City Ethics Panel Delays Vote on Fundraising Ban

The Los Angeles Ethics Commission put off voting on a proposal to ban the mayor’s political appointees from campaign fundraising activity after some members expressed misgivings Tuesday and an attorney for Mayor James K. Hahn said the restriction was unnecessary.

City Controller Laura Chick and City Council members Wendy Greuel, Bernard C. Parks and Cindy Miscikowski urged the Ethics Commission to approve the ban amid concerns that city commissioners appointed by Hahn have raised campaign money for Hahn and others while also deciding who should get city contracts.

“Cronyism and pay-to-play politics should have no role in government,” Greuel told the panel. “Unless we clean up the policy-making process by banning political appointees from fundraising, the integrity of our governance system will continue to be challenged.”

Deputy Mayor Carmel B. Sella, who serves as Hahn’s legal counsel, told the panel that the mayor opposes banning political fundraising by the more than 300 city commissioners he appoints. Instead, she said, Hahn believes the Ethics Commission should require city appointees to disclose when they hold fundraisers for elected officials and should enforce an existing law prohibiting city commissioners from soliciting contributions from businesses that have matters pending before them.

Sella said Hahn’s position was “a reasonable approach” that would advance “the goals of open and transparent government.”

Greuel and Parks said disclosure would not go far enough because it would not identify cases in which bidders refuse to contribute to a candidate and then are denied a city contract.

City Redevelopment Commissioner Doug Ring, who is Miscikowski’s husband, and former Ethics and Fire Commissioner David Fleming also supported the fundraising ban in testimony Tuesday.

“This is a pay-to-play city. That’s what most people think,” Fleming said.

Noting that the City Council shelved a similar ban on commission fundraising several years ago, Fleming also urged the Ethics Commission to seek a charter change giving it power to submit proposed reforms directly to the voters.

Ring, who held a Hahn fundraiser last summer, called the current system “unhealthy” and suggested that the panel poll city commissioners on the proposal.

“I think it would be informative for you to find out how many of us fundraise because we want to, and how many of us fundraise because we think it’s obligatory on us,” Ring said.

Ethics Commissioner Dale Bonner, an appointee of former Mayor Richard Riordan, said he had misgivings about adopting a ban although he was aware that Chick has been critical of contracting by the Airport Commission and has asked county and federal prosecutors to look into rumors of a pay-to-play system.

“Generally I’m not favorable to enacting new rules and regulations without at least having some actual evidence or some facts that support that there is a problem,” Bonner said.

The commission, whose members are appointed one each by the mayor, controller, city attorney and two council members, postponed a vote until next month. Chairman Gil Garcetti said that he did not want to act Tuesday with one of the five commissioners absent and that he wanted to invite other city appointees to testify.

Also Tuesday, the Ethics Commission approved an agreement in which the former president of the Los Angeles Convention Center Commission and a hotel he operates will pay $7,637 in fines for providing excessive contributions to Hahn’s 2001 mayoral campaign.

Peter Zen, part owner and chief operating officer of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, admitted making donations in excess of the city’s $1,000 limit on contributions.