Ethics Fever Has Council Smoldering : City Hall: Publicly, members seem agreeable to reforms. But a battle is brewing over proposals that could change the rules of local politics.

In the warren of offices at City Hall, a wickedly snide takeoff on new proposals to govern the ethics of government officials is circulating.

“No elected official, officers, general manager or employee shall enjoy the respect of the public for any reason,” it declares, its form and language aping the stilted bureaucratese of an ethics document crafted over the last eight months by a mayoral commission.

The two-page spoof has drawn some fans. Hidden behind the agreeable nods of City Council members who have studiously called for ethics reform in the wake of conflict-of-interest allegations raised against Mayor Tom Bradley, an oddly defined and occasionally angry battle is brewing over proposals that could markedly change the rules of politics in the city.

As hearings begin into the package’s future, the ethics debate has made for strange and ironic maneuverings. Two council members usually identified with political reform have lined up against it. Mayor Bradley, whose controversial financial dealings spawned the proposals, has defended it.

But most council members have taken to their bunkers, fearful that any spoken objections will be used to slay them at the polls. The reason, simply, is the apple-pie nature of the ethics issue--and the vows of the ethics commission to take the matter to the voters if the council does not approve the package by February.

Councilman-turned-lobbyist Arthur K. Snyder derides a 40-page draft ethics ordinance as “a ridiculous amount of overkill” in response to Bradley’s crisis. But he nevertheless aptly describes the treacherous turf now treaded by the council, particularly those members inclined to question specific reforms.

“It’s sort of like being against motherhood. Maybe worse,” he said.

The first public hearing on the proposals by the Commission to Draft an Ethics Code for Los Angeles City Government, the group appointed by the mayor last spring when questions about his behavior first surfaced, was held before the council’s ad hoc ethics committee on Thursday. Two hearings are scheduled this week before the committee sends its recommendations to the full council in January.

The commission’s sweeping report, if approved, not only would outlaw the financial transactions that drew Bradley into controversy, but would also vault Los Angeles into the tight circle of cities nationwide that have launched exhaustive reforms to quell public suspicion of government officials.

It would expand the city’s financial disclosure requirements, ordering senior and elected officials to release information not only about their investment holdings but also other items like home mortgages. A city ethics commission, modeled after the state Fair Political Practices Commission, would ride herd on unethical behavior. The enforcement powers of the city attorney would be broadened, a special prosecutor could be named in sensitive cases, and ethics training would be required for city employees.

In what are considered the most controversial aspects, the reforms also would outlaw the earning of outside income, all gifts and honorariums, and would order the public financing of city political campaigns. In California, only Sacramento County has approved public campaign financing.

In only the first council committee session on the matter, the touchy nature of the future debate was unleashed--paradoxically, by Councilman Ernani Bernardi, who for years fought his peers to invoke campaign reform, and by Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, whose successful 1987 campaign against then-Council President Pat Russell established Galanter’s reputation as an outsider willing to take on the political Establishment.

“Please don’t be rushed into this thing! Don’t be steamrollered!” Bernardi bellowed to his fellow council members Thursday, expressing particular resentment at his longtime nemesis, public campaign financing.

Galanter too has voiced trepidation about adopting the commission’s proposals in total, arguing specifically that requiring up to 1,500 city employees to get the city’s and the commission’s permission to take a second job could violate their right to privacy.

Many council members are said to privately share the concerns spoken by Bernardi and Galanter but have sat out the debate so far. Around City Hall, Galanter’s role in particular has drawn quizzical expressions. Most figure that she is in the best position of any council member to articulate the concerns of her silent brethren.

“She’s just like Nixon going to China on this issue,” said Chief Deputy City Atty. John Emerson, a political veteran who equated her role with that of the staunchly anti-Communist Republican President, whose overtures to a Communist nation were arguably better received than a Democrat’s would have been.

“Ruth Galanter can stand up and criticize an ethics package because there are few in government who are as conscientious as she,” he added. “My sense is she is saying what a lot are thinking, but are wary of articulating in the context of ethics fever.”

But Galanter too is careful to note that her opposition is limited and she favors some reform. Other council members suggest that her current role as a lightning rod for debate on the issue is a dangerous one.

“There is some political risk for her to be raising this,” said Michael Woo, like Galanter a member of the council’s ad hoc ethics committee. “She runs the risk of forfeiting the political capital she’s raised.”

