Disputed hospital project spurs calls for Santa Clarita to OK ethics code

The effort to expand Santa Clarita’s largest hospital has generated controversy for months, with residents packing public hearings and council meetings stretching past midnight. Now it has spurred calls for the city to establish a formal code of ethics, something already in place in the county’s largest cities.

Community activists and others say some interoffice city e-mails raised questions about whether hospital representatives and city officials had already agreed on the expansion without a full public airing.

But the demands for new ethics guidelines have rankled some council members, who say that the move is part of a larger political agenda and that they are offended by suggestions that city staff are not abiding by rules already in place.

A code has been needed “for a long time, but we need it more than ever now. It’s necessary to restore faith,” said Bruce McFarland, a community activist and founding organizer of the fledgling Santa Clarita Valley Ethics Alliance. “We are the largest city in Los Angeles County without a code of ethics.”

City officials agreed late Tuesday to investigate whether a specific code is necessary but stopped short of committing to adopt one.

Instead of an ethics code, Santa Clarita -- the fourth-largest city in Los Angeles County, with a population of about 180,000 -- has a “Philosophy.” The document states that “we value ethics,” and underscores the city’s commitment to legality and equality. Council members are also bound by state laws that regulate the conduct of elected officials.

Los Angeles, Long Beach and Glendale, the county’s largest cities, have ethics codes, as do many smaller Southern California cities. Ethics codes are not a set of laws, but a set of detailed guidelines governing employees’ conduct.

Experts in local governance said ethics rules specifically tailored for a city are crucial for building public trust.

“When you adopt this and make it yours, it means something special as opposed to saying that the state Legislature has required that you adopt these laws,” said Judy Nadler, a senior fellow in government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. “It shows you believe in the best principle of good governance, you have confidence in your ability to govern, you are listening to your constituents.”

Supporters of the new ethics alliance want written regulations to include guidelines for officials’ conduct and how they govern; consequences for noncompliance; and an independent review panel. Supporters are also calling for lobbyists to be registered with the city.

Nadler, a former two-term mayor of Santa Clara, where she helped establish a code of ethics and values, said such guidelines should ideally apply to city employees, vendors and volunteers -- “anyone who does business with the city.”

At Tuesday’s Santa Clarita council meeting, some officials said they were offended by allegations that city employees might be unprincipled.

“To make an accusation or suggest that we have no ethics is just wrong!” Councilman Bob Kellar shouted from the dais. He said he “felt hurt” that some people would take such an approach to “a fine, hard-working group of people.”

Mayor Marsha McLean said: “When I hear some of the ridiculous statements. . . I just sigh.” Although she said she was “not afraid” to write a code of ethics, she added, if people were familiar with the laws governing the conduct of elected officials, they would understand that “it would be very difficult to be unethical.”

Councilman Frank Ferry expressed concern that the issue was being politicized. Many of the organizations and individuals supporting the new ethics alliance are affiliated with the Democratic Party.

All of the City Council members are registered Republicans, though the offices are nonpartisan.

McFarland insisted that his group was nonpartisan. Efforts to establish a code of ethics in Santa Clarita are not new. But the issue reemerged in June when Councilman Tim Ben Boydston interpreted some interoffice e-mails as an indication that senior city planning officials were trying to push through the proposal to expand Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital. Other council members said Boydston had misunderstood the interaction.

In July, Valencia resident Bill Reynolds sent an e-mail to McLean complaining about discrepancies in the hospital plan and requesting that the city send the proposal back to the Planning Commission.

Reynolds received a response from McLean’s e-mail. It appeared to indicate that the hospital project had been agreed upon, Reynolds said. But McLean had not sent the message.

City Manager Kenneth R. Pulskamp told Reynolds in an e-mail that the earlier message had been prepared by city staff, “and then mistakenly sent out from the mayor’s e-mail,” without McLean’s review or approval.

Pulskamp assured Reynolds that the response he got “reflected a technical perspective from staff and certainly did not mean to imply a decision on the hospital has been made.”

Unappeased, Reynolds said he believes that the e-mail gaffe “totally bolsters the need for an ethics program.”

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ann.simmons@latimes.com