What recession? Business is still growing for City Hall's lobbyists.

Even as government watchdogs seek tougher laws to monitor to special interest advocates, Los Angeles City Hall's powerful lobbyists, fed by upticks in development and waste-business spending, generated $1.6 million in second quarter 1992 fees.

Altogether, compensation for the 132 lobbyists reporting fees in the April-June period jumped about 10 percent from 1992's first quarter, according to the city's Ethics Commission, which regulates the $6.5-million-a-year trade.

Shelling out the most to lobbyists were real estate interests, which paid out $491,600 in the quarter, compared to $438,680 from corporations and $183,679 from smaller businesses.

For the third consecutive period, Otto Industries -- the North Carolina-based garbage bin maker trying to expand its $25 million city contract -- had the biggest quarterly lobbying tab, spending $170,550 in the period. Otto, Toter Inc. and several other manufacturers are now vying for more than $40 million in future contracts.

Coming in second, at $37,500, was the Tobacco Institute, which represents cigarette-makers and helped defeat a controversial restaurant smoking ban last March.

As usual, the lion's share of fees -- 72 percent last quarter -- wes pocketed by the top 25 money-earning lobbyists, some of them former Los Angeles officials or aides to Mayor Tom Bradley. Of the 302 registered lobbyists, 136 reported receiving fees last quarter, records show.

Ex-city legislative analyst Kenneth Spiker remained City Hall's No. 1 money-earning lobbyist, bringing in $184,400 last quarter, including $90,000 from Otto, $30,000 from R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and $15,000 from Elsmere Corp., which will help run a new landfill in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Another top earner, with $120,400 in second quarter billings, was Maureen Kindel, former president of Los Angeles' Board of Public Works and a Bradley confidante. She snagged nearly $30,000 from Otto, $6,750 from Catellus Development Corp. and $15,000 from Browning Ferris Industries, which is pushing to reopen a Northridge dump.

Close behind Kindel was Frances Savitch, another Bradley fundraiser and his former redevelopment liaison, who made $112,500. Roughly one-quarter of her fees came from City Centre Development, builder of Metropolis, a $750 million, mixed-use project planned for downtown's financial district.

Perhaps the most glaring change this period was the amount real estate companies paid their City Hall advocates, almost $125,000 more than 1992's initial quarter, when corporate interests led the pack.

Forest City Development, for instance, coughed up $36,970 in lobbying fees -- the third highest overall in the second period -- to get planning entitlements for the Park LaBrea, a proposed Mid-Wilshire area mixed-use project. Nansay USA Inc., which wants to raise a hotel-office-retail development in Westwood Village, paid $23,337 in fees to its six lobbyists, half of them from the Democratically-aligned law firm of Manatt, Phelps, Phillips & Kantor.

Still, said Nansay advocate Burt Pines, an ex-Los Angeles City Attorney, increases in development lobbying "may just be fortuitous, because commercial real estate is still grim."

Meantime, another change may be on the way for lobbyists in the form of a stricter-reporting law. Approved by the Ethics Commission's board this summer, the ordinance would: require lobbyist firms to file quarterly disclosure reports, just like individual TABULAR DATA OMITTED lobbyists must do; direct any lobbyist or advocate firm that gives more than $100 a quarter in political contributions to document those expenses in their commission filings and force any individual or group that spends $2,000 or more quarterly for public relations or advertising urging a position on legislative matters must also report.

Industries that use lobbyists
Second quarter 1992 results
                               Fees reported
Client type                  for the period ($)   fees reported
Real estate/Development          491,599.76            31
Business - Corporate             438,680.75            27
Business - Other                 183,679.48            11
Other                            162,852.31            10
Entertainment/Media               62,246.72             4
Business - Transportation         61,625.00             4
Business - Finance                56,433.65             4
Health/Medical                    51,433.45             3
Religious church                  26,550.23             2
Education                         21,865.00             1
Legal                             20,500.00             1
Government                        15,632.16             1
Hotel/Restaurant                   7,100.00             0
Trade/Professional/Union           6,924.20             0
Utilities                          3,000.00             0
Total                         $1,610,132.71
Source: Los Angeles City Ethics Commission

The City Council's rules and election committee is slated to take up the ordinance Sept. 9.

"Despite what some think, we aren't anti-lobbyist," said Ethics Commission Associate Director LeeAnn Pelham. "But we do need to know how much the clients are paying lobbyists to influence city decisions and that extends to advertising and other expenses."

Anti-smoking mailers sent out by the tobacco interests and newspaper advertisements railing against last year's defeated cable television tax are examples of lobbying-related expenses that went unreported in the current system, according to Pelham.

Concerned with how those proposals would affect their business and irked about what they label as another regulatory burden on local business, some of the lobbyists have hired a Bay Area law firm -- Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Mueller & Naylor -- to represent them at commission and council hearings, it was learned last week.

Spiker, the top money-earning lobbyist, said he gave $1,000 to the law firm to follow commission actions, though he was not opposed to broader disclosure. "I'm an old time bureaucrat," Spiker said. "I have nothing to hide."

Most worrisome, however, is not the proposed regulations, but the knottier issue of when a lawyer who doubles as a lobbyist must report fees.

Former City Councilman Arthur Snyder said he doesn't reveal his legal tab for clients vying for city business because the State Bar already regulates attorneys and disclosing billings would be a breach of attorney-client confidentiality. Late last year, Snyder represented a group that unsuccessfully sought City Hall permission to convert downtown's Broadway Trade Center into a garment manufacturing hub.

"I didn't report on a nickel on that (effort) because the courts have deemed that type of activity quasi-judicial," Snyder said. "If the Ethics Commission really wanted" to regulate lawyer-lobbyists, "they should get an amendment to the bar code through the state legislature instead of blustering and threatening."

But Pelham, of the commission, acknowledged there is plenty of gray area on the lawyer-lobbyist issue and that ethics officials are still "gathering information" before deciding whether to the courts for clarification.

Other major earners last quarter included: Howard Sunkin, who reported $124,700 on billings from clients like Century Cable Television, Atlantic Richfield Co. and E-Z Roller, a luggage cart contractor at Los Angeles International Airport; Afriat Blackstone Consulting, the consulting outfit led by Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky's former deputy, Steve Afriat, disclosed billings of $66,600, including $21,000 from builders of Warner Ridge, a $150 million office-residential project being planned for Woodland Hills.