EDITORIAL ETHICS FACADE CITY POLICY ON LOBBYISTS OFFERS PUBLIC LITTLE PROTECTION.

THE setting: The lobby of a Los Angeles City Council member's office. Two influence peddlers are waiting - campaign donations and Laker tickets in hand - to bend the ear of one of L.A.'s lawmakers. Both are well-connected schmoozers paid to ply and manipulate our elected officials. But there's a key difference:

One is subject to strict city ethics and disclosure laws. The other isn't.

Or, to put it another way, we, the public, know what one of these influence-peddlers is up to - what he or she is selling and how it's being sold. As for the other, we have no clue. The first influence-peddler is barred from serving on city commissions; the second is not.

It's a loophole so large as to render city ethics laws little more than an impotent joke - which, of course, was exactly the intent of city officials in enacting such flimsy protections in the first place.

Freelance lobbyists, who get hired to represent all sorts of interests, must register in City Hall and disclose their affiliations. But the full-time lobbyists who work for any number of businesses, unions and advocacy groups are allowed to fly under the radar.

Never mind that both are ultimately doing the same thing - earning their living influencing public policy. They're different in the eyes of the city's highly flawed ethics law, which regulates ``lobbyists'' in name only.

It doesn't have to be this way. In Sacramento, for example, in-house lobbyists are subject to the same scrutiny as freelancers. But in City Hall, there seems to be little interest in changing the law that lets the good many, if not most, influence peddlers operate unimpeded.

Thomas Saenz, counsel to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, says that the city's policy is rooted in the U.S. Constitution. ``Every individual has a First Amendment right, and they don't give that up by virtue of (serving) on a citizen's commission.''

But requiring lobbyists - be it the freelance or the in-house kind - to identify themselves as such is no violation of anyone's free-speech rights. They can speak all they want, but we the public deserve to know who's trying to influence our leaders, and how, so that we can bring that information to the voting both.

That kind of transparency - reported on a weekly basis - is the only way to bring any kind of integrity or honesty to city government. The public, which ultimately pays the bills, has a right to know about all special interests influencing the decisions in City Hall.