Zelman Rejects Ethics Chief Job : City government: The council’s $14,000 cut in his salary showed ‘a fundamental conflict’ over independence, he says.

Walter Zelman, who was to have directed Los Angeles’ new Ethics Commission, turned down the job Wednesday, saying that his decision was prompted by City Council interference with the panel’s independence.

The council and the commission have been battling for the past week over the pay offered to Zelman, the commission’s choice as its first executive director.

Zelman, former head of California Common Cause, a political watchdog group, was to begin work last week, but he balked after the council cut his pay by $14,000. The commission, in conjunction with the city’s Personnel Department, had offered Zelman $90,000 a year, but in a 9-5 vote, the council reduced the proposed salary to $76,254.

“The council wants to keep this commission in check and this was just one little way to do it,” Zelman said Wednesday. “It just happened to be over my salary. It could have been over anything.”

Zelman called the issue a “fundamental conflict” that the council “doesn’t seem to understand.”

The council has the power to set the ethics chief’s salary within a range spelled out by the sweeping ethics ordinance approved by the voters in June. However, the Ethics Commission and the Personnel Department had assumed that the council would not interfere with their decision to offer Zelman the top pay rate, officials have said.

City Council President John Ferraro said Wednesday that he regrets Zelman’s decision to turn down the job, but he defended the council’s action.

“The council felt rather strongly that he shouldn’t be treated any differently than any other employee,” Ferraro said. City employees start at the bottom salary in their assigned range and work their way up, he said.

“We have a principle, too. People start out at the first step,” Ferraro said.

Within six months, Zelman would have been making $85,000 because of a cost-of-living raise and other increases, Ferraro said.

“They made a big issue out of not a very big difference,” he said.

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who opposed the ethics legislation last year, started the movement to cut Zelman’s pay last week, citing the city’s poor economic condition. Yaroslavsky was out of town Wednesday and could not be reached for comment.

Dennis Curtis, the USC law professor who chairs the commission, called Zelman’s withdrawal “a real shame” and said the council’s action was “a frontal assault on the independence of the commission.

“Now,” Curtis said, “we go back to square one, basically. This is going to set us back a lot.”

Curtis rejected the contention that the city cannot afford the $90,000 salary.

“I very much doubt that this was an economy measure,” Curtis said. “The only money spent on this ethics ordinance so far has gone to the City Council raises.”

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 placed on the ballot by the council. The measure also included a 40% raise for the City Council; the raise took effect in July.

The tough new ethics laws contained in Proposition H took effect Jan. 1, and the commission charged with overseeing them is attempting to hire a staff. Zelman was to be the first employee.

Curtis said the commission will have to begin searching for someone else to take the job.

“This problem is not going to go away,” Curtis said. “We want somebody who will not be afraid to take this job because of what has happened so far.”

Curtis said he and the four other members of the commission will not resign because of the battle with the council.

Councilwoman Joy Picus, who voted against cutting Zelman’s pay, said Wednesday that she is disappointed with his withdrawal and sees no possibility of the council reversing its decision. She predicted that the commission may have difficulty finding a qualified replacement.

“I don’t think that the good candidates will necessarily come to work for $76,000,” Picus said.

Zelman ran unsuccessfully for 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.

Zelman said Wednesday that he has several other job offers, but declined to be specific.