Hahn Asks Broader Power to Probe Corruption Cases

While defending the thoroughness of his conflict-of-interest investigation of Mayor Tom Bradley, City Atty. James K. Hahn proposed Wednesday that his office be granted broader powers to investigate such political corruption cases, including the authority to take cases directly to a criminal grand jury.

Appearing before the City Council’s Ad Hoc Committee on Ethics, Hahn called for establishing a “public corruption and election law enforcement section” in the Los Angeles Police Department, a special unit in the city attorney’s office to deal exclusively with government ethics and a permanent city ethics commission.

The changes, he said, would not only enhance his ability to conduct investigations of City Hall corruption, but would reassure the public that all the necessary tools were at the prosecutor’s disposal.

In addition to these enforcement proposals, Hahn called for elected officials to establish blind trusts when their investments exceed $100,000, that there be public financing of campaigns and that the council adopt a ban on outside income by elected officials.

Files Civil Suit

Three weeks ago, Hahn released a 1,165-page report on his six-month investigation of Bradley’s personal finances and professional conduct. Hahn filed a six-count civil suit against the mayor for incomplete disclosure of his financial holdings. He found insufficient evidence to prosecute the mayor criminally, but criticized him for an “indifference” to ethical concerns.

As the lead-off witness in the council’s long-awaited hearing on the report, Hahn defended the professionalism of his inquiry. Although he proposed a broad range of new investigative powers for his office, Hahn insisted that the absence of those powers had not impeded his investigation of the mayor.

“A lot has been said about the fact that my investigation of the mayor was done without the benefit of” powers to issue subpoenas and take testimony under oath, Hahn said. “However, the police and sheriff do not possess such methods of compelling evidence, and their crime-fighting and detection abilities do not appear seriously hampered.”

Hahn later said in an interview that he would not have taken the Bradley investigation to a grand jury--even if he had the power to do so.

“With 20/20 hindsight I can see our investigation was not hampered,” by the lack of investigative powers, Hahn said after the hearing. “It is an option that should be available and one I might have considered at the beginning of the investigation, when I was not confident that I would be able to get all the documents and interview all the witnesses.”

However, Hahn was not able to get all the documents and interviews he initially wanted--including interviews with officials of Columbia Savings & Loan Assn., which had loaned $50,000 to a real estate partnership involving the mayor, documents from Gibraltar Savings Savings & Loan in which Bradley had invested $100,000, and Bradley’s personal income tax records.

But Hahn said that in each of these cases, investigators were able to reach a conclusion without the additional information.

Some committee members, however, were not readily convinced that the Hahn investigation was thorough.

The committee chairman, Councilman Michael Woo, pressed Hahn on why his investigation and report appeared limited to issues that had previously been raised in the press.

Checked Allegations

Hahn responded that his investigators tracked down many other allegations--”not much more than gossip”--but found no substance worth reporting.

Woo said he was also concerned with conflicts in statements made by witnesses, and asked if placing them under oath would have resolved the issues.

But Hahn said City Controller Rick Tuttle placed several of the same witnesses under oath and came up with the same conflicting stories. “Placing people under oath doesn’t get you any closer to the truth,” Hahn told the committee.

Council member Gloria Molina was skeptical of other methods employed by the city attorney’s team of investigators and said she was concerned with “inconsistencies” that she found in documents supplied to the city attorney by the mayor’s office. Hahn said his team had “interviewed everybody” on the mayor’s staff and concluded that “we found no inconsistencies” in the documents.

Seeming Contradiction

Molina later said that Hahn seemed to contradict himself by defending his investigation while calling for more powers. “I thought it was curious when he talked about (needing) the power to subpoena witnesses and put them under oath, but then said, ‘Oh no, I had all the powers I needed,’ ” she said.

The committee will meet again today, and Woo has scheduled two additional days of hearings. He and Molina both speculated that the hearings could go on for several weeks.

Council member Joan Milke Flores said she does not want the hearings to be a “fishing expedition or a limelight opportunity.”