Woo and other council members have indicated they felt pressured to approve the commission’s recommendations virtually before reading them, given the heated atmosphere surrounding the issue. Immediately after the commission issued its report in late November--and before it wrote a draft ordinance that spelled out the reforms--council members Gloria Molina and Marvin Braude endorsed the package. Their move, in effect, posed a challenge to the others.

In his case, the ever-cautious Woo said he fears that by delaying an endorsement, he has stoked suspicions of himself.

“I think it raised questions about . . . whether I as a councilman was less enthusiastic about ethics than others,” said Woo, who said he is still forming his views on the matter.

Ethics reforms typically wind through legislative bodies at a snail’s pace, as does any issue that touches immediately on the livelihoods of council members and their staffs. Indeed, the council ad hoc committee has been tied up for months in a dispute over a competing ethics package proposed by Woo, Braude and council President John Ferraro. Reforms aimed at regulating City Hall lobbyists languished for years before the council last week ordered the city attorney to draft new rules. And Bernardi sought for a decade to reform campaign financing before taking the matter, in initiative form, successfully to the voters in 1985.

But any long-term delay on the new package has been virtually precluded by a deft political move by the ethics commission that issued the proposals. Geoffrey Cowan, the panel’s chairman, vowed when he issued the report that if the council did not approve the package by February, the commission and prominent supporters would take the issue to the voters via an initiative. The group appears to have the financial resources to back up its threat.

In the shorthand of a campaign, any reluctance to approve ethics reform could easily be construed as an anti-ethics position--or so many officials fear. Cowan has indicated the commission will accept some changes in its plan, if they are deemed improvements, but he said the commission remains insistent that taxpayer financing of campaigns and the ban on outside income remain part of the deal.

Asked whether he had the council votes--the “head count” in political parlance--to guarantee approval of those reforms, Cowan smiled and pointedly reinforced the commission’s threat.

“In certain respects, my head count is the voters of Los Angeles,” he replied.

Cowan and those who support the commission’s report argue that taxpayer financing is necessary to fight the public perception that council decisions are dramatically affected by campaign contributions.

Under the formula currently being considered, City Council candidates who are able to raise at least $25,000 on their own will be eligible for up to $133,000 in matching city funds for each election. City attorney and controller candidates could receive up to $333,000 each and mayoral contenders up to $667,000 each in matching funds.

At the same time, council candidates who asked for public money would be limited to spending no more than $400,000 for each primary and general election, while city attorney and controller candidates would have to stop at $1 million and mayoral candidates at $2 million.

Overall, Cowan estimated that the financing would cost the city’s taxpayers up to $2 million per year, in addition to the $1.8 million per year operating price tag for the city ethics commission.

Galanter said she is concerned that the costs could spiral.

“Nobody has looked in any detail at what the costs will be,” she said. “What the public is buying, when they write letters saying pass it, is (the council) writing a blank check.”

Another city official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity but who is familiar with council opinions about the proposed reforms, predicted that “the public financing of campaigns is going to be separated from the package.”

Tinkering with the proposed ban on outside income--which is included in both the ethics commission report and the competing proposal drafted by Woo, Ferraro and Braude--may prove more difficult, for it strikes at the heart of the criticism leveled at Mayor Bradley.

Bradley initially came under fire for accepting payments from two financial institutions in exchange for serving as an adviser or director. Bradley acknowledged that it was a “mistake” to take the money from the firms when they were doing business with the city.

One official who has followed the council’s informal discussions referred to the ban as a “slam dunk”--a move impossible to miss. Others suggest that the council members, many of whom distanced themselves from Bradley when the scandal broke, cannot possibly advocate anything but a ban on outside income because of the political implications.

Council members privately say there are broad disagreements on those and some other specifics, but that most of the proposals stand a good chance of being approved.

“There is no doubt that ethics reform is extraordinarily popular at this point in time--and politicians certainly see that,” said Mark Fabiani, Bradley’s chief of staff.

Curiously, and in marked contrast to the reaction the issue gets among elected officials here and elsewhere, council members report few expressions of interest from their constituents.

“Generally, they know that ‘Ethics with a big E’ is being talked about at City Hall,” said Woo, whose council committee has been convulsed by the issue since spring. “I don’t find an enormous amount of public interest.”