A Megabuck Deal With a Funny Smell

In May, five dedicated Los Angeles city employees and two consultants, all traveling on the public dime, went to London and France to look at public privies.

As a result of the Potty Patrol’s hard work, Los Angeles--where the median price of a home is $242,620--will soon be getting 150 toilets that cost about $250,000 each.

If you’re like me, questions abound.

For starters, why do seven people need to go all the way to London and France to inspect commodes?

Perhaps the question answers itself.

Let’s say, for the sake of discussion, that the toilets in question were located in Toledo, Ohio. Only under threat of immediate dismissal could you drag more than two city employees away from their workstations for that junket.

I’m still trying to find out what the six-day European head-hunting mission cost us, but we get an indication from Assistant City Atty. Christopher Westhoff. He says his portion ran $1,300.

“I’m astounded that we needed seven people there, and I quite frankly question that the trip was necessary at all,” says City Controller Laura Chick, who is scavenging City Hall in search of invoices. She said she’s at $7,000 and counting.

“I’ve been there and I could have told them how the toilets work,” Chick adds. “My God, pick up the phone and call the mayor of Paris and London and ask what you need to know.”

Next up, I suppose, is the question of why a toilet will cost more than a typical L.A. house, most of which come with at least two toilets, a garage and a palm tree.

“They’re very sophisticated,” says Lynne Ozawa, a legislative analyst who was on the European trip.

For a quarter-million dollars, I don’t want sophisticated. I want the royal throne, with one palace guard to collect my quarter and another to yank the flush chain.

I’m told that the self-cleaning toilets, which will be set up where you’d ordinarily find tourists or the homeless, have to be connected to sewer and power lines. That will cost a few bucks, but still.

Fortunately the city won’t have to pay a nickel for these latrines. In return for providing the toilets and hundreds of bus shelters and kiosks, a French-American company called Infinity Decaux LLC will have the right to sell advertising on those and other public structures over the next 20 years.

Speaking for myself, I knew of no groundswell campaigns for sidewalk outhouses or for yet more advertising clutter on L.A. streets.

Do we really need several hundred more posters of some moron with a milk mustache?

But the city likes the deal because it will get 20% of the ad revenue or $150 million, whichever is greater. Or so goes the assumption.

Unfortunately, the Potty Patrol that traipsed across Western Europe was no Magnificent Seven. Despite chatting up European officials who do business with public toilet companies, they completely missed the real scoop.

In the last 10 years, Decaux contracts have been investigated 15 times by French authorities, and six of those contracts were terminated as a result.

The founder of the company, an industrious gent, got smacked with a one-year suspended sentence in 1992 for spending $30,000 on campaign expenses and luxury vacations for the mayor and other officials of a Belgian town.

And he is currently appealing a conviction last year for “conspiring to restrict free and equal access to a public bid process” in France.

But even after all this was brought to the attention of the L.A. City Council, they still went with Decaux over another bidder. Now the city is in the process of writing up the contract.

My advice, before they cross Ts and dot I’s, is that they send the Potty Patrol up to San Francisco.

It ain’t France, of course, but the food ain’t bad. And some of the public toilets installed by none other than Decaux have been a magnet for drug dealers and prostitutes. On Monday, a city official proposed a law to ban partying in the privies.

“The junkies and hookers take these things over in some locations,” says Supervisor Tony Hall, who otherwise likes the public toilets. “They’ll get two people inside and they don’t come out for half an hour.”

The possibilities are endless. You could book a deejay, throw a rave, charge admission.

A trip to San Francisco would also reveal that one-fourth of the toilets don’t work because of vandalism, as Decaux flack Howard Sunkin admitted to me yesterday.

And then there’s the 1996 letter San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown sent to Decaux threatening legal action if the company didn’t tear down some ads and cough up more money. Brown seemed much happier with Decaux after a trip to France.

In the interest of public service, as well as fairness and accuracy, a guy has to wonder if they’ve got junkets for columnists.

Steve Lopez can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com.