Ethics Panel Chief Snubs Council Hearing on Firing

Los Angeles Ethics Commission President Racquelle de la Rocha, who last month engineered the abrupt firing of the commission’s founding executive director, on Wednesday snubbed a City Council committee hearing on the matter.

Citing concerns that confidential personnel issues would be improperly aired, De la Rocha sent her regrets in a brief written statement delivered to Councilman Mike Feuer as he was about to convene an early morning session of the Rules and Elections Committee.

The absence surprised and exasperated Feuer, who believed he had secured her promise to attend, and it seemed sure to heap more fuel on the controversy. The committee, which did hear from two other ethics commissioners, is considering changes in the city’s anti-corruption system in the wake of the largely unexplained dismissal of Benjamin Bycel on Oct. 20.

“I’m disappointed,” said Feuer, a council newcomer who has made ethics issues a top priority. He termed De la Rocha’s statement “completely unresponsive to the underlying issues” of how to fine-tune the voter-approved ethics law to ensure the independence and credibility of those who oversee it.

De la Rocha, a former member of the state Fair Political Practices Commission, which had often clashed with Bycel, was appointed by Mayor Richard Riordan to head the city commission last summer. Bycel hailed the appointment as an opportunity to heal the rift with the state commission, but by fall it was becoming clear that De la Rocha wanted her own person in the job. Two others on the five-member commission sided with her during a stormy closed-door session that led to Bycel’s dismissal and touched off a continuing City Hall controversy.

Although the mayor’s office and De la Rocha have repeatedly insisted she acted independently, Riordan has come under attack because he appointed her. Bycel, who served at the pleasure of the commission, has threatened to sue the city if he does not get some form of severance pay.

Edwin Guthman and Ann Petroni, the two commissioners who did testify at the hearing, gave their views on proposals to spell out a system for evaluating a director. They also discussed possible changes in the method of appointing commissioners and a proposal to strip the mayor of one of his two appointments.

Another proposal calls for the commission to elect its own president instead of allowing the mayor to choose. All proposals, which were forwarded to the Ethics Commission for review, would require voter approval. Xandra Kayden, a UCLA professor who helped create the city’s ethics system more than five years ago, told the committee the commission’s credibility has been badly damaged by the episode and needs a new president.

“Above all, the Ethics Commission needs to be perceived as fair and just,” Kayden said after the meeting.