Katz Digs His Claws Into Alarcon Conflict-of-Interest Debate

In a second straight public forum, state Senate candidate Richard Katz put his opponent, City Councilman Richard Alarcon, on the defensive Thursday over a nasty conflict-of-interest controversy.

At a meeting of The Executives, a group that provides financial support for the Jewish Home for the Aging in Reseda, Katz criticized Alarcon for accepting a $38,000 loan from the wife of a developer who later benefited from a city loan.

Katz, a former assemblyman, suggested that Alarcon refused to sign a code of ethics pledge regarding campaign contributions because he has questionable moral standards.

“Richard didn’t sign that code [because he said] he knew right from wrong,� Katz said. “I don’t think the facts bear that out.�

The controversy surrounds a vote that Alarcon and the rest of the City Council took in 1995 to give a $1.1 million zero-interest city loan to the Valleyheart West Condominium Assn. under an earthquake rehabilitation program.

One of the partners in Valleyheart was Mark Handel, whose wife, Sarah Luluff, lent Alarcon the $38,000 in 1994 in the form of a second mortgage for yard improvements and a pool at Alarcon’s Sylmar home.

The state Fair Political Practices Commission announced last week that it will review the propriety of Alarcon’s actions.

During the meeting of The Executives on Thursday, Alarcon acknowledged that he “goofed,� but said that he voted for the loan not knowing that Handel was involved in the Valleyheart project.

“I have done nothing wrong on that loan,� he said.

Alarcon chided Katz, accusing him of using negative campaign tactics to divert attention from more important issues.

Alarcon’s ethics came up in a debate Tuesday at a meeting of the Studio City Homeowners Assn. The charges are likely to make their way on to campaign mailers and brochures soon.

Expect the campaign to bring up more questions about Alarcon’s past council votes. According to campaign records, Katz has paid $10,000 to a Houston-based firm called The Research Agency. Katz’s campaign staff said the firm was hired, in part, to look into Alarcon’s legislative record to uncover any other issues that may be raised in the campaign.

Paper Chase

City Councilman Mike Feuer’s campaign for a crackdown on paper signs is heading toward victory, boding ill for lost dogs, yard sales, underground concerts and obscure commercial ventures.

Feuer’s effort passed a critical hurdle this week when a council committee approved a draft version of the budget with enough money for three new city employees to hunt down renegade paper signs. Full council approval is expected later this month.

Signs stapled to telephone poles and other public property are technically illegal. But the city has made little effort to enforce the law in recent years.

Under Feuer’s proposal, the city would begin enforcing the law to such an extent that fines collected from offenders would pay for more investigators.

So far, the new sign police haven’t said exactly where they’ll focus their efforts. But they have said a good bet is Ventura Boulevard, where signs abound, and so do complaints about them.

Wachs-ing Indignant

Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs has turned his sights on City Atty. James K. Hahn--and kept them there.

It wasn’t enough for Wachs to vote last week against a costly court settlement that Hahn’s deputies had negotiated.

Nor did Wachs stop at publicly voicing his displeasure directly after the vote, saying Hahn’s attorneys had done “a terrible job� in settling the case before it went to an appeals trial.

Then this week, Wachs proceeded to go on not just one, but two radio talk shows to revisit his gripe with Hahn. In one radio interview, KABC’s Larry Elder show, Wachs reportedly got so passionate that the interview stretched on for nearly an hour.

The attacks have the city attorney bristling. Hahn has produced numbers showing that lawsuit payouts have actually declined since he’s held the job.

Hahn has also retorted with a sentiment to which any working stiff can relate: Wachs is quick to attack failings, but does he compliment successes? Not once, Hahn said.

Out of Touch

Joe Gelman, vying with Randy Hoffman to unseat Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), has tried to make an issue of a satellite navigation device that is sold by the firm that Hoffman co-founded.

Magellan Systems Inc., the firm that Hoffman headed before resigning to run for Congress, makes hand-held devices that use satellite signals to allow users to determine their exact location anywhere in the world. The U.S. military relied on Magellan’s global navigation devices to help troops find their way through the sands of the Middle East during Operation Desert Storm.

But Gelman charged that the devices became a threat to the security of Israel when Magellan began in 1994 to produce a device that allows users to view data in English and Arabic. Hoffman called the charges “pathetic.�

“It’s not true and Joe knows it’s not true,� he said through a spokesman. “He is grasping at straws.�

Gelman will have a hard time finding allies at the Pentagon.

A spokesperson at the Defense Department said commercial Global Positioning Systems are mass-produced throughout the world in many different languages. The spokesperson also noted that the commercial systems use satellite signals that are not as precise as encrypted signals used by the military.