Convention Center Director Moonlighting in Hawaii

The director of the struggling Los Angeles Convention Center has been moonlighting as a consultant to help build a facility in Hawaii that could siphon away some of Los Angeles’ convention trade.

Dick Walsh, who earns $131,607 a year from his post as the center’s general manager, has collected nearly $80,000 from the Hawaii Convention Center Authority over the past two years, according to documents obtained by The Times. Walsh has visited the islands a dozen times for a total of 48 days since the start of his contract July 1, 1994, and has worked more than 1,000 hours--the equivalent of some 60 workdays a year--on the Honolulu project, records show.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Convention Center remains unable to fill its halls, requiring a taxpayer subsidy of more than $20 million a year to pay off debt from its $500-million expansion and garnering increasing criticism at City Hall and in the downtown business community.

Walsh, who has run the Convention Center for two decades, said he has worked on the Hawaii project only during evenings and weekends, and used vacation days for his business trips to the islands. He noted that he followed city policy in receiving permission from the mayor’s office, and said his work in Honolulu has not hurt his day job.

“I’m a bit of a workaholic,” he said. “This is obviously my prime job, running the Convention Center. That’s not going to suffer. . . . Without sounding braggadocio, I’m good at what I do.”

On Tuesday, Mayor Richard Riordan said his office’s initial approval of the arrangement in 1994 had been based on the expectation that Walsh’s role would be narrow and short term.

The mayor dashed off a letter asking the city Ethics Commission to investigate whether Walsh has broken the law.

“It is a huge stretch between an honorarium and a multiyear contract . . . the contract and its specific terms, including its expanding scope, should have been fully disclosed to my office and was not,” Riordan wrote in his letter, which was hand-delivered to the Ethics Commission late Tuesday. “This contract is incompatible and perhaps even in direct conflict with Mr. Walsh’s responsibility to maximize the city’s financial return from the Los Angeles Convention Center.”

Steve Sugerman, the mayor’s assistant chief of staff, added in an interview: “Had we known of this type of scope, we absolutely would not have approved it.

“The taxpayers expect that general managers and all city employees are focused on their job in the city of Los Angeles,” Sugerman said. “The Los Angeles Convention Center is competing in a very competitive marketplace . . . it has been a huge financial drain on the city. We would hope that every ounce of energy, plus some, would be dedicated to making this center perform to expectations.”

Council members Joel Wachs and Richard Alatorre called for Walsh’s immediate firing. An initiative recently approved by city voters stripped general managers, including Walsh, of their civil service protection, so they can now be fired by the mayor if the council approves.

“That’s shocking. That’s unbelievable. It’s a blatant conflict of interest,” Wachs said.

“He should be busting his ass full-time to get business for Los Angeles,” Wachs said. “He should be working around the clock to build business for L.A., not running off to Hawaii getting paid double. He doesn’t have any free time.”

Local business leaders agreed, saying the renovated Convention Center has fallen far short of expectations, failing to become the promised economic engine for a sagging downtown and saddling taxpayers with a $20-million bill each year.

“The Convention Center has simply not lived up to its economic potential,” said Carol Schatz, executive director of the Central City Assn., which represents 250 businesses. “The Convention Center deserves all of [Walsh’s] attention.”

Austin Anderson, president of Economic Research Associates--a Westside consulting firm that has studied the Convention Center--agreed that the past several years have been among the most challenging in the agency’s history.

“It’s pretty clear it’s short of original expectations,” Anderson said.

Nonetheless, Walsh was recruited by the Hawaiian officials in 1994 after a delegation visited Los Angeles’ renovated facility as part of a national tour.

Originally, Walsh simply sat on a panel to help select an architect for the $200-million Honolulu facility, which is scheduled to open for 15,000-person meetings in 1998. He then joined the Hawaiian Authority’s Design Evaluation Board, signing a one-year contract; since then, the contract has been amended six times, with the scope of duties broadened and the maximum payment jumping from $20,000 to $105,000.

Sugerman said Riordan’s then-chief of staff William Ouchi believed he was approving a project that would last less than a month and earn Walsh about $1,000. Ouchi did not return calls for comment Tuesday.

Alan Hayashi, executive director of the Hawaiian Convention Center Authority, said Walsh is one of more than 30 consultants who have worked for his agency, earning up to $800,000 each. The amendments to Walsh’s consultant contract say he was to:

* Chair the evaluation board, overseeing a five-member panel reviewing bids for the operations and management of the center.

* Review plans and drawings.

* “Serve as primary advisor to the state on matters pertaining to the contract for operations and management of the Convention Center.”

* “Furnish advice and services regarding convention center management,” including helping to select a convention center operator.

“The work he has performed has been of exceptional quality and invaluable in ensuring the success of the project as a whole,” Hayashi said. “We feel that he’s done a tremendous service to us and to our state.”

Walsh and Hayashi both disputed suggestions that the two facilities will compete, noting that Honolulu’s will be less than half the size of the Los Angeles facility. Independent experts, however, said that for smaller meetings, the two venues could go head to head, especially because both offer attractive weather and proximity to the ocean.

“They definitely could be competitive,” said Bruce Baltin, senior vice president of PKF consulting, which caters to the hospitality industry. “Climate is a big selling point to L.A. A lot of the reasons people use to pick a convention destination relate to the same reasons they pick a tourist spot. It’s easier to sell L.A. than Detroit in February--Hawaii is a similar sell.”

Indeed, many at City Hall worried Tuesday that Walsh’s help to Hawaii could hurt his home base.

“It’s certainly distressing to hear that one of our employees is actively working for a competitor,” said Councilwoman Ruth Galanter. “It’s bad enough to be taking the equivalent of 60 days off work . . . this sounds like he’s actively undermining what we’re paying him to do.”

“Maybe he’s helping out Hawaii more than he’s helping out Los Angeles,” Alatorre said. “We have our own problems. Maybe the 1,000 hours that he’s spending could have been better spent helping us get out from under.”

The city’s ethics laws and guidelines for employees say officials may pursue outside employment with the permission of their bosses. While Walsh followed that policy, the mayor and some council members believe he may have flouted the spirit of the regulations, which include a general prohibition on any work that has even a potential for a conflict of interest or takes too much time away from a person’s day job.

Employees cannot have a second job that “would be inconsistent, incompatible, in conflict with or inimical to the city official’s official duties,” reads the ethics ordinance approved by city voters in 1990. They also cannot pursue outside employment that involves “such time demands that would render the official’s performance of his or her official duties less efficient.”

Walsh said he has given up actual vacations in order to pursue the Hawaii work. He said he went alone on his trips to the islands--which cost Hawaiian taxpayers more than $15,000, records show--and that he never combined the business ventures with pleasure stays.

Records show the trips ranged from single days in February 1996 to three stays of a week or more.

“To be honest with you, you might as well have been in Tulsa,” Walsh recalled. “You were in the office about 7 [a.m.] or 7:15 [a.m.], and you were out of there about 6. You worked.”