IT ISN’T JUST BRADLEY : ETHICS QUESTIONS RAISE OTHER BASIC ISSUES

Being mayor of Los Angeles, being just reelected for a fifth term, being Tom Bradley, means never having to say you’re sorry. This is the message gleaned from the extraordinary events preoccupying City Hall this month.

But it is not the only message emanating from the Spring Street tower. As the city continued to wrestle with the questions raised by Bradley’s financial ties, two City Council committees met jointly to review the administration of city funds. Enthralled by the sizzle of City Attorney James K. Hahn’s Sept. 13 report on Bradley’s actions and the mayor’s rebuttal, much of the media let the hearing slip by almost unnoticed.

Nevertheless, the issues raised there, and in the recent city controller’s report--fiscal oversight, government accountability, the politicization of decision making--may ultimately be of greater import for Los Angeles. They go beyond an individual’s questionable behavior to the failure of an entire system. And they strike not just at the political fortunes of one man, but at the heart of city governance.

By filing a civil suit against the mayor for failing to disclose specific financial holdings, Hahn can finally extricate himself from an uncomfortable situation--and do it without sabotaging the Hahn family’s long relationship with Bradley or alienating the mayor’s supporters.

Hahn tossed further prosecution into the laps of two active candidates for higher office, California Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp and Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner. As a result, both men may be stuck with politically risky decisions.

Should they punt, take Hahn’s own conservative approach or trigger a more free-ranging investigation and risk antagonizing Bradley supporters?

That question is particularly tricky for Reiner, who has felony jurisdiction for the city. Running for state attorney general, he needs to build a statewide candidacy. Which constituency might he choose to placate--the Democratic constituency represented by the Bradley coalition, or the white, middle-class “reformers” that he’ll need in a general election?

Although Hahn declined to file conflict-of-interest charges against the mayor, he admonished: “Just because we found no violation of the law does not mean that what the mayor did was right.”

Yet nowhere in his 40-minute statement did the mayor say: “I’m sorry. I was wrong. I made a mistake.” Not a mistake in judgment. Not a mistake in perception. Not a clerical error. A genuine “lawful but awful” blooper.

Such an omission may be evidence of a character flaw, but it has not yet proved politically crippling. A recent Los Angeles Times poll confirmed what the mayor himself finally admitted--his reputation for integrity and his approval rating have suffered. But the same poll indicated there is no critical mass forming in the electorate to force Bradley’s resignation or recall from office. Why?

First of all, the people of Los Angeles just don’t seem to care; they are numb from all this ethics stuff. And the disclosure problems are so arcane--matters for tax accountants and attorneys. Ethics-watching remains the blood sport of an elite few--the media, reformers and political opponents who dare to cast the first stone (a small lot, indeed).

What about the lesson of New York? Questions of corruption may have helped defeat three-term Mayor Edward I. Koch. But Bradley, unlike Koch, is a non-abrasive, personally likable man who does not arouse passionate opposition. He is far less volatile than Koch--and so is his political base.

And this is not an election year. Ethics charges--the Jim Wright and Tony Coelho resignations notwithstanding--are most dangerous in the heat of a campaign. Barring a recall, Bradley won’t soon have to face electoral battle. If this is as bad as it gets, Bradley still seems politically safe.

But will he remain politically potent? Until he leaves office, Bradley retains the formidable powers of appointment and budget. However, much of a mayor’s influence depends on the power of persuasion. That is how policies get shaped and mayoral vetoes are upheld.

As questions linger and the mayor’s image erodes, the City Council is less deferential in its cautious sparring with Bradley, who will apparently have to push harder to achieve his policy goals. Still, Council members will not turn on the mayor until they smell political blood.

At least one city official has been badly wounded. It can be argued that City Treasurer Leonard Rittenberg has fallen victim--at least in part--to a dynamic he was ill-prepared to handle.

In municipal government, public finance has become a high-stakes political game. That is a reflection of what has happened on the state level.

When the late Jess Unruh won the state treasurer’s race, he took a backwater, ministerial office and reshaped it into a fiscal and political powerhouse. Decision-makers at every level were quick to grasp the potential of government’s public finance functions as a source of political power and--for elected officials--a reservoir of needed campaign contributions.

As a result, the rules of the game were suddenly changed. Expectations changed, too. Elected officials courted, more and more aggressively, the underwriters, investment bankers and others who make their living in public finance. And, from the top down, handling the public’s money was no longer simply a ministerial function. The treasurer’s “independent decisions,” as the mayor described them, became enmeshed in the new political realities.

Bureaucrats like the city treasurer haven’t been trained in that political game; they don’t always understand how to play it. Nonetheless, the inept cover-up activities of the men that one wag labeled “the Larry, Darryl and Darryl of the treasurer’s office” suggest that, for whatever reason, Rittenberg and crew tried. Why?

Somewhere, somehow, they must have gotten the message that the system requires bureaucrats to be politically responsive. Even if they got it wrong, indications that the message might have influenced their decisions is cause for concern.

The politicization of public-finance decisions bears directly on what may be the most damning revelation of the Bradley-related investigations. The joint committee hearing disclosed what Councilwoman Joy Picus described as “a gaping hole in how we handle our money.” Where the city’s $5.5-million general-purposes fund is concerned, “nobody,” Picus observed, “is accountable for anything.”

An audit of the Task Force for Africa/Los Angeles Relations--one of Bradley’s pet projects, headed by his friend and business associate Juanita St. John--exposed what Councilman Michael Woo called “a glaring example of incompetent private management and incompetent supervision by city authorities.” The audit also spotlighted a politically sensitive system of “random” controller’s audits that skirt programs paid out of the general-purpose fund “because you’d be in 15 different councilmanic offices,” as Councilman Ernani Bernardi pointed out.

This is not only shoddy management, it is shoddy government. It smells of politics and is a waste of taxpayers’ dollars.

Bradley’s problems, the antics of the treasurer’s office and the city’s oversight failures share common roots. At best they stem from carelessness; at worst they are the product of an arrogant disregard for the responsibilities of governance.

They reflect, too, the damage that the clubbiness of city politics and government can do. Peer pressure sometimes leads to bending ethical standards and skirting procedure. And “logrolling” and “turf” have influenced every turn of this political drama.

It’s not over yet, for Tom Bradley or Los Angeles. But while individuals and reputations may suffer, better government may emerge--at least for a while. That has been the historical pattern. Scandals can cause temporary paralysis. But when gridlock becomes politically risky, governments act. At some point, the public’s business begins to get done--perhaps to compensate for scandalous behavior or to deflect public and media attention from it.

That helps explain what happened in Sacramento this year. Smarting from the FBI’s Capitol investigation and charges of special-interest domination, the California Legislature had one of its most productive sessions in years. Bradley, too, has become more aggressive in his policy initiatives.

There are two lessons for politicians in all of this. The first is that, sooner or later, political survival requires good government. The second can be found on a church marquee observed in Washington: “Nothing is politically right that is ethically wrong.”