4 City Unions Seek to Overturn Ethics Law

In a bid to overturn Los Angeles’s new ethics ordinance, four unions have sued to prevent the regulations from being applied to thousands of city employees, an attorney said.

The Superior Court suit challenges the constitutionality of the ethics legislation, approved by voters last fall, and claims that the new law’s provisions invade employees’ privacy and may violate their contracts.

Attorney Margo Anne Feinberg, who filed the suit on behalf of four municipal unions, said the ethics code was intended to prevent corruption of elected officials and city commissioners--not employees whose influence is limited.

Further, the city failed to meet and confer with workers when it became clear the new ordinance would contradict terms of numerous employment contracts, she said.

“If you change the rules of the game, you have to negotiate with us,� Feinberg said. “They never did.�

Plaintiffs are the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the Engineers and Architects Assn., the Professional Managers’ Assn. and the Assn. of Deputy and Assistant City Attorneys. The unions represent more than 17,000 people, but the suit involves 3,000 to 5,000, Feinberg said.

The ethics ordinance has been plagued by controversy and complaints. Despite being heralded as one of the toughest such laws in the nation, it soon was found to be virtually lacking in enforcement teeth. And the city’s Ethics Commission scrambled to close loopholes that seemed to exempt scores of city officials.

The new law requires city employees and officials to disclose details of their income, outside assets, property holdings and a wide range of information as a way of exposing potential sources of conflict of interest.

But, Feinberg argues, such requirements are unnecessary for employees. Under current state regulations, employees must reveal whether they have financial interests in areas over which their jobs might have an influence. The new city law, however, requires disclosure of all income and assets.

Under the state rules, for example, a sanitation engineer would have to disclose that he owned stock in a company bidding for a garbage-collection contract. But under the new ethics code, he would have to disclose even something as remote as property in another state.

The plaintiffs are hoping to join the suit to a complaint filed earlier by other city workers. A request for an injunction could be heard next month.