Ethics Fines With No Sting

One Internet traffic school promises its course will be “Quick ... Easy ... Painless!” Another, a “comedy” traffic school where the students wear goofy hats and watch amateur jokesters, exhorts scofflaw drivers to “Laugh off the points” on their Department of Motor Vehicles records.

Traffic school comes to mind amid reports that Mayor James K. Hahn held a fund-raiser in September to cover his $53,522 campaign finance fine for improper fund-raising activities. Hahn’s pass-the-hat party, like one council President Alex Padilla held last year to cover a $79,000 penalty, is legal under the city ethics law.

But, like traffic school, the fund-raisers soften the sting of the law. The Ethics Commission should bar them. Fines for accepting contributions above the $1,000 limit, like tickets for running red lights, are meant to be punitive, to make you feel so much personal pain that you’ll think twice the next time. Calling the caterer, then inviting the same lobbyists and local fat cats whose money put you in office -- and who now want your ear -- is not punishment. It’s more of the same old “I’ll-scratch-your-back, you-scratch-mine” politics.

Some ethics commissioners have begun to talk about requiring elected officials to pay all or part of their fines themselves. They already could insist on this as a condition of approving settlements with violators. Other changes are also sensible, such as limiting contributions from lobbyists who do business with the city or sitting commissioners; those require City Council approval.

Not everyone thinks scofflaws should have to pay out of their own pockets. “I would like the folks I elect ... to keep their eye on the ball,” said one contributor to the Jim Hahn Legal Defense Fund, “and not spend their time trying to find a second job to pay off fines.”

City Councilman Eric Garcetti worries that “a single parent raising kids” would be hard-pressed to pay the money.” His father, Gil Garcetti, now Ethics Commission president, frets that candidates could be stuck with big fines because of “sloppiness or inadvertent error” by campaign volunteers.

Nonsense. Big donors don’t hand their checks to the college kid answering phones in the candidate’s headquarters. To get the bang they want, they deliver the bucks personally. And, as for single mothers, they don’t get a break for pushing 50 mph in a 25-mph zone. Politicians shouldn’t get one for breaking city ethics laws.

As it is now, the consequences are minimal; politicians think violations are no big deal. Sort of like traffic school. But there, at least, fines still come out of students’ pockets and they spend a painful few hours contemplating their wrongdoing.