Wanted: A Full-Time Worker

The Los Angeles Convention Center needs a full-time, into-the-night director. It hasn’t had one for about two years, even though the job pays a tidy $131,607. The fellow who has held the city post, Dick Walsh, has been moonlighting in and for Hawaii over that time, helping to build a Honolulu convention center.

It’s been productive moonlighting for Walsh: more than 1,000 hours worked, $80,000 collected to date. That amounts to 125 eight-hour workdays. Throw out holidays and you’re getting pretty close to a half-year’s work--for Hawaii.

That this is unacceptable is beyond question. Walsh’s response is as inexplicable as the situation: “I’m a workaholic. This is my primary job, running the (Los Angeles) Convention Center. That’s not going to suffer. . . . Without sounding braggadocio, I’m good at what I do.”

Citizens can draw their own conclusions. Mayor Richard Riordan already has. He told Walsh to stop working in Hawaii.

The Convention Center is not doing well. It can’t fill its halls. Taxpayers are subsidizing it to the tune of $20 million a year to pay off debt from its $500-million expansion in 1987. Meanwhile, many cities are pushing hard for a bigger share of the burgeoning $83-billion exhibition and convention industry and Los Angeles is poorly poised to compete. And the competition will only get tougher. Nearby Anaheim recently joined the convention center expansion race with San Francisco, San Diego, Phoenix, several other Western cities . . . and Hawaii.

Walsh said he followed city policy in checking first with the mayor’s office. Riordan said Walsh got an approval based on the belief that the Hawaii role would be narrow and short-term. Frankly, a mayoral response of “You don’t have enough work here, Dick?” would have been preferable.

Now, Riordan has directed the city’s Ethics Commission to investigate whether Walsh has broken the law. Further steps are in order. If this Hawaii gig is really so important, maybe Walsh ought to move there. Meanwhile, Los Angeles can post its job for someone who isn’t bored by the idea of working full-time, and then some, to draw convention business to the nation’s second-largest city.