Inquiry Into Bradley’s Acts Ended by Ethics Commission

The Los Angeles City Ethics Commission has closed its inquiry into former Mayor Tom Bradley’s conversations with two city officials about a hotel’s tax bill while he was under a one-year lobbying prohibition.

Mimi Strauss, the Ethics Commission’s chief of enforcement, declined Monday to say why the case was closed. But sources familiar with the matter said officials concluded that Bradley did not violate the city’s ethics laws because he was not being paid when he contacted the officials.

The so-called “revolving door” provision in the city’s ethics law prohibits paid lobbying by elected officials for one year after they leave City Hall.

The Bradley case arose last month when The Times reported that the former mayor in September had called a city tax official and City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky to discuss a $62,373 bill owed by the Hyatt Regency hotel for a late tax payment. Bradley was two months out of office at the time.

Yaroslavsky had said the former mayor had suggested that another hotel in the same fix had a late-tax penalty waived. The Hyatt’s attempt to have the penalty waived failed, after Yaroslavsky concluded that the case cited by Bradley was not similar to the Hyatt’s.

Two ethics experts contacted by The Times said they believed that the phone calls by Bradley violated the spirit of the revolving door policy, even if they were made without compensation.

Bradley has declined to comment on the matter. But in a letter to the Ethics Commission, he said he made the phone calls out of “personal curiosity.”

Bradley said he represents neither the Hyatt nor a hotel trade association that was involved in the matter.

It caused him “great frustration” that the commission had asked him about the “unfounded scandal,” simply because of an article in The Times, Bradley wrote.