Changing How Political Campaigns Are Funded

Through over 20 years of public service, I have always held myself to the highest ethical standards. Recent allegations that businesses must give campaign contributions in order to successfully win city contracts go against everything that I believe. I simply will not tolerate that behavior in my administration. “Alice in DWP-Land” (editorial, April 14) suggested that the Department of Water and Power awarded a contract to the public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard because it contributed to my campaign. In fact, Fleishman-Hillard was awarded this contract through a competitive bidding process three years before I became mayor.

I am deeply concerned that allegations of a pay-to-play problem at City Hall are eroding the public’s trust in our local government. I have introduced a comprehensive ethics reform package, which includes a proposal that goes right to the heart of the pay-to-play issue: a ban on campaign contributions to city elected officials by contract bidders and land-use applicants.

Critics say that the ban would be difficult to implement and that it would make it too difficult for politicians to raise campaign funds. But similar bans have been implemented in San Francisco, Chicago, Oakland and other cities. We have an opportunity to enact meaningful ethics reform, and I urge The Times to let its readers know where it stands on my proposals.

James K. Hahn

Mayor, Los Angeles

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It’s time to change the way campaigns for city office are financed. Only full public funding of elections will break the link between special-interest dollars and elected officials, as is done so successfully in the “clean money” public-financing systems in Arizona and Maine. The California Clean Money Campaign has concentrated its efforts on bringing the clean money system to state races, as AB 2949, pending in the state Assembly, would do. But the federal investigations of contracts given to political donors at City Hall make clear that L.A. needs clean money just as desperately.

Susan Lerner

Exec. Dir., Calif. Clean

Money Campaign, L.A.