Mayor-Elect Warns Against Ethics Problems

With a political supporter facing allegations of improper fundraising and a former city contractor admitting fraud, Mayor-elect Antonio Villaraigosa warned his transition team Friday that he will not tolerate misbehavior in his administration.

Villaraigosa’s comments came a day after a county supervisor called on the district attorney to determine whether the county’s former AIDS program director illegally solicited contributions for Villaraigosa’s campaign from county employees and contractors. And it followed a decision by a former executive with the public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard to plead guilty to participating in a scheme to bilk the city Department of Water and Power.

Villaraigosa, who takes office as mayor July 1, held a 45-minute conference call with about 60 members of his transition team to discuss recruiting the most qualified applicants for city commissions and the mayor’s staff.

“I had a transition committee meeting this morning, and I made it absolutely clear: We want people of the highest ethical standards,” Villaraigosa said at a Boyle Heights school. “People who engage in that kind of activity are not welcome and will not continue with the city of Los Angeles.”

He denied knowing about alleged improper fundraising by Charles L. “Chuck” Henry, who ran his Westside campaign office and is the former head of the county Office of AIDS Programs and Policy.

The ethics issue is sensitive, given that Villaraigosa won with a campaign that hinged largely on criticism of the Hahn administration for ethical lapses.

One transition committee member, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Villaraigosa made a point of saying he did not want the same kinds of ethics problems.

“People who have any kind of contact with the city, or who represent anybody with contact with the city, they are going to be looked at carefully,” the committee member said.

Hahn was plagued by investigations into whether his administration traded favors for political donations, though no one has been charged. Two major donors to his 2001 mayoral campaign were charged with political money laundering.

Villaraigosa starts his first term with the district attorney still investigating whether donations to his mayoral campaign from employees of a Florida airport concession firm were laundered. Villaraigosa returned $47,000 in contributions.

During the conference call, Villaraigosa also urged the civic leaders to look outside normal channels for people to fill more than 300 commission posts and more than 120 staff jobs in the mayor’s office.

The transition team has received nearly 2,500 applications, and Villaraigosa hopes to begin naming his staff members next week, said Elena Stern, a spokeswoman for the mayor-elect.

Hahn has proposed that the budget for the mayor’s office remain at about $6.7 million in the fiscal year beginning July 1. Hahn has a staff of 129 people, which has included a chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, budget director and six deputy mayors.

Some of the staff positions are paid by funds from other departments, giving the mayor flexibility on the size of his staff.

Villaraigosa’s team plans to revise the organizational structure of the mayor’s office based on an internal study of mayor’s offices in New York City, Chicago, Houston, London, Paris and Hong Kong, Kramer said.

Sources say one change could be to appoint a point person to oversee economic development at the port and airports.

The mayor-elect signaled that he and his transition staff are also crafting a very active agenda.

“We’re focused on putting an administration together,” Villaraigosa said. “Then we will be working on a number of initiatives in the first 100 days to demonstrate my focus on the priorities we talked about, and that’s education, public safety, traffic and the like.”

Demonstrating that he plans to be a hands-on mayor, Villaraigosa jumped into the talks over a hotel workers strike, meeting until early Friday with leaders of Unite Here Local 11 and hotel representatives in an unsuccessful attempt to work out a compromise. Villaraigosa, the first union organizer to be elected mayor, was widely credited with helping to end the 2003 strike by transit workers.

“I was in a meeting until 2 o’clock in the morning with all the people involved,” he told reporters as he arrived at 8:30 a.m. at a centennial ceremony for Euclid Avenue Elementary School in Boyle Heights.

At the school, Villaraigosa told about 400 students, teachers and parents that he would fulfill his campaign promise to reform the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“In the coming years, you are going to hear me talk and work with teachers and parents to give them a stronger voice in the schools so that they can begin to make tough choices that we need to make to improve the quality of the schools,” Villaraigosa said, drawing enthusiastic applause.

Once his mayoral office is in order, Villaraigosa said, he plans to meet with schools Supt. Roy Romer to discuss working together on reforms.

“This isn’t about taking over the school district,” he said. “It’s about how we create a governance structure where the school district and the city are collaborating.”

During the campaign, Villaraigosa said the mayor should have responsibility over the schools, but he sought Friday to avoid sounding confrontational.

“Ultimately, the mayor should have responsibility,” he said, but added, “You don’t do that by government edict. You don’t do that by just interjecting yourself. You do that by winning trust, creating collaboration and convincing people that what we have right now is not working.”