JIM, TED TREASURE FRIENDSHIP.

Byline: KIMIT MUSTON Local View

I'LL bet that, on this Thanksgiving, Mayor James Hahn was thankful for all his close dear friends - and perhaps for one close friend in particular, Ted Stein.

Back in 1997, Stein and Hahn ran against each other for city attorney. Hahn won that election easily, but evidently there were no hard feelings between the two men because four years later, when Jimmy decided to run for mayor, Ted was one of the first people to offer his support and to raise money for Jimmy's campaign. A lot of money.

Once elected, Mayor Hahn was grateful. He named Ted as president of the Los Angeles Airport Commission, a key post with millions of dollars in contracts to be awarded. And Ted's wife, Ellen, was reappointed to the Public Works Board, a rare paid commission post. Ted's daughter even got a job in the Mayor's Office.

You can't get friends much closer than that - at least not in politics, where money is thicker than blood.

Yet for all his connections, publicly Ted remains modest. His biography on the Airport Commission's Web site merely says: ``Since 1979 Mr. Stein has been a real estate developer, constructing commercial, industrial and housing projects.'' There are projects such as his attempt to jam 21 homes into a 6.7-acre slice of Chatsworth horse country. City officials gave Ted a variance for his project, but Chatsworth residents sued, and a judge ruled the city had violated its own master plan. In closed-door sessions the City Council voted to appeal that ruling; Ted had got the city to sue its own citizens.

The episode showed the power of Ted. But it also made Ted's little housing project a focal point for Valley secession anger.

But if Ted could make trouble for his friends, he could help his friends, too. After all, what are friends for?

Ted threw a little party in his home and raised $500,000 for L.A. United, the mayor's anti-secession campaign. Typical were the $20,000 in donations he picked up from the family and business associates of Chuck Winner, at about the same time that - by sheer happenstance, I'm sure - Chuck's public-relations firm, Winner and Associates, was awarded $1.5 million to sell an expansion plan for Los Angeles International that had been killed weeks earlier. And employees of HMS Host, which provides food service at LAX, donated $15,000 - by coincidence - just after Ted cut a closed-door, no-bid extension on their contract.

There were two of Ted's fellow airport commissioners who questioned Ted's mix of contract bid negotiations and fund raising, but Jimmy Hahn fired them both. What else are friends for? And then there's the amazing story of Tutor-Saliba, the construction giant sued successfully by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in 2001 for shoddy work during construction of the Red Line subway. If you remember, Hollywood Boulevard fell into it.

Well, a jury awarded the MTA $63 million in damages, but Tutor-Saliba appealed and keeps appealing, so the fine has yet to be paid. Still, last year, Tutor-Saliba was able to provide $100,000 to the mayor's anti-secession campaign, and in January of this year - despite the court judgment and despite charges of inflated prices and double-billing on a Tutor-Saliba project at Van Nuys Airport - Tutor-Saliba was granted a $33 million contract for expansion work at LAX.

After all, what are friends for?

Of course, not everything always goes smoothly. A ``senior city official'' recently told the Los Angeles Business Journal that Ted was turned down when he suggested that URS Corp., which had LAX expansion contracts, should donate to L.A. United. Ted is accused of responding, ``You're out of luck.''

But maybe Ted was a little too obvious this time. District Attorney Steve Cooley is investigating this cobweb of contracts and fund raising, and the City Ethics Commission is even thinking of looking into it, too. And if you attract the attention of the somnambulant City Ethics Commission, you have been more than obvious. You have been oblivious.

Still, this is a long way from a charge of extortion or fraud against Ted Stein or any other airport commissioner. Every citizen is innocent until proven guilty, even one as well connected as Ted. And I'm sure that if any charges ever come close to being made, Jimmy Hahn will step in and protect Ted as if he were protecting himself.

Because that's what friends are for.