Ethics Panel Loses Round With Council

Not surprisingly, the only part of the new Los Angeles ethics law being enforced in a serious manner is the provision giving big pay raises to City Council members and other top officials.

The law created an independent Ethics Commission and gave it a full-time executive director as an enforcer. But last week, the council voted to reduce the salary of the man offered the job, Walter Zelman, from $90,000 to $76,000 a year. And now it looks like Zelman won’t take the job, and the regulatory mechanism created by the ethics law is in a state of suspended animation.

Those of us who watched the ethics fight from the beginning aren’t surprised. Most members of the City Council, while grabbing the pay raises, have never felt much affection for the regulatory features of this highly heralded experiment in municipal reform. Nor have the reformers behind the law ever shown much of an understanding of the 15 egos that comprise the City Council.

The law was proposed by an ethics committee appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley after his personal finances came under heavy scrutiny. It provides for partial public financing for campaigns and limits on campaign spending. Outside jobs, honorariums or gifts for top city officials were banned.

But the council extracted a price for ethical perfection. A majority of council members insisted on the pay raises.

Council salaries were raised from $61,522 to $86,157. The mayor’s pay went up 9.2% to $112,004. City Atty. James Hahn jumped 18.6% to $103,388 and City Controller Rick Tuttle’s went to $94,773, a 54% increase. Bradley sends his raise to charity and City Councilman Nate Holden returns his to the city treasury.

When the Ethics Commission was appointed, council members voted to give themselves a role in setting the salary of the executive director. The council approved an amendment to the ethics law permitting it to approve the director’s pay if the salary was above the minimum $76,000.

At that point, the commission was in trouble, although I don’t think the commissioners realized it. If they had, they might not have unanimously picked Zelman as executive director and voted to pay him the top salary of $90,000 a year.

Zelman is a former head of California Common Cause, an organization that often wages its fights against corruption in a guilty-until-proven-innocent manner. Zelman is a master of the Common Cause style. He’s so good at it, in fact, that he’s a favorite name in Rolodexes of political reporters looking for quick, hot quotes.

Zelman had attacked Councilman Hal Bernson for industrious solicitation of campaign contributions. Bernson, said Zelman, had “violated the letter and spirit of state and city campaign finance laws.” Certainly, Bernson, who believes in revenge, could be counted on to give his tormentor a hard time. Other council members, while not embarrassed by the Zelman spotlight, had chased contributions as vigorously as Bernson and sympathized with their battered colleague.

Commission members make a convincing argument that Zelman was the best choice of the 80 contenders they interviewed. His years at Common Cause make him an expert on the evils of political money. His own brief experience as a candidate, losing for state insurance commissioner, provide him with an understanding of a politician’s practical problem. Finally, the commissioners say they should have the independence to set their director’s salary.

As for the pay, both city personnel chief Jack Driscoll and the city administrative office agreed that $90,000 was a fair figure. Zelman, after all, had also been offered an $87,000-a-year job by the new state insurance commissioner, John Garamendi.

Caught up in the logic of its choice, the commission forgot the politics.

But that’s something the council never forgets. Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky had opposed the ethics package from the beginning. He told Driscoll he would oppose giving the commission executive director so much money.

He went around collecting support, so quietly that the Ethics Commission’s main council spokeswoman, Joy Picus, didn’t know what was happening. After the vote, she walked over to Yaroslavsky and said, “Nice job, you took me by surprise.”

“You know how strong I feel about this,” replied Yaroslavsky. “You shouldn’t have been surprised.”

The Ethics Commission clearly miscalculated Yaroslavsky’s determination to fight. It didn’t catch the latent hostility to the ethics law--and to Zelman. On Monday, commissioners tried to change votes on the council without success.

That work should have been done earlier. Now the commission will have to begin a new search for an enforcer.