Hahn Asks Ethics Panel to Plug Disclosure Loophole

Mayor James K. Hahn is urging the Ethics Commission to plug a “significant loophole” that he said kept him from being alerted to a potential conflict when an airport commissioner became a consultant to a company that was negotiating a lease with the city.

Federal investigators are looking into former Airport Commissioner Leland Wong’s role in those negotiations.

The Ethics Commission notifies the mayor about possible conflicts of interests when commissioners are appointed. But Hahn complained that he is not informed by the agency if a commissioner later reports financial interests that could pose a problem.

In Wong’s case, the Ethics Commission did not warn Hahn that the airport commissioner had filed papers in October 2002 disclosing he had been paid $10,000 to $100,000 as a consultant for Evergreen Marine, a Taiwanese shipping company.

That disclosure was made as Evergreen was seeking a port lease at the same time that Wong was involved in talks with a sister company, EVA Airways, on a new airport lease.

“Because Ethics Commission conflict of interest letters are not updated based on new information ... there was no mechanism for being alerted of this new circumstance and the conflict of interest which it raised,” Hahn wrote to the Ethics Commission in a letter dated April 7.