Bradley’s Calls on Hotel Penalty Raise Concerns : City Hall: Former mayor makes inquiries in firm’s effort to avoid a tax penalty. He got no compensation, but some question the appearance that he was trying to use influence.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who is under a one-year prohibition on paid lobbying at City Hall, recently called two city officials about a Downtown hotel’s attempt to obtain a tax refund. Although he received no compensation, his actions have raised questions among government ethics experts.

Bradley, who retired July 1 after 20 years as mayor, called a city tax official and Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky in September in regard to a $62,373 penalty against the Hyatt Regency hotel for late payment of hotel occupancy taxes.

Bradley made the calls after a hotel industry association approached a member of his law firm and asked for help with the Hyatt’s ultimately unsuccessful effort to have the penalty overturned.

In the call to the councilman, Bradley did not specifically ask for the Hyatt’s penalty to be refunded, but he described a case in which he believed that another hotel had been given such a break, Yaroslavsky said.

Yaroslavsky defended the call by the former mayor--now a senior counselor with the Downtown law firm of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison--saying that Bradley was merely providing information. “It was not lobbying,” Yaroslavsky said.

A spokeswoman for Bradley’s firm said the Hyatt and the hotel association are not clients. She said she did not know why Bradley had contacted city officials. Bradley, through an aide, refused to comment on the matter.

The city’s voter-approved ethics law includes a “revolving door” provision that says: “No former elected city officer . . . shall, for any compensation, represent any person other than the city in connection with any matter pending before any city agency for one year after leaving city service.”

According to Hyatt officials and the law firm, Bradley was not working as a paid representative of the hotel. As a result, he does not appear to have violated the provision.

But two experts on government ethics criticized the former mayor for giving the appearance that he was trying to use the influence of his former office to alter decisions at City Hall.

Terry Cooper, a USC professor who studies ethical questions, said Bradley’s actions give “the troubling appearance of misconduct.” Cooper said ethics laws such as the city’s create a “moral minimum . . . but we expect more than minimal compliance with ethical standards.”

“If (Bradley and his firm) care about the city and encouraging and enhancing public trust in the government, they ought to bend over backward to keep Tom Bradley away from City Hall” until the one-year limit has passed, Cooper said.

Cecilia Gallardo, local government affairs director of California Common Cause, said Bradley’s phone calls violated the spirit of the one-year lobbying ban.

“The fundamental goal of any revolving door statute is to prevent former officials from abusing or appearing to abuse the power and status of public office for private gain,” Gallardo said. “Without this one-year cooling off period, there is the possibility of abusing the public trust.”

Gallardo added that Bradley’s actions are ironic because he championed the ethics law approved by voters in 1991.

The Hyatt case is apparently Bradley’s first contact with city government since the end of his 20-year reign at City Hall.

During his last years in office, questions were raised about the mayor’s use of his office, most notably when it was revealed that he was working as a paid adviser to a bank at the same time that he called the city treasurer’s office to discuss the bank’s deposits. After the call, $2 million in city money was deposited into Far East National Bank.

Bradley was never charged with a crime and he said that he hoped the 1991 closure of a federal investigation into his official conduct would put an end to the issue.

This summer, when Bradley moved to the Bunker Hill offices of one of the state’s largest law firms, it seemed that his work would keep him far from City Hall.

The firm announced that he would resolve disputes between major corporate clients and act as a “rainmaker”--a senior attorney who would promote new business for the firm. Brobeck, Phleger partners said Bradley would have an early focus on clients in the Far East, where the former mayor made numerous contacts after years of trade missions.

He got involved in the tax case at City Hall after a call from the head of a hotel industry trade organization, the Southern California Business Assn.

The group was concerned about the Hyatt’s tax dispute with the city. The hotel was due to pay $293,000 in transient occupancy taxes accumulated over the previous quarter. (Every hotel and motel in Los Angeles levies a 14% bed tax on its rooms and passes the money on to the city.)

The Hyatt said that its check had inadvertently been placed in the mail without a stamp. But city officials said that regardless of the reason, the money had arrived three days late and that the hotel would have to pay the $62,373 penalty.

Hyatt officials said they made numerous calls in an attempt to rectify the situation, including calls to Les Benson, who heads the hotel advocacy group. Benson said he asked an acquaintance from the Rotary Club to recommend lawyers who might handle the case. The fellow Rotarian was Ed Davis, a partner at Brobeck, Phleger, who in turn presented Benson with a list of several attorneys who might help, Benson recalled.

One name on the list was Bradley’s, so Benson said he called the former mayor. “I told Bradley to call the Hyatt and I told him what the problem was,” Benson said. “I’m not sure what happened after that.”

Benson said he did not recall when he contacted the former mayor. But on Sept. 1, the chief of the city’s Tax and Permit Division noted in a phone log that Bradley called to inquire about the Hyatt case. “He wanted to know if we had the case before us and what the status was,” said Donald J. DeBord, who received the call.

DeBord said Bradley did not discuss details of the case or try to influence the appeal.

Sometime later in the month, Bradley called Yaroslavsky, whose Budget and Finance Committee was scheduled to hear the Hyatt’s appeal for a refund of the penalty. Yaroslavsky said that in a short conversation, Bradley did not specifically ask that the tax penalty be refunded.

Instead, the former mayor told the councilman that he believed the city had once before waived a penalty assessment for another hotel that made a late tax payment.

“He was not lobbying for these guys,” Yaroslavsky said in defense of Bradley. “You know when you are being pressured to do something and he was not doing that. He was just calling to provide information. . . . And if I was making a decision based on inadequate information, I would want to know it.”

Don Henderson, the general manager of the Hyatt at the time of the tax dispute, said he had no idea that Bradley had called city officials about the issue. “I wish I had that much clout, but I don’t,” Henderson said.

Despite the former mayor’s phone calls, the Hyatt did not prevail.

Yaroslavsky said the previous case cited by Bradley involved strikingly different circumstances, in which a hotel had lost its tax records altogether. The Budget and Finance Committee last week rejected the hotel’s request for a refund and the full council is expected to validate that ruling next week.

Hyatt representatives said they have decided to drop the matter.

USC professor Cooper did not accept Yaroslavsky’s contention that Bradley was merely offering information--not lobbying.

“Talk to any lobbyist and they don’t describe their business as a blatant attempt to persuade,” Cooper said. “They all say they are making sincere efforts to educate public officials.”

Ben Bycel, executive director of the city Ethics Commission, declined to comment on the matter, saying he “does not respond to news stories.”

“No complaint has been filed,” Bycel said. “If a complaint is filed, we would investigate it, just as we investigate any other complaint.”