Ethics Law Becomes Hurdle to Aid Effort : Relief: Fair Political Practices Commission says Assembly members may have violated rules on gift limits by soliciting donations for quake victims.

As tens of thousands of frazzled earthquake victims wearily sought disaster assistance this week, attorneys for the state Fair Political Practices Commission met to confront a legal question stemming from the relief efforts.

It seems that two state legislators were on the verge of violating ethics rules by soliciting donations of food, blankets, diapers and other essentials and trucking them into the quake zone--in the process, making lawbreakers out of the lawmakers.

Although their cause was noble, the FPPC says, there’s a law against how they went about it. It’s called the state Political Reform Act.

Because Assemblywoman Julie Bornstein (D-Palm Desert) collected the goods and shipped them to Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) to distribute, that constituted “a bundling” of items valued at more than $270--a possible violation of gift limits for politicians, FPPC spokeswoman Jeanette Turvill said Friday.

“She solicits the contributions and then bundles them for Richard Katz to give them to Katz,” Turvill explained. “Then the gifts are not from the various persons they may have come from, but from Julie Bornstein. And that may be violating the gift limits.”

The ruling, made by FPPC attorneys Thursday, infuriated Katz.

“This is the kind of bureaucratic bungling that makes people shake their heads,” Katz said Friday while awaiting the arrival of three flatbed trucks Bornstein sent to the San Fernando Valley. “We have people out here who are cold, hungry and need shelter and we’re not going to let some nit-picking bureaucrat interfere with that. I just can’t believe they would be such idiots.”

Name-calling aside, Turvill said the FPPC, the state’s watchdog for influence peddling, is obliged to seriously examine any question put before it. And a Bornstein staff member just happened to be conscientious enough to ask the commission for an opinion.

Katz’s “situation was discussed by our attorneys,” Turvill said. “We’ve told them that if they are going to be soliciting donations, there’s a way to do it.”

It turns out the renegade legislators can escape an investigation, a potential $2,000 in fees and prosecution by either returning the goods or turning them over to a charitable organization within 30 days.

“He can’t grandstand and hand the bottled water out himself to citizens,” Turvill said, referring to the assemblyman. “It would have to go to the American Red Cross or similar groups.”

Katz said it was his plan all along to direct the trucks to a Red Cross shelter at Sylmar High School, the Salvation Army or wherever umbrella relief organizations wished.

At any rate, Turvill noted that if an investigation was launched, the legislators would probably get off easy. “One of the mitigating factors is the intent of the gifts and, in this case, that is to help the public take care of earthquake relief in L.A.”