Panel Rejects Secessionists’ Claim Hahn Misused Funds

In a letter made public Thursday, the city Ethics Commission dismissed a complaint filed months ago by San Fernando Valley separatists over Mayor James K. Hahn’s anti-secession campaigning.

Secession backers had alleged in an Aug. 3 complaint that Hahn was using city resources to fight the Valley and Hollywood measures on the Nov. 5 ballot. State law prohibits elected officials from using public funds to contest ballot measures.

At the time, the mayor’s office conceded it had tapped city resources to lobby against secession and mail press releases, but said it stopped doing so as soon as the county Board of Supervisors approved the cityhood measures for the ballot in late July.

“Prior to that time ... no ballot measure existed,” Deena Ghaly, the Ethics Commission’s director of enforcement, wrote in a Nov. 4 letter to the secessionists. “Consequently ... [the law] would not apply.”

But Ghaly noted that in 1998 the ethics panel had urged the state Fair Political Practices Commission to broaden the scope of the law to include “all activities aimed at voters to initiate and advocate for or against a [secession] effort.” The FPPC declined to change the policy.