State Ethics Board Cuts Ties With L.A. Panel

The head of the state agency that investigates political corruption has accused his counterpart at the Los Angeles Ethics Commission of a series of ethical lapses--problems so severe that he said he has cut off interaction between the two agencies.

Ethics Commission Executive Director Ben Bycel leaked confidential information, threatened attorneys and botched sensitive negotiations by shifting his positions, according to a letter by Wayne Ordos, executive director of the state Fair Political Practices Commission.

Bycel called the letter--delivered this week to state and city ethics commissioners--a “vicious personal attack.” He said he believed the complaints about him were rooted in the state agency’s jealousy that the upstart city Ethics Commission helped launch a series of high-profile investigations into political money laundering.

At the regular city Ethics Commission meeting Thursday morning, members voiced support for Bycel. “It’s a very unfair attack on Ben, and we have full confidence in him,” Commissioner Ed Guthman said. Commission President Dennis Curtis said Bycel is doing a great job.

The Ethics Commission and Fair Political Practices Commission collaborated on several investigations, in large part because the city agency has a small staff and no in-house attorneys to investigate corruption. For example, city ethics officials uncovered a money laundering scheme by Evergreen America Corp., a giant shipping firm. State agency lawyers and investigators helped prove the allegations, resulting in a record $895,000 fine and Evergreen’s admission that it funneled $172,000 in campaign contributions through third parties.

But while the public was being told of cooperative efforts to blot out corruption, tensions were quietly simmering between the state agency and Bycel, Ordos acknowledged in his letter.

The five-page letter depicts Bycel as a publicity-hungry zealot who could not keep private discussions about pending cases to himself.

Ordos accused Bycel of telling the press of the Evergreen settlement before it was to be announced at a public Ethics Commission meeting. He also accused Bycel of asking to time the announcement of another significant case to a major sporting event to get more publicity. (No further explanation was given in the letter.) And Ordos noted that a Superior Court judge ordered Bycel to drop out of another investigation earlier this year after the judge found that Bycel had shown bias toward the subjects of the inquiry.

The latter investigation involved relatives and associates of Arthur Snyder, a former city councilman and influential City Hall lobbyist. Snyder has not been accused of any campaign violations and denies wrongdoing.

The Ethics Commission and political practices commission have also been investigating political contributions by employees and associates of the Los Angeles Marathon. No one has been accused of wrongdoing in that case, and that investigation is continuing.

It is unclear how the rift between the two agencies will affect those investigations.

“We have long been concerned about your apparent inability to disengage your personal feelings and biases from our cases,” Ordos said in the letter. “My staff has reported a number of instances in which you have asked them to focus on ‘getting’ one person or another even though the facts were not yet in place to warrant such a prosecution.”

Ordos also concluded that after an initial tip from the Ethics Commission, “virtually everything done” to settle the watershed Evergreen case was the result of the state agency’s work.

Bycel hotly contested that assertion and most others in Ordos’ letter, saying that the Ethics Commission had carried at least half the burden by exposing the money laundering by the shipping firm.

“The FPPC has existed for almost 25 years and never came close to the kind of fine that we helped them collect in the Evergreen case,” Bycel said. “I think they as an institution feel threatened by the Ethics Commission.”

Bycel also denied that he had leaked information to the news media or others. He declined to discuss most other specifics in Ordos’ letter but said “philosophical differences about what the public expects from an enforcement agency” are at the heart of the dispute.

Bycel, a lawyer and former law school dean, has fought to win credibility for the Ethics Commission since he was hired 3 1/2 years ago as the agency’s first administrator. His supporters say he has frequently run afoul of the city’s political Establishment by questioning the status quo.

One of his first investigations put him at odds with City Atty. James K. Hahn, when the commission focused on allegations that members of Hahn’s staff were engaged in political activity while on the public payroll. The district attorney’s office declined to file charges in that case, but Bycel lambasted that office for releasing the name of the confidential informant whose tip initiated the investigation.

Bycel acknowledged that he recently applied for a position with the State Bar of California that would put him in charge of disciplinary actions against lawyers. He denied that the attempted move was influenced by tensions with the stage agency, saying he simply was ready for a new challenge.

“I was ready to move on,” Bycel said. “But now that there has been criticism of what I’ve done, I think I’m ready to dig in my heels and stay for a while.”

Ordos and other political practices commission officials declined to comment, but in his letter the state agency chief told Bycel that “this agency cannot continue working with the city Ethics Commission as long as you remain its executive director.”

Bycel was appointed by and serves at the will of the Ethics Commission. The five-member panel is appointed by Mayor Richard Riordan, City Atty. Hahn, Controller Rick Tuttle and City Council President John Ferraro.