Attorneys’ Contributions to Hahn Outlined

Lawyers from at least 29 local firms that do work for the city have contributed to Los Angeles City Atty. James K. Hahn’s reelection bid, sparking criticism by Hahn’s challenger and by independent ethicists.

In all, more than a third of the 80 private firms that handle legal work for city government are represented among contributors to Hahn’s campaign, to the tune of $24,325 so far. Many of the contributors gave $1,000, the maximum allowed under city law, while in other firms, multiple employees made donations.

The firms and lawyers donating to Hahn have collected about $15 million in taxpayer money over the past five years, city records show. Many were directly chosen or approved by Hahn or his top deputies; staff from the city attorney’s office participated in nearly every selection.

Contributors range from Morrison & Foerster, which has collected about $5 million since 1993 for helping Los Angeles International Airport in disputes with the airline industry, to Burke, Williams & Sorenson, which has been paid only $312 in taxpayer dollars, according to city records.

Five attorneys at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher gave Hahn a total of $800 last fall, and the firm kicked in $1,000; Gibson, Dunn has a $200,000 city contract to work on the Playa Vista development. Irell & Manella, which has collected $652,000 in legal fees for the First Street North project, wrote Hahn a check for $500 in November. Lisa Greer Quateman has an $84,000 contract with the city attorney’s office; she and her husband, Neil, each donated $1,000, the maximum allowed, to Hahn.

The contributions are legal but challenger Ted Stein called them a “flat-out conflict.”

“He has put the office up for sale,” charged Stein, the Encino lawyer-developer who is running against the 12-year incumbent in the April 8 election. “It’s putting his political interests above the interests of the city.”

Stein’s campaign finance reports show that he, too, has gotten help from scores of lawyers at 19 firms that do work for the city, including a dozen that also are on Hahn’s donor list. But Stein had no role in awarding those contracts, and vowed to remove himself from contract decisions if he is elected to avoid potential conflicts.

A former president of the city’s Airport Commission, Stein has also received contributions from at least nine companies--including three law firms--that do business for the airport, records show. But Stein said he does not believe he voted on any matters involving his contributors--indeed, he says he returned several checks to avoid such conflicts--and city officials were unable last week to provide a complete list of airport contracts, or the dates they began.

“Candidates get their money from people who are doing business with the city. That’s who gives contributions,” said Robert M. Stern, co-director of the Center for Governmental Studies, which has analyzed Los Angeles campaign contributions in depth.

“People contribute for a reason. They’re not contributing out of some altruistic motive to better educate voters or promote a democratic system--they’re contributing to have access, or have influence, on the officeholder,” said Stern’s colleague at the center, Craig Holman.

“Not only do some contributors give money in order to buy access, they also give money out of fear of losing access. You’ll find many people give to both sides in order to avoid any possibility of being viewed as the enemy by whoever wins.”

Hahn, and several of the attorneys involved, said in interviews last week that there is absolutely no connection between the contributions and the contracts.

Some of the lawyers said they have been friends and political supporters of Hahn for years; others acknowledged that they met Hahn through their government legal work but insisted that they have won each contract on merit and that they give Hahn money solely because they believe he is doing a good job.

“People who know me know that’s not the case,” Hahn said when asked whether his contract decisions are motivated by political self-interest. “I’m going to ask people who are my friends to help. They know there’s no connection. I don’t guarantee anything because someone’s my friend. I make sure there’s competition for every contract.”

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But one lawyer who spoke on the condition of anonymity--for fear of losing future Los Angeles contracts--said contributing to Hahn’s campaign is considered the cost of doing business for those bidding on city legal work.

“It’s almost a requirement,” the lawyer said. “I don’t think that I’ll [necessarily] get picked, [but] I think that I wouldn’t even be considered unless I gave money. Sometimes, I got work and I found out it was obviously political, and not on the merits.”

