitude toward the financial affairs of city officials, who were not required to disclose much of anything. And all through the building, aides used city time to work on the political campaigns of their bosses--and those of other politicians.

The law was loose, and enforcement--in the hands of the city attorney and the city clerk--was lax. Reporters would find out about venal--or at least outrageous--conduct. But no matter how shocking the disclosure, all that would result was an announcement by the city attorney or city clerk that he’d looked into it and nobody had done wrong.

Once created, the commission moved slowly. For example, it is just completing a long revision of the personal financial reporting regulations, easing some of the tougher requirements.

The investigation of Fuentes was a change of pace, featuring raids by about 20 D.A. investigators equipped with search warrants. Ethics Committee consultant Alkire was with them, helping the prosecution, advising where to look for damaging evidence. The raid was big news and Fuentes’ name was splashed all over town.

The commissioners had tried to balance the scales of justice. On one side were Fuentes’ rights. On the other was the need to impose law on City Hall’s ethical anarchy. This case shows that in the enforcement business--even when liberals are in charge--the scale tips toward law and order.