Lower Limits on Individual Campaign Donations Urged

Lobbyists, hold on to your wallets.

Los Angeles City Council members, who spent more than $600,000 from their officeholder accounts last year, may be hosting even more fund-raisers under changes approved Thursday by the city’s Ethics Commission.

The commission recommended lowering permissible individual contributions to such accounts from $1,000 to $500, with accounts capped at a total of $75,000.

“In the interest of getting us to fund-raise less, they keep finding ways that will require us to fund-raise more,” said Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg. “That is exactly what will happen.”

Ethics commissioners said they were attempting to keep the laws consistent: Council members are already restricted to $500 individual contributions to their campaign accounts. The proposed changes must be approved by the City Council.

“The reduction in the contribution limit also keeps any single person from having too much influence,” said Rebecca Avila, the commission’s executive director.

The officeholder accounts are used by council members for such things as mailers and postage, meals and professional service contracts.

Ethics Commissioner Art Mattox sought to reduce the limits on the overall accounts from $75,000 to $40,000, but he did not have the necessary votes.

Councilman Nate Holden has gone further, proposing the abolition of the accounts after he was rebuffed last month in his efforts to use the funds to mail Mother’s Day cards to women in his district. The Ethics Commission said the officeholder accounts could only be used to send mail that related to upcoming districtwide events--such as neighborhood cleanups--or to discuss issues coming before the council.

Council members’ use of their officeholder accounts vary dramatically. In the 14 months from October 1996 to December 1997, according to the latest report by the Ethics Commission, Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas spent the most--$80,998--with Councilwoman Rita Walters spending the least--$4,812.

All told, the 15 council members spent more than $600,000 and raised nearly $455,000 during the 14-month period. The officeholder accounts also can be supplemented by lawmakers’ leftover campaign funds.

The top contributors to those officeholder accounts were mostly City Hall lobbyists and labor groups, according to the commission’s report. Some of those contributors also appear on the latest list of the top 10 lobbyists in the city, which shows that lobbying expenditures in the city were more than $940,000 in the first quarter of this year.

Some of those lobbyists, who appear in the top 10 list as well as on the list of officeholder contributors, include Rose & Kindel, which contributed $3,200 to officeholder funds and was paid $40,000 to lobby on behalf of the construction management firm hired to oversee the seismic retrofitting and rehabilitation of City Hall. Planning Associates, which contributed $7,375 to lawmakers’ office accounts, was paid $45,000 to lobby on behalf of the Porter Ranch development plans.