D.A. Seeks Ban on Some Campaign Soliciting

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley called on Mayor James K. Hahn on Thursday to end the practice of allowing city commissioners to solicit campaign contributions for city officials.

Cooley said he was particularly concerned about commissioners raising money from potential city contractors. He told the Holmby Westwood Property Owners annual meeting that he would suggest Hahn ban the practice.

“That can be done unilaterally, and I think it should be done,” Cooley said. If the mayor doesn’t do it, perhaps the City Council could, he said.

Cooley called the practice “the core” of the pay-to-play problem in L.A. city government. After his speech, he said the problem was most serious at the city’s airport, harbor, and water and power commissions, which generate huge incomes from user fees and control most of their own contracting.

Those commissioners, he said, “make serious policy decisions” and should “avoid the appearance of impropriety.”

City commissioners in general are part-time, unpaid appointees of the mayor who oversee the work of city departments. Some of them are among the mayor’s biggest fundraisers.

County prosecutors are currently investigating possible corruption in the way the city’s airport department handles lucrative outside contracts, according to sources. In the last week, Deputy Mayor Troy Edwards, along with a former airport agency executive and a lobbyist who represented a Los Angeles International Airport concessionaire, have been called to testify before a county grand jury, according to sources. Cooley has declined to comment on the matter.

Mayoral spokeswoman Shannon Murphy said Thursday that the mayor was unavailable for comment. In the past, however, he has said he believed disclosure of fundraising activities and contributions was a preferred alternative to an outright ban.

Current city law does not require disclosures of fundraising activities.

The City Council in recent months has been debating proposed regulation of fundraising activities. On Wednesday, a council committee directed the city attorney’s office to draft language for an ordinance that would ban fundraising by commissioners.

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Times staff writer Noam Levey contributed to this report.