Ventura Law School Dean to Head L.A. Ethics Panel : Government: Benjamin Bycel will enforce a tough new set of regulations for municipal officials.

The man credited with rescuing the Ventura College of Law from near ruin five years ago has been chosen to become the first ethics officer for Los Angeles city government.

Benjamin Bycel, the school’s dean since 1986, was selected by the Los Angeles Ethics Commission to be its staff director and enforce an ethics law approved by city voters last year, commission President Dennis Curtis said Thursday.

“The idea of getting paid to reform the system and make it better is a thrill,” Bycel, 48, of Santa Barbara said. “This is a challenge that couldn’t be sidestepped.”

His friends in Ventura County said the appointment was particularly appropriate for an educator who stresses ethics and values to his students.

“His commitment to the concept of an ethical society goes to the very core of his being,” said Ventura County Superior Court Judge Steven Z. Perren, a member of the college’s board of directors. “He wants to see justice done in a very real sense.”

Bycel, a lawyer in Santa Barbara for 15 years, was appointed dean by the California Bar Assn. after a 1985 scandal that nearly brought down the Ventura College of Law and the jointly run Santa Barbara College of Law.

The state attorney general’s office had filed a lawsuit against then Dean Fred J. Olsen and four former board members alleging that Olsen misappropriated funds and the board failed to scrutinize spending. Olsen and the board members resigned, leaving the college in financial shambles.

“He took over at its darkest hour and elevated it to a very reputable school,” Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury said. “He will be very hard to replace, but he leaves it in good shape for his successor.”

The Los Angeles Ethics Commission, which chose Bycel from a field of 100 candidates, was created by Los Angeles voters in June to enforce a tough new set of regulations for city officials, including rigorous financial disclosure laws.

Its first choice for executive director, former California Common Cause Director Walter Zelman, rejected the job after the City Council voted to cut his starting pay from $90,000 to $76,254 a year.

Bycel said he does not object to the salary cut. He makes only a few hundred dollars more a year as the schools’ dean, according to his resume, which also lists between $3,000 and $4,000 a month income from his private law practice.

Bycel is a former Peace Corps volunteer in Africa and Democratic Party functionary who was an Associated Press reporter in New York before becoming legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union in Sacramento.

He is now president of the Santa Barbara County Board of Education and on the state Council for Post-Secondary and Vocational Education. He ran unsuccessfully in 1986 for the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors.

In taking over as dean, Bycel sought to provide an affordable legal education for people seeking to make career changes or who were unable to enter more prestigious law schools.

“He made it a school for the common person,” Bartley Bleuel, president of the Ventura County Bar Assn., said.

Bycel is also credited with starting a free legal clinic for the poor, run by his students and faculty, that provides advice on family law and debt-credit law.

The nonprofit college, on Market Street near Telephone Road in Ventura, has about 175 students enrolled in its 3 1/2- and 4-year programs. It is accredited by the California Bar Assn., which is sufficient to qualify for the bar exam in California but not in many other states that require American Bar Assn. accreditation.

The state bar said 57.1% of Ventura College of Law graduates passed the California bar exam in July on their first attempt. The average pass rate for students from schools with state accreditation was 49.9%, and 81.5% for students from nationally accredited schools.

Robert L. Monk, president of the college’s governing board, said the board will meet in May to discuss hiring a new dean for the fall semester. Bycel will remain through the end of May and continue as a consultant until his successor arrives, Monk said.

Generally regarded as an outspoken workaholic, Bycel said his first goal as ethics director will be to assemble a staff and office procedures by July. Once that is done, he said he would be only to happy, for the public’s sake, to find himself idle in his new position.

“If everyone abides by the law, and we have nothing to do,” Bycel said, “that would be fine with me.”

Times staff writer James Rainey contributed to this story.