County Lobbying Law Ignored, Unenforced : Ethics: The ordinance requiring lobbyists to report their employers, their earnings and activities carries no civil penalties.

An 8-month-old ordinance requiring Los Angeles County lobbyists to document their activities and register with officials is not being enforced and many lobbyists are ignoring key provisions of the law, The Times has learned.

Enacted last July by the Board of Supervisors, the law was intended to shine the light of public scrutiny upon the highly paid men and women who work behind the scenes to influence the county’s elected and appointed officials.

The ordinance requires lobbyists to list how much they are paid, the companies and organizations they represent and the official actions they are attempting to influence.

Some lobbyists complied with the ordinance’s reporting provisions only after The Times began contacting them this month, after the Feb. 22 filing deadline.

Only 13 lobbyists or lobbying firms had reported earning any money for their services by the filing deadline. In all, the lobbyists reported earnings of just $190,969 during the last quarter.

By contrast, about 300 lobbyists reported quarterly earnings of more than $1.6 million to the city of Los Angeles, which has adopted a similar ordinance.

Breaking the county law carries no civil penalties; the city law does, and comes with an Ethics Commission staff prepared to enforce it.

Ruth Holton of the government watchdog group California Common Cause said the poor compliance means the county ordinance is weak and ineffective.

“It makes a farce of the law if people don’t reveal what their activities are,” Holton said. “If you don’t enforce it, people will ignore it.”

Some suggest that lobbyists are reluctant to disclose their activities because they are accustomed to operating in secrecy. Others say that full disclosure could embarrass special-interest clients--developers, waste management firms and other large corporations. And many lobbyists themselves say they just overlooked the requirement.

“I know a lot of people around town who don’t plan on filing at all,” said one lobbyist who did register. “I guess I’m an idiot if I have to waste my time doing paperwork that other people aren’t doing.”

Government watchdog groups say the county ordinance is one of the weakest lobbyist registration laws in the nation. Unlike other laws, the county ordinance does not require lobbyists to list gifts and campaign contributions, nor does it require any reporting from firms that hire lobbyists.

“The law doesn’t do very much and people are not even complying with what the law requires,” said Bob Stern, who drafted a state lobbying law in the mid-1970s. “It’s a weak law, weakly enforced.”

County officials acknowledge that employees simply collect the paperwork mandated bythe ordinance. The executive office of the Board of Supervisors files the documents, which include photos of the lobbyists. Steve Carnevale, the principal deputy county counsel who wrote the ordinance, fields questions from those seeking to register. Officials have no way of knowing if someone is breaking the law, Carnevale said.

Many agree with one lobbyist who said, “There has to be more action going on” than is being reported.

In addition to failure to register at all, many lobbyists are complying with only part of the law, a review of documents on file with the county shows.

Douglas Ring and Roger Van Wert, for example, registered with the county as lobbyists for BKK Corp., the Marina Two Holding Partnership and other firms. They did not file a quarterly earnings report, however, or list the government actions in which they represented their clients. Records show Van Wert has spoken at recent meetings of the Regional Planning Commission.

When contacted by The Times, Ring said he and Van Wert made a mistake.

“We made an error and we did not file our quarterly report,” Ring said. “We will correct that error. It slipped through the cracks.” Ring said he did not know how much the firm had earned during the last quarter.

Clark Davis and Alma Fitch registered as lobbyists for several firms, including Newfield Enterprises International, the Los Angeles representative of a billionaire Saudi Arabian businessman with long-term leases on county-owned Marina del Rey property. Newfield paid them $10,000 for their services.

Davis and Fitch said they performed “ongoing representation” for their clients, but failed to disclose which matters those clients had pending before the Board of Supervisors, the Regional Planning Commission and other county entities. Davis contended he was under no obligation to be more specific, and added that the reporting guidelines are unclear.

The financial disclosure statements of Robert Bush, one of the county’s highest-paid lobbyists, were not yet on file this week. Bush said he mailed the forms late Monday, missing the filing deadline by more than two weeks. No one at the county offices seemed to notice or mind very much, he said.

Apologizing for his tardiness, Bush said, “We just really didn’t understand how to report. It’s our fault. We just didn’t get our act together.”

Several well-known lobbyists did not file any county documents at all, including Gilbert Archuletta, a city-registered lobbyist working for the law firm of former City Councilman Arthur K. Snyder. Records show that Archuletta has appeared at recent meetings of the county’s Regional Planning Commission.

“I don’t think I’ve done sufficient work (at the county) to register,” Archuletta said. Asked to elaborate, Archuletta said his activities fell under a provision of the law exempting attorneys who represent clients on legal matters.

But Carnevale said the exemption does not apply to attorneys when they speak at public meetings. And sources close to county supervisors added that Archuletta’s recent contacts with officials were not limited to legal matters.

One official for a county employee union who routinely lobbies county officials said he did not bother registering because the law is never enforced and the penalty is so innocuous--scofflaws are prevented from speaking at public meetings only until they register.

In fact, no representative of any labor union had complied with the ordinance as of this week.

“If we did (have to register), I’m in trouble, because I don’t know about it,” said Richard Shumsky of the Los Angeles County Probation Department Union, Local 686.

An attorney at the county counsel’s office said trade union representatives must register if they attempt to “influence official action” by the Board of Supervisors or elected or appointed officials, something labor representatives do routinely.

“If we were notified by the county, we would probably register,” said Dan Savage of Service Employees International Union, Local 660.

Gerry Hertzberg, chief legislative deputy to Supervisor Gloria Molina, called the county’s lobbying ordinance “Swiss cheese.” Molina was the only supervisor to vote against the ordinance in July, saying it had been gutted of any enforcement provisions. Molina had proposed a much stronger ordinance--including tougher reporting requirements--but could find no support for the measure.

“Wimpy ethics,” said Hertzberg, “is no ethics at all.”

Times staff writers Jeff Rabin and Amy Pyle contributed to this report.