Planning Commission Can’t Rule on Arena

The Los Angeles city attorney’s office on Wednesday disqualified the city’s Planning Commission from ruling on matters related to the new basketball and hockey arena proposed for downtown, citing a potential conflict of interest because one of the commissioners is a partner in a law firm working on part of the project.

Because of the ruling, officials said the commission’s recent approval of various agreements in connection with the $200-million arena will be nullified and must be reconsidered by the city’s Board of Referred Powers. That board, made up of five council members, acts in the place of various commissions when there are conflicts.

The potential conflict concerns Commissioner Gerald Chaleff, who recently joined the law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, which has a contract worth up to $225,000 to counsel the city on bond issues for the project. Chaleff wrote to the city attorney asking whether he should recuse himself after a recent meeting in which the commission voted on arena-related items.

Officials said the disqualification will have no effect because the Board of Referred Powers is scheduled to take up the matters in early August, which will not disrupt developers’ plans to return to the City Council for final approval at summer’s end.

“I just wanted to make sure everything was being done correctly. I initiated this . . . in an abundance of caution,” said Chaleff, who has been nominated chairman of the city’s Police Commission and will probably leave the planning board next month. “Nobody wants to be the cause of [a] problem. I want to ensure the integrity of the city’s decision-making process.”