Council Gives Preliminary OK to Tighter Expense Rules

New rules to prevent city lawmakers from using their “officeholder account” funds to pay for personal meals and travel or to subsidize their reelection campaigns won preliminary approval Tuesday from the Los Angeles City Council.

The tighter rules were sought by the city Ethics Commission after it had identified and documented what it believed were expenditure abuses by several lawmakers but found itself powerless to discipline them.

Officeholder accounts were originally devised as a way for council members to raise up to a maximum of $25,000 per year from political contributors and spend this money with virtually no restrictions.

Except for the $25,000 cap, the money in these accounts has not been governed by the city’s campaign finance reform rules, enacted in the mid-1980s to regulate political fund-raising.

The funds are often used to supplement a council member’s taxpayer-financed office budget--thus enabling him or her to hire additional staff, purchase office supplies or attend educational trips. Such uses are widely accepted as legitimate.

On a 9-3 vote, the council agreed to approve the new officeholder rules but not until it had lifted some of the restraints recommended by the Ethics Commission.

“The council took a step in the right direction, but they could have taken a bigger step,” said city Ethics Commission Executive Director Benjamin Bycel. The reforms also were generally applauded by California Common Cause, the nonprofit ethics watchdog group.

Final approval of the new rules requires a second council vote, expected next week.

Under the proposal, lawmakers would be required to disclose more about their travel and meal-related expenditures from their officeholders accounts. For example, the new rules call for lawmakers to disclose the names of all guests at meals costing $50 or more that are paid for with officeholder account money.

For trips costing $100 or more, the lawmakers would be required to identify whose travel expenses were being paid with the money and the purpose of the trip.

Such disclosures, according to Bycel and the five-member Ethics Commission, should make it easier to identify and prevent potential abuses.

In 1993, the commission questioned officeholder expenditures made by Councilmen Hal Bernson, Richard Alatorre, Mike Hernandez and John Ferraro. Bernson was questioned about the propriety of officeholder expenditures to pay for his membership in a Jewish temple, a trip to Hawaii and his wife’s membership in a nonprofit women’s group.

The rules also would place a limit of $1,000 on how much money can be contributed to the accounts by any individual, and require quarterly reports of officeholder account financial activity. At present, no contribution limits exist, and officeholder account financial activities are reported only semiannually--except during election season.