COUNTY PULLS ADVERTISING OFF WEB SITE.

Byline: David Bloom Daily News Staff Writer

Seeking to avoid possible conflicts of interest, the Los Angeles County's Board of Supervisors temporarily suspended Tuesday all advertising and outside ``links'' on its computer accessible World Wide Web sites on the Internet.

County departments in the past several months have established a number of Web sites to take advantage of growth of the increasingly popular Internet, the international network that links computers.

County departments use their Web pages to provide basic information about permit rules, office hours, meeting schedules and agendas and more.

But a recent call by the Regional Planning Department for companies interesting in advertising on its pages caught the eye of Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

Calling for a 30-day moratorium on all advertising on county Web sites, the supervisor said he was concerned about possible conflicts of interest, because the department's most likely advertisers are engineers, consultants and companies that also could do business with the department.

``I thought that was an outrage,'' said Yaroslavsky. ``I don't have a problem with advertising on a Web site where it doesn't create a conflict. But this creates the impression of a conflict.''

County officials acknowledged that they have been slow to develop policies on advertising by outside companies on the county's Web pages.

Nor have they made clear what the rules should be for other organizations to have a direct ``link'' on the county pages. Links are spots on the screen that allow a user to jump directly from one of the county pages to another site provided by someone else.

The issue of government agencies soliciting advertising also has raised concerns from organizations representing more traditional media that are dependent on advertising for much of their revenues.

``The government is entering into private business,'' said Jim Ewert, staff attorney for the California Newspaper Publishers Association. ``Are we going to allow our government to get into for-profit enterprises to directly compete with private entities? Obviously, we don't want them doing that.''

Ewert said the possibility of government-run entities financing Web sites with private advertising raises constitutional issues.

The potential for conflict of interest also makes government-sponsored advertising outlets ``very bad public policy,'' Ewert said.

Web sites for seven county departments are run by the Internal Services Department, which banned all advertising while awaiting a countywide policy, said Crystal Murrell, ISD section manager overseeing Internet issues.

But Regional Planning officials, hoping to find ways to pay for their Web site through advertising, instead hired an outside company to do the work, said Principal Planner Dennis Slavin, the department's de facto Internet guru.

``What we were trying to do was simply have the option (of advertising) available,'' Slavin said. ``It sort of backfired.''

The department's Web page, featuring permit information, Planning Commission agendas and support material, has been operating for about a month, Slavin said.