Posted on 05/05/2005 8:44:57 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
Freewheeling spending in the Los Angeles mayor's race by a wide range of interests that have something to gain has swamped the city's ethics-reform efforts and heightened concerns that City Hall is for sale, political experts said Wednesday.
Companies, unions, individuals and other special interests locally and across the country have contributed millions of dollars to candidates in the primary and runoff elections and spent millions more as independent expenditures in an effort to sway voters.
The opening of the floodgates has resulted in more than $2.6 million being spent outside the campaigns on behalf of Mayor James Hahn and City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa versus the $1.75 million the two had spent during their first match-up in the 2001 mayor's race.
And that has made the ethics reforms undertaken more than a decade ago nearly meaningless, said Bill Boyarsky, a retired journalist who is a member of the city Ethics Commission.
"It's a terrible thing," Boyarsky said. "I think the independent expenditures have made the reforms meaningless for a major race with a lot on the line."
Villaraigosa has been thrown on the defensive in recent days for taking $47,000 in campaign contributions from Travel Traders, a Florida firm that apparently wanted airport concessions in Los Angeles; and benefiting from more than $82,000 in independent expenditures from Richard Meruelo, a developer who lives part time in Miami and Southern California, and his family.
The councilman said the two are friends, but that he didn't know about Meruelo's controversial purchase of land the Los Angeles Unified School District had designated for a new school.
Hahn, whose administration has been the subject of "pay-to-play" local and federal investigations for 18 months, took $336,000 for his political campaigns from developer Mark Abrams, who has been fined $270,000 by the Ethics Commission. He got $25,500 more for his 2001 race from attorney Pierce O'Donnell, who is charged with money laundering.
Unlike Villaraigosa, who returned the questioned $47,000, Hahn has refused to return the tainted contributions, saying the money has all been spent.
Despite the investigations and criminal charges, there is growing evidence that more contributors are willing to take a chance by laundering their donations or committing other violations, as evidenced by $736,615 in Ethics Commission fines so far -- a record over the past decade.
Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior scholar at USC's School of Policy, Planning and Development, said the reforms aren't working because too many people are willing to risk violations, or even breaking the law, to see their candidate win.
"Political money is like water running downhill," she said. "It will find its way around any obstacle to get to the bottom.
"We shouldn't be surprised it's happened. If you need the money and people are willing to give it, there will be ways found to give it. You're going to spend the money and take the risk."
On Wednesday, for example, the California Teachers Association announced a $500,000 independent expenditure on behalf of Villaraigosa for television ads to air next week, bringing the statewide union's total to just more than $600,000.
Bob Cherry, CTA associate executive director, said the union is pleased with Villaraigosa's record on public education.
"It's an unfortunate fact that if people want to have their viewpoints heard, it's very expensive," Cherry said.
That independent expenditure alone would have been enough to break the $1.8 million spending cap the candidates initially agreed to in order to receive city matching funds.
But the cap already was shattered April 20 by a $270,000 independent expenditure on behalf of Hahn by United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local Union No. 112, which is led by the brother of Hahn chief of staff Tim McOsker.
Five days before the cap was broken, another union -- SEIU-Los Angeles Homecare Workers Union Local 434B, whose president, Tyrone Freeman, is a city fire commissioner -- began to spend on independent expenditures, which have totaled $310,866 so far.
As the City Hall pay-to-play scandal erupted, rules were changed to bar commissioners from raising money for a candidate's campaign in the wake of allegations that several of Hahn's commissioners who were major fundraisers also had influence over the award of contracts.
But there is nothing barring commissioners from participating in independent expenditure efforts, for which the U.S. Supreme Court has said there are no spending limits.
Boyarsky said some commissioners said they were unconcerned when they were banned from raising funds directly for the campaigns.
"They said, 'I don't care, I'll start doing IEs."'
Other avenues have opened up for funneling hundreds of thousands of additional dollars into the race as the result of unions and other groups sending campaign messages directly to members, as in mailers or other forms of communication.
Disclosure of the membership mailings was required in the 2001 general election.
So far, $324,047 has been spent on mailings on behalf of either Hahn or Villaraigosa. The mayor has been the biggest beneficiary of independent expenditures although Villaraigosa has raised more money directly for his campaign.
When unions, or powerful individuals with special interests, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on independent expenditures or membership mailings, it automatically creates a climate where pay to play can flourish, the analysts said.
"Access is a huge commodity worth a lot; an average person never gets in to see the top aide," Boyarsky said. "That's a huge, valuable commodity.
"The only cure for it is public financing of campaigns. That's really the only way to take these elections out of these contributors on all sides, and make (it) a part of the cost of doing government."
Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, a Los Angeles-based nonpartisan, nonprofit group that looks at campaign financing and ethics, said the independent expenditures undermine competitive races.
"It's a way to get around the contribution limits, and that's not good.
"From a civic point of view, independent expenditures aren't helpful. The candidates don't control them, it's unlimited spending, and they're usually done by someone who wants something from government."
heh, Hahn's still under investigation for his 1987 run for City Attorney (requiring his staff to give election $$$ to him) - Feds are still working on the Louie Louie lyrics though and hope to wrap up the Hahn project someday - maybe soon
Won't it be great when the pro-illegal alien candidate, and UCLA drop out, wins the mayors race?
LMBO!!! NOOoooo....!
The sickening side is that a lot of the new Leftist candidates for state and local offices are coming out of the ACLU/Mexican Nationalist farm clubs... and hardly anyone makes a peep about it.
If you like in Los Angeles, you are so screwed.
""....and heightened concerns that City Hall is for sale""
Its not for sale. Mexico already bought it.
If he did know, he's corrupt. If he didn't know, he's incompetent. Either way makes him unqualified.
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