Wage Plan Can’t Be Applied to 3 Agencies, Lawyer Says

Former City Atty. Burt Pines has weighed in on a hotly contested proposal to require some private firms that do business with Los Angeles to pay better wages and benefits to their bottom-rung workers.

In a letter released Tuesday by the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, Pines, a chamber board member now in private law practice, agreed with his onetime city staff attorneys that the measure cannot legally be applied to the city’s three semiautonomous, or proprietary, departments.

The issue of how broadly the ordinance can be applied is becoming a major front in the battle over the ordinance. The measure, tentatively scheduled for a City Council vote next Wednesday, has pitted the mayor’s office and business leaders against council liberals and a coalition of labor unions, community activists and clergy including Cardinal Roger Mahony.

The city attorney’s office has said the measure cannot be applied to the proprietary departments--Airports, Harbor and Water and Power--because the city charter gives them control of their own budgets and contracts.

That view is disputed by Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, the measure’s principal architect. She has cited a 1991 ballot measure, Proposition 5, in which voters gave the City Council the authority to overturn the awarding of contracts and other actions of the mayor-appointed citizen commissions that oversee city departments.

“The current advice of the city attorney’s office is consistent with the long-standing view of the office,” Pines wrote to chamber President Ezunial Burts. The chamber is spearheading the business community’s fight against the proposal.

“In situations where the city government is acting in a proprietary capacity, the charter vests general control of the funds and contracts of [the three] departments,” despite Proposition 5 and other limitations, Pines wrote.

“This is just part of a war or words; it’s just silliness,” Goldberg said of the Pines letter. She said that ever since voters gave final authority over contracts to the City Council, there is no such thing as a truly independent department.

Goldberg believes she has the votes to win council approval for her measure.