A Watchdog Can’t Be a Pussycat

Watchdogs aren’t popular with the people they watch. But the voters of Los Angeles didn’t create the city Ethics Commission to fall in with the chummy business-as-usual crowd in City Hall. They voted to create the Ethics Commission to break up that club and remind the politicians of who the real bosses are supposed to be: the electorate.

So it shouldn’t cause any surprise that the Ethics Commission continues to come under attack by many politicians and lobbyists who have made careers (and in some cases, fortunes) by doing things the way they’ve always been done.

A lot of these folks never wanted the 1990 charter amendment that restricted gifts, honorariums and campaign contributions, called for public financing of political campaigns and created the Ethics Commission to enforce these new restrictions.

In its first high-profile case, the commission launched an investigation into allegations that employees were doing political campaign work while on the payroll of City Atty. James K. Hahn.

The commission, short on staff, brought the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office into what potentially was a felony investigation. Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner last week dropped the months-long probe, saying there was “no foundation for filing criminal charges.”

Hahn, never personally a focus of the investigation, has continued to vilify the commission, likening it to a “runaway freight train,” and to question the investigation’s tactics, which included using search warrants and grand jury subpoenas.

Attorneys for the accused in Hahn’s office argued that the commission had exceeded its authority; but the commission won a key victory when a state appellate court recently found that it had not only proceeded legally but had broad authority to pursue a wide range of allegations of government misconduct.

So that burr is still under the saddles of a lot of City Hall politicians and lobbyists. What most offends them, it seems, is the break with protocol. They want the commission to call first, cooperate, settle things quietly.

Reform makes many people uneasy. Too bad. Watchdogs are not supposed to make politicians and lobbyists comfortable. Only taxpayers.