LAFCO to Review Top Exec’s Outside Income

The commission weighing cityhood proposals for the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood and the Harbor area decided Wednesday to review its top executive’s outside work for lobbyists and developers.

The Local Agency Formation Commission for Los Angeles County “needs to decide whether to countenance” the flourishing private business of its executive officer, Larry J. Calemine, said County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, a member of the panel.

The nine-member commission accepted Yaroslavsky’s proposal to review Calemine’s outside income on March 13 at a meeting that will be closed to the public.

“This board needs to understand what’s been going on,” Yaroslavsky said.

LAFCO pays Calemine a full-time salary of $100,000 a year. He is in charge of drafting plans that would be used to slice apart Los Angeles if voters approve a municipal breakup.

At the same time, Calemine has collected tens of thousands of dollars in fees from builders and lobbyists for advice on winning City Hall approval for Valley real estate projects, The Times reported last week.

In one case, he performed at least $10,000 worth of consulting work for a lawyer who was arguing a Valley secession group’s case before Calemine and the LAFCO commissioners, records show. Calemine says his outside income poses no conflict with his government job.

On Wednesday, one of the commissioners, County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, requested a legal opinion on the rules governing Calemine’s outside work.

“I’d like some clarification,” she said.

Another commissioner, Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson, defended Calemine. Bernson questioned whether fellow commissioners hadn’t known for years that Calemine’s job contract allows him to maintain his private consulting business.

“I think most of us were here when this contract was negotiated, and we all knew the terms,” Bernson said. “So I just don’t appreciate . . . trying to insinuate that something is amiss, or you didn’t know about or investigate the contract.”

“Speak for yourself,” Yaroslavsky snapped.

Bernson and Calemine are longtime friends who in the 1970s were among the co-founders of a group that promoted Valley secession from Los Angeles.

Bernson has also played a role in approving the commercial real-estate projects of Calemine’s clients. In one deal, Calemine was paid in part to lobby Bernson to support a zoning change for a Northridge parking lot in his City Council district, according to Rob Glushon, the lawyer who hired Calemine to work on the project.

Bernson, who as a LAFCO commissioner oversees Calemine’s government work, has refused to discuss Calemine’s private work.

“I’m not going to talk to you about Mr. Calemine,” Bernson said Wednesday.

Bob Stern, president of the nonprofit Center for Governmental Studies, a Los Angeles research organization, has said Calemine did not appear to have broken any rules or laws. Stern has questioned whether the public’s interest in the secession proceedings might conflict with the interests of the developers and lobbyists who pay Calemine on the side.

Yaroslavsky said the commission will discuss in its closed meeting “how you reconcile a full-time position here” with a substantial outside business. He has accused Calemine of using “bad judgment” by accepting money from developers and lobbyists, but Yaroslavsky declined to say whether the board would consider any potential conflicts.

“I have to be a little bit more judicious than normal,” he said. “This is a very serious matter.”

“I can’t just pop off on what I think every time something happens up here,” he added. “We have to operate collaboratively and deal with this as a board. The board’s reputation--and LAFCO’s credibility--is at stake.”