Last fall, according to the lawyer, Hahn called personally to ask for a donation just one week after a request for proposals for a lucrative city contract had arrived on the firm’s doorstep. Hahn never suggested that the contract could be bought, but the lawyer said he felt pressured.

“I’ve decided that under the circumstances, the best strategic position for me is to give a modest amount to Jimmy because he’s the city attorney and he’s giving out RFPs [requests for proposals],” the lawyer said.

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Artis Grant Jr., a longtime Hahn supporter who has done legal work for the city since Hahn was first elected in 1985, said contributions do not buy contracts, but they do get noticed.

“We’re in the muck with everybody else, but it doesn’t hurt,” said Grant, who recently moved his practice to Washington state. “It doesn’t totally get you [business, but] it doesn’t hurt that you’ve given to him.”

Los Angeles County Bar Assn. President Sheldon Sloan, who does not work for the city and is supporting Stein in the election, said the city’s low contribution limits--$1,000 per candidate, per campaign--have led hundreds of local lawyers to participate in local politics as cheap insurance that doors at City Hall will open for them.

“It’s ludicrous to say [Hahn] doesn’t look at it. Of course he looks at it. You would. I would,” Sloan said. “It means [he] should take my phone call. That’s all. You buy a little access.”

In general, Los Angeles has some of the strictest campaign finance rules in the country, with laws not only governing how much people can contribute, but requiring disclosure of the source of every dollar. In addition, candidates who agree to overall spending limits are eligible for public matching funds, which generally reduces influence peddling.

City laws prevent appointed commissioners or department managers from soliciting political contributions from anyone who has had business pending before them in the past year, according to Ethics Commission Executive Director Rebecca Avila. (Records from the airport were not available last week to determine whether Stein had voted in 1995 on any contracts involving companies that have since contributed to his campaign.)

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State law also prohibits elected officials who are appointed to additional boards--such as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority--from voting on items involving their campaign contributors.

But nothing stops the city attorney--or for that matter, the mayor and the City Council--from handing out contracts to people who have given them money. Indeed, companies often receive their most vocal support at City Hall from the politicians to whom they contribute.

“It makes a very closed system,” said UCLA political scientist Xandra Kayden, who helped write the city’s campaign finance rules. “It looks as if, and probably is as if, people are buying favor. Actually, what happens mostly is they buy access, and they therefore have the capacity to make their case.”

Kayden said the nonpartisan nature of municipal elections and the low level of interest in Los Angeles politics complicate the situation. Contribution limits help reduce the level of influence peddling, Kayden said, but also increase the number of donors needed to fund campaigns, making it more difficult for candidates to cross an entire category, such as city contractors, off their target list of donors.

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Lisa Foster, a San Diego attorney who serves on the board of California Common Cause and teaches election law and ethics at UC San Diego, said the confluence of contracts and contributions “fuels the cynicism the public already feels about the role of money in politics.”

“If someone has made a contribution not because they feel Jim Hahn--or, for that matter, Ted Stein--is going to be the best city attorney, but because if they don’t, they won’t get a contract, that’s a problem,” she said. “It’s not how our system is supposed to work.”

The lawyers who have contracts and also contribute to Hahn insist that the two things are separate.

“One has nothing to do with the other,” said David Gill, who gave Hahn $1,000 in June and works at a firm that has had several city contracts. “I don’t think Mr. Hahn is for sale for whatever my contribution was. I know I’m not.”

Amy Forbes, the Gibson, Dunn attorney who is handling Playa Vista and gave Hahn $250 on Dec. 31, noted that “it’s a 1st Amendment right to express your preference for who you want.”

Fred Yanney, who gave Hahn $250 five days before the Department of Water and Power Commission voted to give his firm a $600,000 contract to help with deregulation, echoed many others when he said, “The competition is quite stiff” during the bidding process.

“These are not sweet deals,” Yanney said. “I think the analysis was done and decisions were made well before my becoming involved or supporting in any way the city attorney’s office.”

