Ethics Panel Urges Council to Restore Director’s Salary

Los Angeles’ fledgling Ethics Commission voted as a “matter of principle” Friday to urge City Council members to reverse their decision to reduce the salary promised to the city’s first ethics chief.

“The issue wasn’t money,” said Ed Guthman, who sits on the five-member commission. “The issue was the commission’s independence.”

Last Tuesday, the council cut the pay offered to Walter A. Zelman, the commission’s choice for executive director. In conjunction with the city’s Personnel Department, the commission had offered Zelman $90,000 a year. But in a 9-5 vote, the council reduced the salary to $76,254.

Zelman was to begin work Wednesday, but has refused to assume the job because of the pay cut and called the council’s action an attack on the commission’s independence.

“The issue is not me or my salary,” Zelman said Friday. “The issue is the relationship between the commission and the council.”

Zelman, former director of California Common Cause, ran unsuccessfully for the post of state insurance commissioner last year. He was a leading critic of the power wielded by special interests in government and an advocate of public financing of election campaigns.

The commission vote to support Zelman was unanimous. Commissioner Treesa Way Drury, was absent.

Guthman, a USC journalism professor, said Friday that the squabble over pay was embarrassing and added that the commissioners felt very strongly that Zelman should not take the job at the lower rate. “We would not have let him do it,” Guthman said.

The move to cut Zelman’s proposed pay was led by Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who argued that the city’s budget could not afford the $90,000 salary.

Yaroslavsky said Friday that the reduction had nothing to do with Zelman. He said he told the city’s Personnel Department before Zelman was selected that he would not support a $90,000 salary.

The Ethics Commission and the ethics chief job were created by voters in June through passage of Proposition H, a wide-ranging ethics-in-government package.

The tough new ethics laws contained in Proposition H took effect Jan. 1, and the commission is attempting to hire a staff. Zelman was to be the first employee. Guthman said the commission may now have to begin searching for a new director to take Zelman’s place.

After the meeting Friday morning, Guthman and Commission Chairman Dennis Curtis met with City Council President John Ferraro and Councilwoman Joy Picus to urge reconsideration of the matter, Guthman said.

Picus had voted against the pay cut, but Ferraro had voted for it.

“We had a very cordial conversation and they’re gonna think it over,” Guthman said.