End of an epic ethic epoch

The May 2, 2007 Los Angeles Times headline reads, “L.A. Mayor accused of ethics lapses.” The words immediately shape a mental image of Antonio Villaraigosa lurking in a darkened room and issuing Nixonian orders to shadowy henchmen. Did he hiss instructions to some aide, telling him to fake a few photos of a political opponent inside a Wal-Mart? Did he steal the church collection box and use the money to promote school reform? Whatever it was, he must have done something unethical, at least in the opinion of the people who ought to know: the staff of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission.

In fact, the executive director of the commission accused Villaraigosa of 31 violations of city campaign finance laws [pdf], stemming from his hard-fought and successful challenge to Nick Pacheco for a City Council seat in 2003. The mayor is conceding on most of the counts, which deal with taking too much cash from particular donors and failing to file information with the commission. He’s fighting on other counts over whether contributions actually were made to his council campaign or went instead to his transition fund. At issue is not whether he cheated, or if he has flimsy ethics, or whether he hires from a cesspool of shady campaign workers, but simply whether he violated campaign finance laws, for whatever reason.

Several members of the Ethics Commission in its current makeup have worried aloud in recent years that they slap candidates with ethics charges far too readily. The problem, especially as articulated by commission President Gil Garcetti, is that the commission’s crack audit staff finds violations, the enforcement staff alleges the violations and proposes a settlement, and the next thing you know a newspaper is branding someone with bookkeeping glitches unethical.

Garcetti may have a point. If his panel were called the City Campaign Finance Compliance Commission, there’s a good chance the same violation would produce a headline that reads, “Mayor accused of campaign finance lapses.” But it’s called the Ethics Commission, so Villaraigosa is accused of ethics lapses.

He’s not alone. Every city campaign is audited, and if a candidate intentionally or inadvertently took more than the maximum allowable contribution from any donor, the Ethics Commission’s staff will find it. The candidate will get nailed, usually with a modest fine, which usually will be paid by more donations. The settlements and the fines will be reported in the newspaper, as they should be. There will often be some grousing about being unfairly tagged as unethical. It’s easy to sympathize.

But the sympathy should go only so far. No campaign has ever been successfully challenged based on newspaper headlines about Ethics Commission actions. Members of Mayor Jim Hahn’s inner circle had their share of ethics issues, but Hahn’s 2005 mayoral election loss to Villaraigosa had nothing to do with any commission ruling. Still, members of the city’s preeminent regulatory and oversight body have considered lowering fines or softening enforcement because they don’t like the way newspapers report their actions. That’s simply chilling.

The city has campaign finance laws to make sure that no single candidate gets an unfair advantage over his or her opponents. There’s no point having contribution limits and reporting requirements if they are applied loosely, or unevenly. When Councilman Jack Weiss was fined for failing to file copies of his campaign mailers—violating a law put in place to allow the public to see what message he was sending to voters—several commissioners suggested that the law wasn’t important enough to be enforced. Villaraigosa, to his credit, is not challenging the charges that he, too, failed to file mailers. We can hope that the commission won’t again try to undermine its enforcement staff by deciding to let the candidate off the hook for the violations.

Through most of the 1990s the Ethics Commission was a tough and even-handed enforcer of city campaign finance laws. The last five years have seen a continuing and creeping capture of the panel by the same campaign finance industry it is supposed to oversee. The audits continue and enforcement actions are brought, but it’s no longer the case that every violation will result in commission action. It’s now impossible to predict just what the panel will do in any given case, and that makes enforcement an increasingly hit-and-miss proposition.

Garcetti’s tenure on the commission ends June 30. His replacement is to be named—and here’s some irony for you from the institutional-capture/nepotism department—by his son, council President Eric Garcetti. Both Garcettis, by the way, got in trouble last year for an illegal donation from the father to the son’s City Council campaign.

But Eric Garcetti is a staunch proponent of clean campaigns and has in his power the chance to steady the panel with a careful appointment. A bad pick could make the commission a permanent possession of the political establishment, and elected officials would no longer have anything to fear but newspaper headlines.

Robert Greene is a member of The Times’ editorial board. Send us your thoughts at opinionla@latimes.com.