Whose Home Page Is It?

In the vast expanse of cyberspace, the city of Los Angeles occupies the electronic equivalent of a well-stocked information booth, offering photos of animals born at the zoo, listings of civil service jobs and news releases touting City Atty. James K. Hahn’s latest court victories.

Elsewhere on the Internet, Burbank provides agendas for upcoming council meetings and a link to “real time” traffic reports to help constituents avoid problems on the way to meetings.

And the San Diego home page includes a biography of Mayor Susan Golding that describes her as having “a proven track record of visionary leadership.”

Los Angeles and hundreds of other municipal governments--notorious for being technologically behind the times--are jumping onto the Internet with both civic feet.

The goal is simple: Put government literally at the public’s fingertips by creating an “electronic community” where residents can participate in civic life with a simple click of the computer mouse.

But as cities have set off down the information superhighway, ethical questions have been raised about the nature of some of their online information.

At issue is how to prevent elected officials from using a city-funded Internet page as a tool to promote themselves or their pet projects. Although many cities have allowed elected officials to post speeches, glowing biographies and photos of themselves, some government watchdog groups say this can unfairly politicize public information.

As the number of U.S. communities with Internet sites has jumped from less than a dozen to about 600 in the past two years, the issue probably will be raised with greater frequency, according to representatives of several political watchdog organizations.

Los Angeles, which provides the biggest information menu of any municipality on the Internet, is already grappling with the problem as officials begin drafting guidelines for the city’s Internet pages.

“How do you make sure the city’s Web site is used for the public interest?” asked LeeAnn Pelham, a deputy director at the city’s Ethics Commission who is working on the guidelines. “It’s a tough one.”

She and other government watchdog groups must walk a fine line between allowing elected officials to distribute information to constituents and ensuring that the Internet pages do not become a campaign tool, with taxpayers paying the bill.

Unlike campaign fliers that must be funded with private contributions and mailed only during campaign season, the Internet provides elected officials a year-round forum that can be revised and deleted relatively quickly, making it harder to regulate.

“We are going to have a tough time defining when it becomes a campaigning tool and when it is a legitimate extension of holding office,” said Gary Huckaby, spokesman for the California Fair Political Practices Commission.

According to city officials nationwide and researchers at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Illinois, most cities lack guidelines to ensure that their Internet pages are not used to promote a political viewpoint or candidate.

Typically, the only person to review a city page before it is launched onto the Internet is a computer expert, who is more concerned with technical glitches than with content.

For example, Sacramento’s Internet page includes the text of Mayor Joe Serna Jr.’s “State of the City” speech, in which he criticized the GOP’s “contract with America” for “pitting one group of Americans against another.”

The debate over guidelines arose in Los Angeles in December after Mayor Richard Riordan launched his home page on the city’s Internet site. The page included photos of the mayor at ceremonial events and a glowing biography that listed his accomplishments during his tenure.

In response, Councilman Mike Feuer introduced a motion asking for the formation of a task force to draft guidelines to “ensure that any use of the systems serves a legitimate public purpose.”

Soon after Feuer introduced the motion, Riordan’s staff eliminated the page, saying it was only a preliminary effort and was mistakenly put on the Internet before it had final approval from the mayor’s office.

There are wide variations on the scope of information found on city home pages as well. Some cities provide council agendas and ways to report potholes via the computer while others simply offer a list of city officials and their phone numbers--information that is available in most phone books.

What’s more, a National Center for Supercomputing Applications’ survey found that 80% of the material on municipal Internet home pages focuses on tourist information such as locations of hotels, restaurants and museums. Only half of the information on the pages is related to local community events and education.

“What we are asking is, where is the beef?” said Alaina Kanfer, research director for the center’s study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Despite such apparent shortfalls, municipal Internet sites are gaining popularity.

The Los Angeles Internet page is visited 150,000 times a month, while San Diego’s site gets 40,000 visitors a month.

As the technology advances, municipal governments plan to add dozens of new services on the Internet.

San Diego is designing an all-Spanish Internet page to serve its Latino population. Los Angeles city officials hope to put together a photo archive where residents can download historic pictures of past civic leaders and famous city landmarks.

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City Sites

In the past two years, cities across the country have launched sites on the World Wide Web to provide municipal information for residents. Here are the Internet addresses for some area cities:

* Los Angeles: https://www.ci.la.ca.us

* Burbank: https://linkto.burbank.k12.ca.us/documents/city.html

* Pasadena: https://www.ci.pasadena.ca.us/index.html

* Glendale: https://www.keyconnect.com/glendale/index.html

* San Diego: https://www.sannet.gov

* Long Beach: https://www.ci.long-beach.ca.us/

* Beverly Hills: https://www.ci.beverly-hills.ca.us/

Or log on to City Net, which allows computer users to see pages for cities all over the country: https://www.city.net/