EDITORIAL ETHICAL FAILINGS HAHN KEEPS SKIRTING ETHICS LAWS IN THE FACE OF CORRUPTION PROBES.

SINCE the investigations into alleged ``pay-to-play'' contracting at City Hall began, Mayor James Hahn has maintained that the commissioners he appointed never engaged in improper or illegal fund raising on his behalf, and certainly never shook down contractors.

No matter that two key commissioners and his former chief fund-raiser/deputy mayor, Troy Edwards, resigned under a cloud of suspicion. No matter that the noose of ongoing local and federal criminal investigations is tightening.

As for Hahn himself, he remains steadfast in his posture that he not only knew nothing but also that he is the real champion of cleaning up the cesspool of unethical and illegal conduct that has tainted City Hall's reputation for clean government worse than anything that has happened in nearly seven decades.

And even as the dots of scandalous misconduct slowly get connected, Hahn offers belated support for ethics reforms that would serve his interests best since he is the king of fund raising and his measures would thwart the fund-raising efforts of his rivals.

Given that these steps are tacit acknowledgment that there is a corruption problem at City Hall, a reasonable person would think that Hahn would take pains to avoid even the appearance of impropriety by himself, his staff, his appointees and his allies.

But that is not the case. On one recent day, public employee union boss Julie Butcher, beneficiary of a sweetheart contract with the city, mistakenly used a city site to store and distribute re-elect Hahn campaign signs.

On another day, Dominick Rubalcava, head of the Department of Water and Power commission, was spotted behaving very much like the host of a fund-raising breakfast for Hahn at a swanky downtown restaurant.

That would be a blatant and direct violation of one of those very ethics reforms which Hahn went along with after the district attorney and FBI began investigating whether the mayor's administration was engaging in pay-to-play shakedowns of city contractors.

But the Hahn campaign, in its usual brusque and vulgar manner, dismissed any possibility of wrongdoing. Rubalcava didn't introduce the mayor. He didn't thank the assembled contributors. He had nothing whatsoever to do with the event.

No, the Hahn campaign said, Rubalcava just happened to be having breakfast at the same restaurant at the same time and decided to come over and say hello to the mayor and all those people he happened to know, who just happened to be there. Just a simple coincidence.

Once again the mayor has put a wall of denial up around his conduct. That ought to be disturbing to everyone, even to the insiders who have benefited one way or another from the Hahn administration and are hopeful for more of the same during a second Hahn administration.

What's even more disturbing is that Hahn continues to routinely skirt ethics laws and continues to avoid holding people like Rubalcava - who as a DWP commissioner oversaw the tainted public relations contracts with Fleishman-Hillard among other controversies - responsible for the failure to look after the public interest.

Of course, in the end, there is only one person to be held most accountable - and it will be the voters who will do that.