Public campaign funds ... when dinosaurs rise

The City Ethics Commission last week did something provocative: It recommended a system that would make it easier for people like you -- yes, you! -- to run for office in Los Angeles.

The idea is to give ordinary folk a chance by using public dollars to counter the special interest donations that flow to the campaigns of incumbents and insiders.

The new system would provide candidates with hundreds of thousands of dollars to run a campaign on the condition that a candidate can first raise $25,000 from city residents in donations no larger than $250 each.

Imagine the fun if you win. You would get invited to all these neat events, and people would have to actually listen when you talk -- well, at least sometimes.

And if you felt like hiring a staff of people with great smiles and are good at picking up those pencils, well then so be it.

You’re the king, queen, and big kahuna all rolled into one big burrito of power.

There’s one tiny problem....

Will the City Council ever approve a plan that would make it easier for people to run against them?

Yes -- when a dinosaur rises from the La Brea tar pits, dines on City Hall and then successfully sues the city for improperly labeling the building’s nutritional contents.

Hmm. On second thought, I kind of like the dinosaur’s chances in court.

And how will council members rationalize voting against a public financing plan?

They’ll say it costs too much and that taxpayers shouldn’t foot the bill if some whack-job wants to run for office. There is a back story here:

Over the summer, the council voted to put before voters a ballot measure that would ease term limits and impose lobbyist restrictions.

It won at the polls earlier this month, and some members of the Ethics Commission are still not happy that they weren’t consulted, because it was an ethics package.

In that sense, the commission’s action last week was a nice try at barking the council’s shins.

The problem is that the plan, as written, would cost at least $11.6 million a year out of the general fund.

And even that gives pause to the council members who have said they support public financing -- Eric Garcetti, Wendy Greuel and Bill Rosendahl.

“I would never support any general fund money being used for that purpose,” Greuel said.

“If you look at all our priorities, ethics is high up on that list, but I’m not going to jeopardize street repaving, public safety and other programs,” she said.

Ethics Commissioner Robert Saltzman said he understands that funding is a difficult issue, but he hopes that the council will consider the plan -- because it’s a chance to restore people’s faith in government.

“The current system suggests there are connections between who has money [to give] and who is making decisions,” Saltzman said.

“I hear elected officials say all the time that they feel like they spend too much time fundraising, and this is a chance to get out from under that,” Saltzman said.

Is there any alternative to public financing?

The big problem with running for city office is that it requires money -- the kind of money that candidates need special interests to help raise.

This column wonders whether technology at some point will become the great equalizer in city campaigns.

What if a future candidate with little money made a funny video that showed an incumbent doing things like reading a newspaper during a council meeting or spending too much time cutting ribbons?

And what if the candidate posted the video on YouTube and was savvy enough to get news coverage that steered thousands of residents to that video? Could that sort of thing tip an election? It’s already happening at the national level.

There’s a great example of how humor and video can be used for political purposes on Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels’ website.

You can check it out at www.seattle.gov/mayor. Scroll down to the video by the Committee to Save Big Ugly Things and see how Nickels is trying to defuse opposition to a big project he is proposing.

So the council gave a raise to hotel workers near LAX. Are they going to give me a raise too?

Nope.

The council last week extended the city’s living wage ordinance to cover workers at hotels. The ordinance previously applied only to firms that contract with the city.

It was a semi-bold move, considering that it covers only the 3,500 workers at the hotels and not the tens of thousands of people toiling in other tough jobs in Los Angeles.

The federal government sets the minimum wage, which is $5.15. States can set the wage higher, and 16 have, including California, where the minimum is $6.75 and will rise to $7.50 on Jan. 1.

Municipalities can set an even higher minimum, but as far as can be told, only three large cities have: San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Santa Fe, N.M.

It took a ballot measure in 2003 to get it done in San Francisco. The current minimum wage there is $8.82, and it will rise to $9.14 on Jan. 1.

Will that ever happen in L.A.?

“I wouldn’t be in favor of it -- I don’t want Los Angeles to get a reputation as not being friendly to business,” said Rosendahl, one of the prime backers of the LAX hotel plan.

The problem, Rosendahl said, is geography.

If Los Angeles raised the minimum, it would be surrounded by dozens of other cities with the lower wage.

That could literally suck business and workers away from Los Angeles.

Rosendahl said that his great hope is that the Democrats can do something on raising the wage everywhere now that they have control of Congress.

Who is doing a good job of racking up the frequent flier miles?

Council President Eric Garcetti.

He flew from Los Angeles to Seoul early Thursday to participate in a summit of 40-and-under young leaders from 28 countries.

Then, on Sunday, Garcetti flew from Seoul to Boston via Los Angeles, where today he is being honored for his public service by receiving a New Frontier Award from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum and the Institute of Politics at Harvard.

Garcetti is then jetting back to L.A. on Tuesday night, meaning he will have traveled about 17,100 air miles in five days.

We look forward to his in-flight movie reviews in this space next week.

So is state Sen. and Assemblyman-elect Richard Alarcon really going to run for his old job on the council in March?

“I can’t express how serious I am about this,” Alarcon said last week.

After our phone conversation, I picked up my Politics to English Dictionary and found that his statement roughly translates to, “Yes, but I need to first phone a few more potential contributors.”

Alarcon also said he was surprised that, on the same day that voters elected him to the state Assembly, voters in Los Angeles also relaxed term limits for the council.

That made him eligible for another council term.

The ballot measure “made me rethink a lot of things,” he said. “Voters want to reward experience. The 7th District had two consecutive council members” -- himself and Alex Padilla -- “who couldn’t complete the eight years because we had to look elsewhere” to stay in elected office, thanks to term limits.

Alarcon also said he was living in the city’s 6th District in Sun Valley on election day but quickly moved into the home of his girlfriend’s brother in Panorama City to meet a Nov. 9 residency deadline to run for the northeast San Fernando Valley seat.

The question is how an Alarcon candidacy would affect other candidates, including Padilla’s chief of staff, Felipe Fuentes, former Richard Riordan field deputy Monica Rodriguez and Assemblywoman Cindy Montanez (D-San Fernando).

Fuentes, Montanez and Rodriguez said last week that it’s full steam ahead.

“I didn’t jump into this race because of who was and was not in it,” Rodriguez said. “I’m motivated to run to serve this district the way it should be served.”

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steve.hymon@latimes.com