ETHICS COMMISSION MEMBERS ENDORSE BAN ON FUND RAISING.

Byline: Rick Orlov and Beth Barrett Staff Writers

As criticism mounts about links between campaign contributions and contract awards at City Hall, a majority of the members of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission endorsed a ban Tuesday on political fund raising by members of city commissions.

At the urging of Ethics Commission President Gil Garcetti, the former county district attorney, the panel put off action for a month to allow commissioners from other city boards to weigh in.

The debate followed a scathing audit by City Controller Laura Chick on the involvement of airport commissioners - including Airport Commission President Ted Stein, a major fund-raiser for Hahn - on contractor selection panels prior to a final vote. Hahn last week ended that practice. Stein has said he did nothing improper.

Ethics commissioner Bill Boyarsky, a retired journalist, said he found the audit, testimony before the commission and other evidence compelling.

``I think the information we've been given shows there's a need to have a ban on fund raising by commissioners.''

The City Council voted last week to hold its own hearings on whether to ban commissioners' fund raising.

Since June, at least three commissioners, including Stein, have hosted, or participated in, fund-raisers for the mayor, the Daily News found. Others participated in fund-raisers for council members.

Hahn, in a recent interview, said it wouldn't be right for him to ask

the commissioners ``to do things on my behalf,'' but that they should be allowed to participate in fund raising of their choosing.

``I think we have some of the toughest ethics laws in the country and people should be allowed to participate,'' Hahn said. ``When you make different rules for different classes of people you start down a slippery slope.''

Current city law bans commissioners from seeking campaign contributions from people with business pending before their commissions, either currently or within the past year.

The mayor said he favors tougher disclosure requirements, adding: ``It's important for everything to be disclosed, what everyone is doing, where candidates get their funds from. Anything that aids that reform I support.''

David W. Fleming, a former member of the city Ethics Commission and the Fire Commission, said at Tuesday's hearing that a ban is the only way to clean up the city's image.

``I think two things have become painfully apparent,'' Fleming said. ``First, over many years, Los Angeles has become a 'pay-to-play' city. Second, despite the presence of citizen boards and commissions, this city government is, in reality, run and controlled by, in Churchill's words, the few - the very few.

``L.A. is approaching a population of 4 million people. Yet those who wield the power and control what happens in City Hall can be measured, at best, in the dozens ... One gets to be an insider in a variety of ways - but the primary criteria is and always has been money. Money talks.''

Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization in Los Angeles that studies campaign financing and ethics, said the city should ban commissioners' fund raising, noting that the state in 1982 strictly limited its commissioners' fund-raising activities.

``Fund raising (by commissioners) should be prohibited, banned. It sends the wrong message,'' Stern said. ``If (a commissioner) is known to be a mover and a shaker, people feel they should be giving.''

Reaction among commissioners from other departments to the proposed ban has been mixed.

Doug Ring, a Community Redevelopment Agency Commissioner and husband of Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who is spearheading reforms on the council, said he favors the ban.

``I am sure, if you took a poll of commissioners, nearly all of them would say privately they support that,'' Ring said.

Port Commissioner James Acevedo, whose name appeared on fund-raising invitations last year for councilmen Tony Cardenas and Eric Garcetti, opposes the ban. ``We should have the ability to raise funds like everybody else for people we care about.''

Department of Water and Power Commissioner Leland Wong, whose name also appeared on the Cardenas invitation for an Oct. 29, $500-a-ticket event at the downtown San Antonio Winery restaurant, said commissioners have the ``right and privilege to participate in the political process.''

Wong said while the ban might be ``great for guys like me,'' in terms of relieving them from the burdens of fund raising, it would remove them from participation on important issues.

Wong said he doesn't sit on review panels, but believes that commissioners have a role in finding ``good matches'' for city business. He said part of a commissioner's job is helping constituents - especially minority and women businesses - work through the city bureaucracy.

Councilman Bernard C. Parks said he and other council members long have heard complaints about the need to contribute money in order to win city business.

``The perception is that it is important to make contributions in order to get city business,'' Parks said. ``We hear that from people who do business with the city or those who had contracts and lost them or those who never won contracts.

``We have long heard about the systemic corruption of cities in the East or the South. I wouldn't like to see that here.''

Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, whose Audits Committee is looking at the ban proposal, said: ``It is critical that participation on citizen commissions be open to all residents of this city and not simply to the elite few who have the resources to make political fund-raising contributions. The mere perception, let alone the reality, of a 'pay to play' system not only taints the policy-making process, it also damages public trust.''

Rick Orlov, [phone]

rick.orlov(at)dailynews.com