Councilman Doesn’t Like the Questions : The Ethics Commission isn’t supposed to become warm and fuzzy with City Hall

The audit staff of the city’s Ethics Commission has reviewed Councilman Hal Bernson’s campaign expenditures and committees and found too much disarray to extend the good bookkeeping seal of approval.

In a highly critical audit released Monday, the staff said that Bernson had used campaign funds for more than $158,000 in questionable expenditures, including foreign travel and expensive dinners. It could not find documents to verify how an additional $700,000 in campaign funds was spent by two of seven campaign committees controlled by Bernson.

Bernson’s response: “They (the staff) have been biased, hostile and antagonistic because I won’t knuckle under to (Benjamin) Bycel (executive director of the Ethics Commission) and his dictatorial tactics.”

We can do without the bluff and bluster. City law requires routine audits of candidates’ finance committees, and the Ethics Commission brings a welcome set of eagle eyes to the task. Besides, Angelenos did not vote to create the Ethics Commission to have it be warm and fuzzy with City Hall.

The findings of this latest audit covered some ground previously explored by a state attorney general’s probe that cleared Bernson of using campaign funds for personal benefit.

It’s time for the facts to come out, and the staff was right to send its audit on to the Ethics Commission’s enforcement staff, the city attorney’s office and the state Fair Political Practices Commission--the agencies that enforce city and state campaign finance reform laws.

This is Bernson’s second run-in with the Ethics Commission. Last November he was one of two local politicians who initially refused to comply with an Ethics Commission order to give the city treasury a sum equal to campaign contributions that turned out to be tainted; in Bernson’s case, $10,000 was involved. The councilman was among 20 state and local candidates who unwittingly received laundered money. The Ethics Commission emphasized that none of the 20 had known that the contributions were improper. Only in January did Bernson agree to pay up.

Now Bernson and his staff are complaining that the ethics staff did not grant them enough time to respond to the audit. In fact, they had 45 days; that’s 15 days more than usual. We would suggest that more precise bookkeeping in the first place might have left Bernson and company with much less to explain. The councilman and his staff should complete their studies and present their explanations. The public deserves answers.