Los Angeles City Elections

Los Angeles Ethics Commission Director Benjamin Bycel, in a self-righteous interview (Opinion, Jan. 24), defends a debatable public-funding mechanism for eliminating the advantage of incumbents in city elections and chooses the inflammatory route of complaining that we have the best legislators “that money can buy.” The mean-spirited tasteless slur can hardly disguise the high cost of an ineffectual ethics body--certainly not the best money can buy.

Bycel and his staff may be a luxury that we can ill-afford. Consider the costs of the failed defense of the onerous disclosure requirements when the city attorney’s advice on its unconstitutionality was ignored. This required the expense of private counsel for the city and it could easily have been avoided.

And was the inept blitzkrieg attack on the city attorney’s office, seizing records, computers and even books, a worthy effort? Were the resignations of commissioners and board members, and the difficulty in finding voluntary replacements worth the self-proclaimed “liberal” Bycel’s challenge to the Bill of Rights?

With the slate of mayoral candidates established, does anyone really believe that those who already have large campaign “war chests” can be challenged by public funding in this election? Given the budget crisis in this city, should the taxpayers continue to fund Bycel’s failed zealotry?

LAWRENCE KRUGER

West Los Angeles