Legislative Sleight of Hand Suspends Lobbyist Measure

I’ve been intrigued by the bottomless bag of tricks the Los Angeles City Council has used over the past 20 months to kill a lobbyist control law.

With chief magician Richard Alatorre orchestrating the show, the council, through its Rules and Elections Committee, has been highly imaginative in its efforts to prevent increased regulation of lobbyists. That is understandable. Campaign contributions by lobbyists and their business employers are the grease that makes the wheels of government turn quickly for those sophisticated or rich enough to know how to manipulate the system.

In an earlier column, I reported how the committee members--Chairman Alatorre, Council President John Ferraro and Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky--were pulling the old legislative trick of “loving a bill to death.” This is when opponents, professing undying affection for a measure, load it up with so many complicated and cumbersome amendments that nobody can vote for it.

This time, all their amendments and delays add up to another old legislative trick, imprisoning a bill in a committee. In this case, opponents have been holding the new lobby control law prisoner in Alatorre’s committee, under a life sentence without possibility of parole. Their apparent hope is that the public and the press will forget about the issue. In that way, the measure can be killed without council members ever having to vote against it.

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The intent of the proposed law is to make it easier to shine the bright light of disclosure on the hidden relationships between the lobbyists, the people who employ them and the lawmakers.

We already have such disclosure to some extent. The current lobby control law requires anyone who is paid to influence legislation to report what they earn and who pays them. The reports, issued periodically by the city Ethics Commission, make for revealing reading.

For example, the Lockheed Air Terminal firm is negotiating a contract to maintain equipment at a Los Angeles International Airport aircraft parking facility and a terminal. This requires extensive negotiations with the Airport Commission, a bewildering maze even for a corporation as big as Lockheed. So Lockheed paid $45,000 in the last three months to six lobbyists from three lobbying firms run by City Hall insiders--Fitch/Davis Associates, Rose and Kindel and Fran Savitch and Associates. The firms are substantial contributors to City Council members’ campaigns. There is nothing wrong or illegal about these contributions, by the way. It’s just good to know who’s influencing whom.

But while the present law looks tough on the surface, it is full of loopholes. The major one is that lawyers who are lobbyists do not have to register on the grounds that they are protected by the privacy rights of the attorney-client relationship.

So, the current law nets the little fish. Even Sister Diane Donoghue, a nun who heads a nonprofit organization that builds housing for the poor, was asked to register. That’s because she occasionally testifies for her organization’s projects.

But the big fish, the powerful lawyer lobbyists, get away. Among them is a shrewd attorney, former City Councilman Arthur K. Snyder, who knows--or has invented--just about every legislative trick known in City Hall.

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The Ethics Commission, which wrote the new law, has been trying without success to persuade Alatorre to release the measure from the committee.

Alatorre keeps finding new delays. For example, he asked the council’s chief legislative analyst, Ron Deaton, for an analysis of the commission proposal. Nothing could be done, Alatorre said, until he had this important analysis.

Deaton prides himself on being energetic, but in this case his office was struck by unaccustomed lethargy. Finally, commission staff member LeeAnn Pelham wrote an exasperated letter to Chris O’Donnell, the Deaton aide assigned to the project. She reminded O’Donnell that he had promised to work over a weekend to finish the analysis. “To date, despite repeated requests, we have not heard back from you about whether your report has been completed,” she said.

But her sharp words failed to stir action. On Feb. 28, commission Executive Director Ben Bycel stepped in. He wrote a memo to the chief legislative analyst. “Dear Ron. Since you have not returned my phone calls, I thought it would be more expeditious to communicate with you in writing regarding the proposed lobbying ordinance.” He pleaded for the report.

The long-awaited report surfaced Tuesday, and it asked many more questions, indicating another delay.

I asked Alatorre if there would ever be a hearing. He said that when the Ethics Commission answers the questions raised in the report, “I will schedule it at the next available meeting in the middle of the month, or at the latest the following month.”

I remain doubtful. As I said, there’s no bottom to the City Council’s bag of tricks.