Council Approves Ethics Package Tied to Pay Raises

The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday passed a sweeping ethics reform package that revives a proposal to establish public financing of local political campaigns but ties the reforms to pay raises for the council and other elected officials.

The council pay raises, approved by a 10-4 margin, are $8,187 larger than those proposed three weeks ago.

Council salaries would rise by $32,822, or 53%, bringing members’ annual pay to $94,344, the level of Superior Court judges. The mayor would get a $20,110 raise, bringing his salary to $122,647.

The council voted to provide city matching funds to political candidates but placed an $8-million limit on the amount that could be spent over four years. Providing unlimited public financing could have cost taxpayers $27 million, according to city estimates.

The proposed pay raise, public campaign financing and ethics reforms will be linked in a single ballot measure in June, meaning that voters must grant elected officials the pay raise if they want to adopt the reforms.

Several council members said that voter sentiment against the pay raises will be so strong that the entire package will go down to defeat. As originally envisioned, the ethics reforms would have been split into several ballot measures, none calling for pay raises.

“I think that we accomplished absolutely nothing,” Councilwoman Gloria Molina said of Tuesday’s action. “You’re not giving the options to the voters. You’ve linked everything together, and I think what you have done is dismantle any attempt at . . . ethics . . . and campaign reform by adding a $30,000 salary increase to the members of the City Council.

“It makes the statement, ‘I will be honest if you pay me enough,’ ” said Molina, who opposed making the pay raise part of the package.

Some council members may have voted for the pay increases as a way to indirectly defeat other parts of the package that they oppose.

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, a foe of public campaign financing, voted for the pay raises even though he says he opposes them. “I think it makes the whole package more vulnerable,” Yaroslavsky said in an interview. He said he favors the other ethics reforms.

The sponsors of the broad-ranging package pronounced themselves satisfied with the results Tuesday.

Councilman Michael Woo, who has been shepherding the measures through the council, said key provisions of the package were restored.

Through a frenzy of amendments three weeks ago, the council had thrown out the public financing provision and had inserted numerous exceptions to proposed bans on outside work, gifts and honorariums. Under the new proposal, the council reinstated the ban on all outside work and honorariums but allowed elected officials to accept certain gifts.

The result comes close to the compromise worked out in mid-January between Woo and Geoffrey Cowan, head of an ethics-in-government commission appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley one day after his narrow election victory last spring.

Questions about Bradley’s personal finances began to emerge a year ago and are at the heart of the renewed interest in ethics reform that led to passage of Tuesday’s package.

Cowan and several citizens groups had threatened to place a citizens initiative on the November ballot if the council did not pass an ethics package that contained the major provisions of the commission’s proposals.

Cowan called the reforms as they now stand “probably the most comprehensive in the nation.”

“In many respects, it’s probably the toughest in the nation,” he said.

Cowan said that a citizens initiative is now unlikely, but that the paper work for a ballot measure will be filed this week as insurance against the council changing its mind.

The ethics package will be sent back to the council next month for approval of ballot language drafted by the city attorney’s office.

“Technically, it’s another opportunity for the council to tinker with the package,” Woo said.

Woo called the council action “a real accomplishment” because a majority of members voted to ban outside employment and honorariums, and to put public financing and expenditure limits on the ballot. The council showed a “commitment to at least give the voters a chance to enact meaningful campaign finance reform,” said Woo, who voted to include the pay raises.

The reforms hit an unexpected snag Tuesday when representatives of the city attorney’s office issued an opinion saying that the council cannot make the new ethics code apply to city employees who are members of unions without running afoul of labor contracts. As a result, the council made the proposed new code applicable only to elected officials.

The council will attempt to devise ethics guidelines for administrators and others in policy-making positions at a later time, Woo said.

The pay raise was the most politically troublesome feature of the package approved Tuesday, and Councilman Richard Alatorre was one of the few who spoke out in favor of it.

“I do not see anything wrong with linking public financing, salaries and an ethics package,” Alatorre said. “I don’t believe that we are paid adequately for the work that we do. . . . I believe we are worth it.”

Councilman Joel Wachs, who had objected to a number of the provisions banning outside income, said he could support the ban if the proposed pay raises were increased.

The council then approved Wachs’ motion to link council members’ pay to that of Superior Court judges rather than Municipal Court judges, who make $8,000 a year less.

In addition to Molina, council members Marvin Braude, Joy Picus and Joan Milke Flores voted against the raise. Councilwoman Ruth Galanter was not present.

Under the proposal, the mayor’s salary would be 30% higher than that of Superior Court judges. But Bradley said in a letter to the council on Monday that he objects to linking ethics reforms and pay raises and would give his raise to charity.

Woo said Bradley could use his veto power to remove the measure from the June ballot but that he could not single out particular issues, such as the ethics reform proposal. His office had no comment Tuesday on whether he might take such action.