The City Council Needs a Code

Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Feuer has rankled some colleagues with his call for a code of conduct for the council. “There is currently no mechanism for the council to deal with a situation when [a member’s] conduct injures the council as a whole,” the Westside/Valley member pointed out Wednesday. “There’s a need for a code of conduct here.”

Feuer is exactly right, but a number of his colleagues looked askance at the idea, calling it intrusive and ripe for abuse. Nevertheless, the plan deserves a fair hearing. The council referred the matter to the city attorney’s office and the Ethics Commission for study, but this action must not bury the proposal.

What Feuer has in mind is a council oversight committee, possibly composed of the council president and president pro tem, the chair of the council’s Rules and Elections Committee, the city attorney and the president of the city’s Ethics Commission. If an investigation was to proceed, a majority would have to agree, with at least one of the majority votes coming from a non-council member.

The organizational aspect might be the easy part. More difficult is the question of just what conduct would come under scrutiny. Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, a lesbian, pointed out that her sex life is illegal in 32 states. Would that mean that her private life would be subject to official review? Well, no. California no longer has sexual offense laws that target homosexuals. According to Feuer, the oversight committee would have to establish wrongdoing and then make the case that it had brought discredit upon the council.

There seems ample precedent for the council to reprimand or censure one of its members in a nonbinding vote. A review of the proposal may show that’s as far as the council could legally go in imposing a code upon its members. Feuer says his intention is to complement the Ethics Commission, not compete with it.

Council members who claimed to worry about attacks on their private lives or even their style of dress if Feuer’s proposal is approved are off base. Ethical conduct is something that the public increasingly demands, and city leaders ought to realize that it’s time to find a way to make a code of conduct work.