Ethics Panel Weighs Rule Changes After Dump Battle

The Los Angeles Ethics Commission is considering rule changes that might have prevented trash giant WMX Inc. from quietly bankrolling a seismic study that attacked the Sunshine Canyon landfill--which is being built by a rival company--as vulnerable to an earthquake.

City and county officials said WMX violated no law when it paid for the study and kept the payment quiet.

The political buzz after disclosure of the unusual alliance continues to be clearly audible, particularly because it involved the North Valley Coalition, a group with impeccable environmental credentials that released the study as its own in January.

Many expressed incredulity that the feisty environmental group would team up with the nation’s biggest operator of landfills to try to stop the second-largest landfill operator from opening a dump above Granada Hills.

Though LeeAnn Pelham, deputy director of the Ethics Commission, declined to discuss specific cases, she said the commission has been studying the city’s lobbying laws for months and will recommend reforms in August.

“We are looking into tightening [rules on] any kind of unreported lobbying expenditures,” said Pelham.

Asked about the partnership between WMX and the coalition, Pelham responded: “These are clearly the types of issues we are going to talk about.”

Browning-Ferris Industries, which owns Sunshine Canyon and plans to open the dump by July 1, said that earlier disclosure of the role played by WMX might have speeded regulatory approval of the landfill.

“Wouldn’t I want to know if a major competitor that had an opportunity for large financial gain had paid for this study?” asked Arnie Berghoff, director of governmental affairs for Browning-Ferris. “It would change my mind.”

WMX maintains that it has lobbied against Sunshine Canyon out of genuine concern for the public safety, and argues that Browning-Ferris appears to be subject to less stringent standards than WMX’s own dumps. Browning-Ferris, however, says that WMX is simply attempting to eliminate competition in the waste-hauling industry.

Earlier this month, WMX officials acknowledged that the Illinois-based firm had paid the engineering firm Treadwell & Rollo Inc. about $60,000 to conduct a seismic study of the landfill.

WMX also paid the landfill’s main political opponent, the North Valley Coalition of Concerned Citizens, an additional $6,000 to continue fighting the dump, according to WMX.

The Treadwell & Rollo report said the proposed dump could collapse in an earthquake and pollute the city’s drinking water supply.

When the study was released, the North Valley Coalition held a news conference attended by Supervisor Mike Antonovich and City Councilman Hal Bernson across the Golden State Freeway from the proposed dump to publicize the report’s findings.

Both both the coalition and WMX maintain that they did not attempt to sway the conclusions reached by Treadwell & Rollo.

“We had nothing to do with the findings,” said Chuck White, WMX’s director of regulatory affairs for the West Coast. “That’s why we hired an independent firm to do the study.”

Originally, White said, WMX had considered using Rust Environmental & Infrastructure--its own subsidiary--to do the study. In the end, however, it was through Rust that WMX made the payments to Treadwell & Rollo.

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While both city and county ordinances require lobbyists to register and report income, the WMX-North Valley Coalition relationship falls into a gray area of the law, officials said.

“I’ve never heard of anything like it,” said John McKibben, deputy executive officer for Los Angeles County, the office that oversees ethics and lobbying laws. “But this is probably not the kind of thing that would be covered under existing law.”

USC professor Terry J. Cooper, an authority on public ethics, said that disclosure ordinances and laws are designed, in part, to “neutralize” lobbyists by making their visits and gifts to public officials part of the public record.

Because the focus of such laws has been to ensure that government officials remain unbiased, the role played by the North Valley Coalition makes the Sunshine Canyon case particularly interesting, Cooper said.

“I don’t know of any government at any level that has required a citizens group to disclose where they get their money,” he said. “That there is a coexisting interest in this case gives it an interesting twist.”

The relationship between the North Valley Coalition and WMX started in mid-1994, when the coalition was financially tapped out due to its long fight with Browning-Ferris over Sunshine Canyon, said Rosemary Woodlock, the coalition’s attorney.

Tax returns from 1995, for example, report that the coalition took in just $2,583 in contributions. Meanwhile, Browning-Ferris has spent more than $43 million building--and fighting for--the dump.

The neighborhood group sent out letters pleading for financial aid to everyone they could think of--including the big trash firms that were Browning-Ferris’ primary competitors.

North Valley Coalition President Mary Edwards said that at first it appeared that BKK--a Torrance-based trash company--would assume the role of white knight.

But BKK eventually declined, she said, and WMX, owner of the Bradley and Lancaster landfills and backer of a proposed huge landfill in San Bernardino County, agreed to provide aid. The two sides decided that WMX would pay for a seismic study.

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Although receipts for payments obtained by The Times date from November 1994 to March 1996, government officials--even those with close relationships to the North Valley Coalition--learned about the pairing only recently.

“We heard the rumors, so we asked North Valley directly about six weeks ago, and they said yes, it was true,” said Dave Vannatta, an aide to Antonovich, who has long opposed the dump. “There was never any effort to deny it, [so] we have no ethical concerns.”

Representatives from WMX and the North Valley Coalition said the relationship was never a secret, they just didn’t advertise it.

But Browning-Ferris--and the public--found out only after the company hired private investigators who obtained invoices that pointed to WMX as the sponsor of the seismic study.