To prevent even the perception of a conflict, Barbara Lindemann of Seyfarth, Shaw, Fairweather & Geraldson said she was careful not to invite any of the people at her firm who work on its city contract to attend a fund-raiser for Hahn at her Malibu beach house last summer.

“It’s nothing illegal, it just wouldn’t seem to me to be an appropriate thing to do,” she said. “I would bend over backwards to be so sure there would not even be a hint of that.”

Perhaps what rankles watchdogs most is lawyers and firms who give to both sides. For example, lawyers like Kenneth Bley, who works at Cox, Castle & Nicholson--which has had city contracts worth more than $200,000--and contributed to both Stein and Hahn last year.

“That tells me they’re not interested in who gets elected, they’re just interested in making sure they’ve supported whoever gets elected,” complained Stern, of the Center for Governmental Studies. “The whole idea of an election is to pick which candidate you like. Not to support both.”

But Bley said he simply thinks both men are qualified--and hates saying no.

“I figure that these are not the highest profile races,” he said. “If I can contribute a little bit so they can make their views known, we’re all the better for it.”

That’s the same reasoning offered by Chuck Woodhouse, executive director of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, which has employees supporting each candidate and, as a firm, donated $1,000 to both.

“I view it as believing in the process and contributing to the process,” he said. “May the best person win.”

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Lawyers’ Contributions

Lawyers from 29 local firms that have had contracts with the city of Los Angeles in recent years have contributed money to City Atty. James K. Hahn’s reelection campaign. Challenger Ted Stein also has received financial support from many firms with city contracts. Here is a sampling:

Firm: Cox, Castle & Nicholson

City Contracts: $211,029

Contributions to Hahn: 1 lawyer, $100

Contributions to Stein: 6 lawyers, $700 total

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Firm: Fulbright & Jaworski

City Contracts: $357,721 paid, $600,000 just approved, for DWP deregulation

Contributions to Hahn: 1 lawyer, $250

Contributions to Stein: 1 lawyer, $1,000, plus $1,000 from firm

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Firm: Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher

City Contracts: $2000,000 for Playa Vista project

Contributions to Hahn: 5 lawyers, $800; plus $1,000 from firm

Contributions to Stein: 1 lawyer, $500; plus $1,000 from firm

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Firm: Irell & Manella

City Contracts: City contracts: $700,000 for work on 1st St. North project

Contributions to Hahn: $500, from firm

Contributions to Stein: 1 lawyer, $250

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Firm: Kaye, Scholer, Flerman, Hays & Handler

City Contracts: City contracts: $87,000, Commmunity Redevelopment Agency

Contributions to Hahn: 1 lawyer, $1,000

Contributions to Stein: 1 lawyer, $500

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Firm: Latham & Watkins

City Contracts: $1.75 million, various departments

Contributions to Hahn: 5 lawyers, $2,425

Contributions to Stein: 11 lawyers, $5,200

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Firm: Lewis, D’Amato, Brisbols & Bisgaard

City Contracts: $300,000, Community Redevelopment Agency

Contributions to Hahn: 2 lawyers, $1,000

Contributions to Stein: 1 lawyer, $100

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Firm: Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro

City Contracts: $6,500, Community Redevelopment Agency

Contributions to Hahn: 5 lawyers, $1,425, plus $500 from firm

Contributions to Stein: 3 lawyers, $1,500

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Firm: Quateman & Zidell

City Contracts: $84,000, LAPD lease

Contributions to Hahn: 1 lawyer, $1,000

Contributions to Stein: 1 lawyer, $500

Notes: The city of Los Angeles does not have one clearinghouse for legal contracts, so records were compiled from a variety of sources, which report payments differently. Details of the scope of some contracts were unavailable. Some numbers above reflect the amounts of the approved contracts; others reflect actual payments made. In some cases, the firms may have additional city contracts not included in this report.

Some contributions listed include a donation from a single lawyer to both candidates.

Sources: City attorney’s office, city controller’s office, Ethics Commission.

Researched by: JODI WILGOREN / Los Angeles Times