City Hall Offices Used to Aid Walters Campaign : Politics: Six staffers helped council bid by Bradley ally, records and interviews show. Mayor issues reprimands.

At least six aides to Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley used City Hall offices and equipment to assist the City Council campaign of Rita Walters, the candidate endorsed by the mayor in the 9th District race, according to interviews and records.

City Hall computers were used to solicit staff members’ help for Walters, who is a Los Angeles school board member and longtime Bradley ally. Bradley staff members subsequently wrote briefing papers for Walters on city issues, provided documents from their files and met with her to answer questions about their areas of expertise, The Times found.

Bradley’s chief of staff, Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani, sent a computer message last Friday asking staff members to attend a fund-raising event for Walters.

The assistance began in January, less than two months after the Los Angeles Police Department opened an investigation into possible misuse of city resources by the mayor’s staff during three of Bradley’s campaigns.

Following inquiries from The Times, Bradley on Wednesday reprimanded six staff members--including Fabiani--for creating “the perception that they used either city time or city facilities to assist an ongoing campaign,” according to spokesman Bill Chandler.

Two aides were ordered to reimburse the city for a “small amount of staff time and computer time,” Chandler said. The penalties totaled $37, the equivalent of one hour’s pay for each.

Fabiani, who is vacationing in Hawaii, was reprimanded by phone for sending a computer message to mayoral aides last Friday soliciting volunteers to “boost the crowd” at a Walters fund-raiser held by Bradley and Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky on Sunday.

“This afternoon I called a number of staff members into my office,” Bradley said Wednesday in a written statement. “I wanted them to hear directly from me my outrage. . . . I will not tolerate even the appearance of a violation of my policy” banning campaign activity in City Hall.

A century-old state law prohibits city, county and state officials and their aides from using taxpayer resources for campaign purposes. The law, the California Supreme Court said, is intended to ensure that government does not “bestow unfair advantage” to anyone in an election contest.

The law requires that campaign work be performed on personal time, generally outside business hours, and not involve use of government resources such as staff, supplies, typewriters, copiers and telephones, according to guidelines prepared by the state attorney general.

Walters, who faces City Council aide Bob Gay in a June 4 runoff, said Wednesday she solicited help from Bradley’s office to familiarize herself with city issues and saw nothing improper about the request or the assistance she received. The briefings and materials she obtained were similar to those offered to the mayor’s constituents every day, she said.

“There didn’t appear to be anything that wasn’t already in the public domain,” Walters said. They included “documents that were already published, press releases, copies of newspaper articles,” she said.

Gay, a longtime deputy to the late 9th District Councilman Gilbert Lindsay, said Wednesday that he will ask the city attorney and the state Fair Political Practices Commission to investigate. He called Bradley’s actions against the staff members “a slap on the wrist.”

“I’m chagrined . . . that this kind of thing goes on inside City Hall and the mayor’s office,” Gay said.

Bradley summoned four staff members into his office Wednesday afternoon to deliver “verbal reprimands,” Chandler said. The four are Gary Boze, area coordinator for South-Central Los Angeles; Wendy Greuel, an aide for social issues; Michael Bodaken, the mayor’s housing coordinator, and Wendy Harmon, an environmental aide.

Bradley planning aide Jane Blumenfeld was reprimanded by telephone, Chandler said. The reprimands will not be entered in the staffers’ personnel files, and no further disciplinary action is planned, he said.

The staff members could not be reached for comment late Wednesday, but in interviews earlier this week, several acknowledged assisting Walters.

At least three held meetings with Walters to brief her on issues in the 9th District. Walters said she also discussed legal matters with Bradley legal adviser Jane Ellison outside City Hall as she contemplated entering the council race in January.

The attorney said Walters, who moved to the 9th District after Lindsay’s death in December, asked questions about the city’s residency requirement for council candidates. Ellison said there was nothing improper about the session.

Several aides also compiled written materials from City Hall files for Walters, including press releases and newspaper clippings, according to interviews.

In one instance, Harmon, the environmental aide, wrote a four-page briefing paper on water conservation, recycling and trash collection. She said Tuesday the paper, written on a City Hall computer during regular working hours, had been requested by Boze, the office’s main contact with the Walters campaign.

Harmon stated in the memo, addressed to Boze, that she prepared it “per the mayor’s instruction as relayed by you.”

Chandler said the mayor had never requested that the memo be prepared or that any other help be provided to Walters. Boze said, “She’s never heard from me that I wanted something per the mayor’s instructions.”

