City Ethics Rules Can’t Wait

The Los Angeles City Council has spent two years finding excuses to postpone a vote on reforms aimed at limiting the influence of City Hall lobbyists. The latest is City Council President Alex Padilla’s claim that newly elected council members need time to study the proposals of the city Ethics Commission. He sent the package back to the council’s rules committee for a not-yet-scheduled rehearing. If lobbyists get their wish, there it will languish until the next city election, in 2005, produces a new crop of council members and other reasons to delay.

It’s happened before. An earlier proposal has been mothballed in committee since 1996, when Padilla was barely out of college and before he or any other current council member was elected. This pattern of indefinite delay transcends term limits. So do the lobbyists the proposed rules seek to rein in.

The 1996 recommendation called for barring city commissioners and board members from lobbying city officials on behalf of a client. City ethics laws already prohibit panel members from working as contract lobbyists for one year after leaving office. But the laws never contemplated still-active commissioners and board members. Central Area Planning Commissioner Allan Abshez recently exploited this loophole to lobby other city planning commissions for a paying client to expand a Westwood cemetery.

The Ethics Commission’s more recent recommendation seeks to restrict too-cozy relationships between some lobbyists and the politicians they are paid to try to influence. In the first quarter of this year, lobbyists made, delivered or acted as intermediaries for $116,000 in political contributions to City Council candidates. The new rules would bar elected officials from acting on issues involving lobbyists who had worked on their elections or donated at least $7,000 to their campaigns. They also would bar a city official from acting on matters involving any lobbyist who had hosted fund-raisers netting more than $15,000 for that City Council member or more than $25,000 for the mayor or other citywide officeholders.

Even requiring the disclosure of such relationships -- along with lobbyist donations to charitable groups made at candidates’ or elected officials’ “request” -- would give voters valuable insight into who might influence whose vote, especially now that lobbyists have far longer political lives than term-limited officials. Voters imposed term limits because they wanted fresh voices, not the same old ingrained interests. By declining Padilla’s offer to postpone a vote, and insisting that he schedule one as soon as possible, the council’s new members could honor that intention.