The Bishop’s Squalid Tale

There is blame enough to go around in the squalid story of how Bishop H. H. Brookins enriched himself by manipulating an anti-poverty program administered by the city of Los Angeles.

There is, first of all, blame for a powerful clergyman whose abuse of public trust amounted to an administrative rifling of the poor box. There also is blame for the city officials and members of Mayor Tom Bradley’s Administration, who treated the tax monies their fellow citizens had intended for the poor as if they were a sort of benevolent fund to be distributed among their lodge brothers. There is blame, finally, for the prosecutors whose deference to a politically influential individual led them to conduct an investigation of the case remarkable only for its lack of vigor.

In sum, the Brookins affair is a strikingly instructive example of why Los Angeles desperately needs the independent ethics commission that approval of the reform initiative on the June ballot will provide. Consider these facts:

Ten years ago, Brookins, then head of Los Angeles’ African Methodist Episcopal Church and a longtime Bradley associate, secured $336,000 in federal anti-poverty funds through the city’s Community Development Department (CDD). Officials were told that the money would be used to refurbish a church-owned building that would house job-training programs. In fact, Brookins secretly owned the building, which currently is valued at about $1 million. He also used $26,000 of the federal funds to cover an unspecified “personal obligation.”

CDD officials say that they were pressured to assist Brookins by William Elkins, the mayor’s special assistant. Elkins denies he ever intervened on Brookins’ behalf. Ultimately, the bishop repaid the $336,000 loan, though the city forgave him $46,824 in back interest. The district attorney’s office recently dropped its criminal investigation of Brookins’ conduct because the statute of limitations for fraud and embezzlement charges had elapsed.

However, had the ethics commission provided for in the June ballot proposal been in place, its independent, nonpartisan members and staff could have subpoenaed the relevant records, compelled testimony under oath, conducted public hearings and, if they found cause, imposed a monetary penalty up to three times the amount misappropriated. It is another compelling reason to vote yes on this critical measure.