Boze said he requested the paper for his own use, but later shared the information with Felicia Bragg, Walters’ campaign manager and an old friend.

Harmon met over lunch with Walters on May 15 to discuss the issues outlined in the paper. “I have worked on her campaign and I’ve been involved in her campaign,” Harmon said Tuesday of her City Hall activities on behalf of Walters.

“Gary Boze has asked me to do a number of things,” she said, confirming that she received at least two messages on her City Hall computer from Boze about the Walters campaign.

A Feb. 21 computer message identified Boze as the author and said the mayor “has asked that breifing (sic) papers be drawn up for Rita, so I do appreciate your assistance.” A second message, sent to several staff members on April 19 under Boze’s name, asked for volunteers to meet with Walters.

“Some of you have already graciously provided briefing papers, but I have found that Rita will need to sit down and ask you questions as well,” the message stated. “I would like to start arranging these meetings next week. So please let me know of your interest . . . “

Boze said Wednesday that he could neither confirm nor deny that he wrote or sent the messages. “It’s possible,” he said. “I don’t remember.”

Boze said that he solicited the assistance of several Bradley aides on the telephone and in person at City Hall. “What I did was ask people who wanted to volunteer their time to get with Rita,” he said. “The policy of the . . . mayor’s office is not to use the computer to do these kinds of things. And I think I abided by that.”

Walters said that Boze provided her with the names and phone numbers of mayoral aides who agreed to consult with her on a range of city issues. She said she used the list to arrange briefing sessions with the staff members. Boze said that he could not recall giving Walters such a list.

On Wednesday, Bradley ordered Boze to reimburse the city $24 for using staff and computer time to assist the Walters campaign, Chandler said. Harmon was ordered to repay $13.

Blumenfeld, the planning deputy, said she met with Walters for one hour on May 14 outside City Hall on her lunch hour and later wrote a letter on her City Hall computer answering several questions that came up during the meeting. Included with the letter were copies of six community plans covering the 9th District, she said.

Blumenfeld said she regularly provides such assistance to “any constituent out there asking questions about planning issues.”

Walters said that she met with Greuel, the deputy for social issues, at 7:15 a.m. on a work day in her office in the mayor’s suite at City Hall. Greuel said she did nothing improper. “I get a lot of requests from people, whether elected officials running for office or not, about issues,” she said.

Bodaken, the housing adviser, had scheduled a lunchtime briefing session with Walters on Tuesday but the meeting was canceled because of a scheduling mix-up. Chandler said Bodaken was reprimanded for arranging the meeting. Reached earlier, Bodaken said he saw nothing wrong with meeting with Walters on his own time.

Last November, The Times reported that the mayor’s staff operated a political fund-raising network inside City Hall for at least five years and that Bradley campaign-related work was performed by city staff, using city offices and equipment. At the time, Bradley ordered his top deputy Fabiani to review issues raised by The Times story.

“It would be a mistake to assume that the events discussed in The Times are relevant to the mayor’s office today,” Fabiani said at the time, noting that most of the disclosures involved the 1985 and 1986 campaigns.

The disclosures prompted a police investigation, which according to Capt. Doug Watson is still under way.

After the disclosures, a memorandum outlining state law was circulated to the mayor’s staff by Ellison. It advised staff members that they could volunteer to work on a political campaign, but that they could not use city resources or time. Ellison wrote that the law offers “some leeway” for such things as an occasional campaign-related telephone call, but she said the mayor “does not permit any leniency.”

Campaign Assistance in Question

After Mayor Tom Bradley endorsed longtime ally Rita Walters in the 9th Council District race, members of the mayor’s City Hall staff prepared information on city issues and provided briefings to Walters, who faces a June 4 runoff with Bob Gay.

According to records and interviews, City Hall computers were used to solicit help from mayoral staff members for the Walters campaign, documents were prepared on city equipment and some materials from files in the mayor’s office were mailed to the Walters campaign.

After inquiries by the Times, Bradley reprimanded six staff members for creating the “perception” that they improperly used city time or property.

A state law prohibits city, county and state officials and their aides from using taxpayer resources for campaign purposes.

* Computer message from Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani invites mayor’s City Hall staff to a Walters fundraiser being sponsored by Bradley and Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky.

* Gary Boze, Bradley liaison for South-Central Los Angeles, sends computer message to mayoral staff members soliciting their help with the Walters campaign.

* In a briefing paper prepared “per the mayor’s instruction,” staff member Wendy Harmon outlines information on environmental issues facing the district. Harmon says she prepared the document on a city computer and Boze says the information was relayed to the Walters campaign.